It probably helps that my background is in the sciences and I can speak the scientists' language.

Although I'm Australian, I find myself much more in sympathy with the Austrian version!

Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

Now I have to say I'm a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it's a natural fact of life.

It probably helps that my background is in the sciences and I can speak the scientists' language.

I had the idea that it would be wonderful to be a physicist or a mathematician maybe 500 years ago around the time of Newton when there were really fundamental things just lying around to be discovered.

What does it mean, exactly, for a given system to be a "neural correlate of consciousness"?