Unless someone eventually finds the consciousness center in the brain I will continue to hold the position that it is just another property of "things". I know consciousness must be real because it's the first thing I have access to without any sort of reasoning attached on top of it. Its realness is more visceral than atoms or any other physical theory because it is the way in which the world is conveyed to me, but I don't think I'm unique in any way for having it.

  I feel like all systems, in a panpsychist sense, participate in consciousness, so in some way it's a property of matter or systems in our universe that we have somehow failed to account for in physics. We miss it because systems only exhibit consciousness internally like on top of having all the physical properties of rocks, rocks also have an internal state of being. That internal state of being for the most part is uninteresting cause it doesn't dictate the rocks actual form or function in the universe.

  I'd argue human consciousness is the same. My conscious experience has nothing to do with the thoughts that are actually being produced. By this I mean there is no authorship of the thoughts and actions I perform by my consciousness. To me it seems more like a stage in which elements of my experience appear for brief moments before fading away, so much like the rock's internal experience my internal experience does not have any affect on the physical world.

  Part of me then starts to worry why worry about consciousness at all if it's something that doesn't participate in the physical world because then what's the point of it all? Also, if all systems get to participate, then what stops things like basic logic gates on a PC from having consciousness as well. I tend to lean towards thinking that those feelings are similar to the same kinds of feelings humans used to have about thinking they were the center of the universe, but I'm not sure.

Sorry for the brain dump,

Austin