I really think you nailed it with this analogy, and I think I can better understand your position and the disagreement. Let me extend this analogy to clarify wh

I really think you nailed it with this analogy, and I think I can better understand your position and the disagreement. Let me extend this analogy to clarify what I mean then. If we agree that "alive" simply arises from ever more complicated chemical processes, and that we've specified an arbitrary line somewhere to give the term meaning, then that's fine. But it no longer makes sense to ask questions like "why are we alive?" or "at what point does something go from being just chemistry to being alive?". Because these answers are implicit in the definition itself. Yes, "alive" still has meaning but these questions don't have meaningful answers. Now in the case of "consciousness", I think that it might be much the same way. I think we've overloaded and conflated the term with different concepts which gives rise to resistance. Let's call the supposed fundamental property "experience" instead, and say that this is what the electron has. Then your "human consciousness" becomes what arises from that "experience" property overlayed onto your body as a chemical system. And this might seem useless, but I think it's not. The main mystery, which is "how am I here experiencing this?" Is answered by: this "experience", which seems so special to us and we assume we're the only ones that have it, is just the default of everything in the universe, and the subjective part of it is in the systems where the particular experience manifests. So with this view, the question: "what gives me consciousness but not an ant?" Reduces to the same arbitrary distinction like we've said for being "alive": it's just your arbitrary definition of it, and these questions might not have any deeper answers. And I think this perspective is counterintuitive for a lot of people and that's what leads to the intense belief that the questions must have meaningful answers, because we think we're the only stuff in the universe with "experience". For me, once I get a sense for what goes into that "experience", of being there and feeling like something inside my head, I don't have much mystery in the other stuff. For instance, I'm not concerned about equating "consciousness" to: "I think therefore I am" that's just my "experience" overlayed onto the circuitry of my brain. And I find that I disagree with Descartes. "I am" even if I can't "think", I just wouldn't be able to self-reflect about it, and those are different things.