I don't know that the experience of being a human is any more vivid or real than the experience of being a shrimp. Don't conflate the ability to reason with th

I don't know that the experience of being a human is any more vivid or real than the experience of being a shrimp. Don't conflate the ability to reason with the quality of having an internal experience. Perhaps the shrimp lives more truly, undistracted as it is by meaningless thoughts. The state of consciousness is correlated with the state of matter. We don't know more than that. We've assumed that physical reality is the ground state and consciousness is the phenomenon, but reality could just as easily be a dream in the mind of the universe. If consciousness can influence reality that would seem to indicate it is either equally fundamental to, or even precedent over material reality. The alternative, that consciousness is a passive observer, is both depressing and unlikely.