Sense data are much more controversial than qualia, because they are associated with a controversial theory of perception - that one perceives the world by perceiving one's sense-data, or something like that.

My interests started about in science and in mathematics, I always thought I was going to be a mathematician.

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

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.

Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain.

Studying consciousness tells us more about how the world is fundamentally strange. I think we have a few revolutions to go yet before we get to the bottom of it.