But the familiar picture of reality, atoms interacting in a void, inescapably concludes that matter as the brain is the source of consciousness. In this talk I will put experiences as the source of matter and explore where that leads. Many scientists think that personal awareness is real, but is out of the range of things science can presently explain. Subjective experience does not seem to be required by the laws of physics, and after physics as we know it there is still something to be explained. Chalmers suggests that subjectivity may be an additional aspect of all matter, and that its extent and clarity can grow with the complexity of systems.
Personal awareness does depend on the state of certain parts of the brain.
Thus subjectivity does interact with matter. Following many thinkers from the past such as Peirce and Whitehead, let us postulate that matter is composed of interacting experiences, whose interactions produce new experiences. Their interrelations would be objective and their responses subjective. Whirlpools of interacting experiences, to the degree that they interact only among themselves, would have the quality of permanence. These evolving particles and organisms would encompass increasingly complex inner and outer experiences, and the evolution of the whole system would be toward increasing understanding.