What is so mysterious about human consciousness?

[Jim__]

18. Think about color.

Color, of course, is just one aspect of consciousness. But, it can help to get a handle on what the problem of consciousness is.

Our perception of color is due to the stimulation of selected sets of cones in our retina by various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. The stimulation of the cones causes certain neurons to fire. I can grasp, at least at a conceptual level, that neural networks in our brain can tie certain firing patterns of these neural networks to similar patterns in the past - i.e. we can remember similar visual situations. But our experience is not of patterns of stimulation in certain neural networks. Our experience is not a recollection of previous experiences. We experience things like red and blue. You can call that just our way of recollecting these neural patterns; but that doesn't really explain the experience. I don't understand how the firing of neurons produces an experience of color. The experience of color seems to be a difference in kind from any expected experience from neuronal excitation and communication.