What do you believe causes consciousness

@QuixoticSoul see that's the thing though, we still haven't figured out where in the brain consciousness comes from. Roger Penroae has some interesting theories about quantum mechanics being responsible for it. Like we're actually almost like quantum computers.

@basilfawlty89 Consciousness is an emergent property of human brains. I don't think quantum phenomena is required, really - the whole system is plenty complex enough without it, and the trick seems to be in the organization. But perhaps.

@QuixoticSoul I dunno, I'm skeptical, because we still can't explain it or where it sits in the brain. His theory is interesting https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/why-a-genius-scientist-thinks-our-consciousness-originates-at-the-quantum-level

@basilfawlty89 "Still" in this context is asking a lot. The brain is a fantastically complicated machine made out of a hundred billion simpler (but not simple) machines, a product of an iterative process over billions of years (iterative processes generate things that work, but are very difficult to comprehend from the outside). We're trying to reverse engineer it with no manual to go on and with only the simplest of tools.

I'm not surprised we haven't figured out how it works - I'm amazed at how much about it we [i]do[/i] know.

I think that at this stage, the quantum explanation is jumping the gun. It's interesting, and at least sort of testable, but seems far fetched and somewhat unnecessary to me.

@QuixoticSoul I can dig it. I like that we're exploring multiple theories and hypotheses at once instead of just restricting our research to one field.