Ever find yourself wondering why you don’t simply do things, but you actually feel like the one performing them? Like, why do you feel that “I’m me” sensation when you look at a sunset, take a bite of pizza, or bump your toe?
This sense of being you—of having a world inside your head and being aware you exist—is what clever people refer to as consciousness. And it’s the largest, most difficult problem in science.
The “Hard Problem”: It’s Not Math, It’s Magic
Scientists can work out how your brain makes you walk, talk, or recall your best friend’s birthday. That’s the “Easy Problem” (or easy for a genius, at least). They can trace the cables and observe the electricity.
The “Hard Problem” is the actual puzzler: How does a squishy mass of flesh (your brain) generate the sensation of being something?
When light strikes your eye, electrical impulses sprint to your brain. That’s basic wiring.
But how does that wiring instantly transform into the individual, internal, “redness” you perceive?
Why isn’t your brain an ultra-speed robot? Why does it feel like a human?
That intimate, personal sensation—the flavor of coffee, the pain of sorrow—is what qualia (kwah-lee-ah) refers to. It’s the “magic” component of the brain that can’t be explained with wires and chemicals alone.
Two Big Guesses About How We Get the “I’m Here” Feeling
Because nobody has the answer, scientists have two pretty smart hunches about how the brain does this trick.
1. Integrated Information Theory (IIT): It’s All Connected
Think of your brain as one enormous, incredibly knotted ball of string.
Dumb systems (such as a calculator) are simple to separate. You can pull the wires out, and every wire still performs its own little function. They don’t have a total sense.
Conscious systems (such as your brain) are the reverse. If you attempt to disassemble the components, the entire system comes apart and ceases to make sense.
IIT maintains: The tighter a system’s components are coupled up and communicating with each other as one large, coherent entity, the more conscious it is.
The theory even contains an involved number known as Phi (Φ) that quantifies the extent to which a system is “whole” and integrated. You have a high Φ, you’ve got a good sense of self. It says that consciousness is not the number of neurons but about that unbreakable bond.
2. Global Workspace Theory (GWT): The Spotlight of the Brain
Imagine your mind as a busy movie studio with hundreds of workers.
Unconscious workers (the bulk of your brain) are performing silent tasks: one operates your heart, one deals with your balance, one takes hold of memories. They don’t communicate with the entire group.
Consciousness is the large stage in the middle.
GWT explains: Your “I’m here” feeling occurs when information—such as a frightful noise or an idea—is posted up on that big stage. After it’s posted up on the stage, everybody in the studio (all of the other components of your brain) sees it and can play with it.
This beam of light is your conscious mind. It’s the hub broadcast station that sets one thought or one feeling into clear focus for a split second, allowing the entire brain to respond to it. It makes you conscious because that information is now accessible to all the thinking and planning aspects of your brain.
The Mystery Endures
Both solutions are intelligent but do not completely capture the magic of the transition from electricity to the “redness” you experience when you look at a rose.
The Hard Problem remains. We can tell you what the brain does (such as GWT), and we can quantify how integrated it is (such as IIT), but we still don’t understand why we have that internal, irrefutable, “I’m me” sensation.
Perhaps the solution is even stranger than we imagine. But at least for now, simply enjoy the experience of being here—because it’s the grooviest unsolved problem in the universe!