Straight question - is explaining (or at least understanding) consciousness in the realm of physics?
Detailed question:
We know that consciousness exists. Or rather, I know that I have it. The rest of you may not be conscious, but I know that I am, so it exists. Since it's the goal of physics to explain everything in the universe (even indirectly), I feel that sooner or later, we have to tackle how consciousness arises.
With many other phenomena, we see a straightforward link between the fundamental laws of physics and the phenomena in question.
Examples:
Economics -> human psychology -> evolutionary biology -> biology -> chemistry -> physics
Climate science -> thermodynamics/weather/geology etc -> physics
Fluid mechanics -> collected movements of particles -> physics
So with most other phenomena, we see the links between them and physics. The links may be too numerous to compute, but there's nothing mysterious about these links. We can easily observe and measure these links, no problem.
With consciousness however, there appear to be no direct links to explain how subjective experience can possibly arise from the interaction of particles. Could this be because consciousness arises as an emergent phenomena in the evolution of the human brain? Emergent phenomena are outside the bounds of conventional reductionist physics, but many physicist still consider them to be physics based. For a full throated defense of this view soo this video of a lecture by Ed Witten.
What do you think? Is consciousness in the domain of physics, or is it outside?
