The notion of “absolute scientific truths” is invalid.

Rather, we have “best guesses” base on current empirical evidence.

That the more firmly established best guesses are not too far off the mark is evidenced by the billions of artifacts and systems that have been generated by science and its inseparable sibling, technology..

Existence is Identity
Identification is Consciousness

Your Move!

More specifically, I know of no evidence which would engender the slightest doubt about the sufficiency of current knowledge to “explain” consciousness in the sense of showing what ingredients and geometry are necessary for consciousness to come about.

That said, until we can build, simulate or describe in all essential details a physical system that exhibits something most of us would be inclined to call “consciousness,” our conclusions in the matter must logically be taken as provisional.

What if these things are simple echos of something we don’t have the equipment to perceive properly? What if our brain has the ability to tap energies that we haven’t begun to understand? Maybe we do not yet have the equipment to perceive all that the mind is. To us, the mind is of Newtonian physics even though we live in a string theory universe (I mean this metaphorically).

Someday, maybe the ineffable quality of the mind will not be so ineffable, but not today, I’m afraid.

“What is life” can quite reasonably be interpreted in scientific terms within at lest two contexts.

“Why life happened” on the other hand, would not seem able to to addressed empirically, and so, within the domain of science, is meaningless.

However “What is consciousness” when stripped of the metaphysical baggage generated by introspection, is seen to be entirely accounted for by science. In fact, it is an evolutionary necessity.
Simply the navigational facility which enables an organism to interact optimally with its environment.

The level of interaction of our species being inordinately high and the extent of consciousness (which we must remember, can be inactivated rather easily by a whiff of anaesthetic ) correspondingly sophisticated.

This latter point, in particular, is expanded upon (very informally) within the context of the wider evolutionary model presented (very informally) in my latest book “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?” which is a free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website
Actually, the quite spurious and unnecessary invoking of quantum effects to account for consciousness is not even a new idea , having quite inappropriately proposed by Roger Penrose many years back and vigorously promoted by Hammeroff .

The Hameroff-Penrose “theory of consciousness” as such, has no evidential basis and is a speculation which can fairly be describes an exercise in pseudoscience.

Having said that, there is, of course, absolutely no doubt that quantum effects underlie all chemical systems, including the subset represented by biology. That, however does not make them agents of consciousness.

This phenomenon, as I have pointed out previously is very easily accounted for within the macroscopic world of well established science.

It is saddening to see so many workers in the sciences becoming tied up in knots with what, in the light of present understandings, is a very easily explained phenomenon.

In their attempts to cope with the mystical overtones generated by the traditional introspective approaches to the subject, with the consequent recursivities, all manner of quite unrelated or pseudo-scientific concepts are brought to bear..

Examples in this case are “emergent dynamics”, information theory and autocatalysis.

Phenomena blithely invoked by others include (as in this article) quantum effects nd also fractals and “complexity theory”

“What is consciousness” when stripped of the metaphysical baggage generated by introspection, is seen to be entirely accounted for by our current understanding of biology.
It is, in fact, an evolutionary necessity.

Simply the navigational facility which enables an organism to interact optimally with its environment.

The level of interaction of our species being inordinately high and the extent of consciousness correspondingly sophisticated.

A point I have frequently made in various writings over the years is reflected in a far more more down-to-earth article in this same issue: We must remember this facility can be inactivated rather easily by a whiff of anaesthetic.

The topic is discussed rather more fully in chapter 16 of “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?”, a free download.