To embrace thoughts, emotions, and memories is to embrace the core of human experience. It is also a story that requires a perspective qualitatively different from any we have taken so far. Entropy, evolution, and life can all be studied “out there.” We can fully tell their stories as third-person accounts. We are witnesses to these stories and, if we are sufficiently diligent, our account can be exhaustive. These stories are inscribed in open books. A story that encompasses consciousness is different. A story that penetrates into the inner sensations of sight or sound, of elation or grief, of
...more
