> What I don't understand is why are we conscious beings instead of extremely complex bio-computation machines exhibiting memory, inputs, and complex behaviors

> What I don't understand is why are we conscious beings instead of extremely complex bio-computation machines exhibiting memory, inputs, and complex behaviors such as attention and decision making models, all with behavioral actuators, and all this simulating thought and intelligence but really have no entity whatsoever thats actually experiencing stuff? Subjective experience and the "self" are just emergent properties of the system I described, on a scale that's difficult to comprehend. > I've always wondered what ultimately makes neurons and all so special that they produce conciousness. Does a rock that undergoes vibrations have some sort of consciousness associated with it, if not much less than what is seen in a human? There's nothing special about neurons, they are biological systems to encode information from the external world and produce action potentials that trigger other neurons. It's also a misconception that neurons are the only thing firing in the brain. Glial cells also play an important function here. Further, it doesn't make sense to talk about consciousness at the neuronal level. Consciousness is an emergent property of the nervous system. You can't point to any molecule and call it wet, but a bunch of h2o molecules clumped together have an emergent property of wetness. Likewise, a rock is hard and if you use it to crack open a walnut, it has physics that relates to the entire object. However, we could explain the entire system at the molecular level but it doesn't really explain the hardness and physical forces that emerge from the rock that allow us to crack a walnut.