ABSTRACT
According to English biologist Thomas Huxley, ‘How it is that anything
as remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of
irritating nervous tissue is just about as unaccountable as the appear-
ance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.’ Indeed, it is considered by
some to be so unaccountable that we’re never going to be able to
understand it. Colin McGinn, for example, in noting that the problem
‘has stubbornly resisted our best efforts’, argues that ‘the time has come
to admit candidly that we cannot solve the mystery’.
