The mystery of the mystery of consciousness

Consciousness is a familiar and beloved feature of our lives. One way to locate the mystery of consciousness is to recognize it as one aspect of a more general problem, the problem of reconciling our everyday experience of the universe with the ‘scientific image’, the picture of the universe we obtain from the sciences, especially fundamental physics. Consciousness and the manifest image are said to be qualitatively rich, but the physical universe as depicted in the scientific image is thought to be qualitatively bereft. Although the bifurcation of the mental and the physical and the related bifurcation of qualities and powers are perhaps the most prominent sources of the mystery of consciousness, the author mentions one more impediment to a sensible understanding of consciousness and a reconciliation of the manifest and scientific images. Neuroscientists describe brain states as the ‘substrate’ of consciousness.