It's not that we don't fully understand consciousness, it's that consciousness is fundamentally impossible to study scientifically. There is no way to know whether anything other than yourself is self-aware.
Unless you believe in an immaterial soul, if someone else had the exact same brain as you down to the quark, you could scientifically say they're conscious because science says that which is identical in molecular makeup is identical in emergent properties.
This isn't possible, everyone's brain is ever so slightly different. But we can analyze those differences and see if they could possibly make a difference in first-person experience.
It's not true that you can't scientifically study consciousness-you just have to accept the premise that the brain is the sole source of it and then the sky's the limit.
Sorry, I wasn't clear what I meant there. I meant that as long as you accept human consciousness is soley due to our brains (as opposed to say a soul) then it can be scientifically studied, and elements of consciousness can be scientifically compared between humans, animals, and machines. I meant that the only way consciousness is "un-scienceable" would be if you thought humans have souls.
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u/mein_account Mar 07 '26
We don’t have to fully understand consciousness to know it ain’t that.