What is the correlation between physical processes and our conscious perception of feelings and emotions? Physical processes are the actions of neurons, for example, when we feel pain. The subjective experience of what pain feels like is known as qualia. The experience of pain isn't sufficiently explained by the mere actions of neurons.
The concept of consciousness is closely related to the concept of our self.
There is, as of yet, no verifiable or falsifiable model of how physical processes are responsible for qualia, and this has led to many strange theories.
Here, however, is a logical concept that accounts for qualia from a purely materialistic perspective.
I assume that qualia, and consciousness in general, are the result of a coupling between emotionally tagged information and memory.
Emotions can be physically explained. They are states of neurons and neurotransmitters causing physical responses, from increased heart rate to penile swelling. If we imagine a human body with all the physical functions that accompany emotions but zero memory capacity, emotions could be classified as mere reflexes. There would be no qualia, no conscious experience.
For qualia to exist, there must be at least short-term memory. The greater the extent of long-term memory, the more explicit the qualia.
You can even conduct a self-experiment to test this hypothesis. Handle your cooking utensils carelessly in dim light. If you burn your hand on a frying pan, the first thing that happens is a non-conscious reflex of withdrawing your hand. It takes a fraction of a second for you to realize that you are experiencing, and have experienced, pain. This happens because neurons at the site of the burn continue to fire even after you have reflexively withdrawn your hand. Now, for the conscious experience of pain, or any qualia, it is necessary that these physical processes are coupled with information—even just the fact that you withdrew your hand—and stored in the brain's memory. The rate of stored instances can be very high, even thousands per second. The recall of stored sequences of emotional states associated with any kind of informational framework results in consciousness, or awareness, even self-awareness.
This is not mysticism. This can be tested by scientific methods.
Stored information (something seen, heard, etc.) alone does not constitute qualia. Computers store such information.
Processed information is not qualia. Chess-playing computers process information better than humans.
Withdrawal reflexes do not prove the presence of pain. Mimosa plants also exhibit such reflexes.
Pain perception only occurs when specific neurons fire, as demonstrated by local anesthesia. Even when neurons fire, there must be a neurotransmitter bridge to the thalamus to evoke the biochemistry of emotions, ranging from increased heart rate to endorphin-induced euphoria.
Cortical storage of information is necessary for qualia. Drugs that interfere primarily with memory functions can be used as effective anesthetics, even if the thalamus is still functioning to produce neurochemical signals of emotion.
Without memory, there is no qualia. A psychological trauma requires memory, even if the memory is subtle and not available for immediate recall.
Not all information stored in our brains is always readily available, but it can often be recalled with a little effort. You may have learned a second, third, or fourth language a decade or more ago, and then forgotten much of it—or rather, transferred the knowledge to passive memory—because you never used it. But then, if the occasion arises, the language returns to active memory much faster than it did when you first learned it.
You cannot do that with a word you heard under general anesthesia.
