You ask what causes consciousness and how it emerges, which presupposes something before consciousness - something that can cause it and it can emerge from. Mos

You ask what causes consciousness and how it emerges, which presupposes something before consciousness - something that can cause it and it can emerge from. Most likely you intend the physical world. Why is consciousness in need of being explained in that manner, is what I think the author would ask. It's similar to saying that physical matter or energy are hard problems, as we don't know what causes them or how they emerge - not in the sense of conversion from one form of energy or matter to another, but what generated matter or energy in the first place. (With that said, I do think there are strong arguments for favoring the physical world, and that pose a challenge for the author's position.)