Self Comes to Mind

by no means affirming that this is how feelings arise, but I regard this line of inquiry as worth pursuing. Finally, I note that these ideas should not be confused with the well-known effort of locating the origins of consciousness at the level of neurons, thanks to quantum effects. 10
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    Another layer of the answer as to why perceptual maps of the body should feel like anything calls for evolutionary reasoning. If perceptual maps of the body are to be effective in leading an organism toward avoidance of pain and seeking of pleasure, they should not only feel like something, they actually ought to feel like something. The neural construction of pain and pleasure states must have been arrived at early in evolution and must have played a critical role in its course. It was probably drawn on the body-brain fusion that I have emphasized. Notably, prior to the appearance of nervous systems, unbrained organisms already had well-defined body states that necessarily corresponded to what we came to experience as pain and pleasure. The arrival of nervous systems would have spelled a way of portraying such states with detailed neural signals while holding neural and bodily aspects tightly bonded to each other.
    A related aspect of the answer points to the functional divide between pleasure and pain states, which are correlated, respectively, with optimal and smooth life-managing operations, in the case of pleasure, and impeded, problem-ridden life-managing operations, in the case of pain. Those extreme ends of the range are associated with the release of particular chemical molecules that have an effect on the body proper (on metabolism, on muscular contraction) and on the brain (where they can modulate the processing of newly assembled as well as recalled perceptual maps). Other reasons aside, pleasure and pain should feel different because they are mappings of very different body states, just as a certain red is different from a particular blue because they have different wavelengths and the voices of sopranos are different from those of baritones because their sound frequencies are higher.
    It is often overlooked that information from the body’s interior is conveyed directly to the brain by numerous chemical molecules that course in the bloodstream and bathe parts of the brain that are devoid of blood-brain barrier, namely, the area postrema in the brain stem and a variety of regions known collectively as the circumventricular organs. To call the number of potentially active molecules “numerous” is not an exaggeration since the basic list includes dozens of examples (the usual transmitter/modulator suspects—the inevitable norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, acetycholine—as well as a wide range of hormones such as steroids and insulin, and opioids). As the blood bathes these receptive areas, the suitable molecules directly activate neurons. This is how, for example, a toxic molecule acting on the area postrema can lead to a practical reaction such as vomiting. But what else do the signals that arise in such areas end up causing? A reasonable guess is that they cause or modulate feelings. Projections from these regions are highly concentrated on the nucleus tractus solitarius but reach out widely to other nuclei in the brain stem, hypothalamus, and thalamus and to the cerebral cortex.
    Beyond the issue of feelings, the remainder of the Qualia II problem seems more approachable. Take visual maps, for example. Visual maps are sketches of visual properties, shape, color, movement, depth. Interconnecting such maps—cross-fertilizing their signals, as it were—is the right prescription for producing a blended, multidimensional visual scene. If one takes this blend and adds to it information from the visual portal—to the effect that the flesh around the eyes is involved in the process—and a component of feeling, it is reasonable to expect a fullblown, properly “qualied” experience of what is being seen.
    What can we add to this complexity such that the qualities of a percept are indeed distinctive? One thing has to do with the sensory portals involved in gathering the information. Changes in the sensory portals play a role in the buildup of perspective, as we saw, but they also contribute to the construction of perceptual quality. How? We know the distinctive sound of Yo-Yo Ma’s playing, and we know where the sound maps are created in the brain, but we hear the sounds both in our ears and with our ears. In