Consciousness and the Anthropic Questions

Abstract

By the anthropic questions I mean the following three queries:

• 1. Why are the laws of nature so well tuned to support the biological structures we find here on earth, including our own human bodies and brains?

• 2. Why, given the fact that the physically described structure of my body and brain has the form that it has, are certain activities of that physically described system accompanied by my stream of conscious experiences, which convey the pervasive impression that elements of this stream of experiences causally affect the way my body behaves?

• 3. Are idea-like qualities primordial? Or do they emerge from a world completely devoid of all mind-like qualities?

These questions may lack answers that human minds can comprehend, or that our scientific investigations can find firm evidence to support. Still, these questions are being asked, within scientific contexts, and a science-based world view may be incomplete without some rationally coherent responses to them.