Water to Wine Mystery

Why does that turn water of the brain into the wine of the consciousness?

This is a quote from philosopher David Chalmers, who posed the question as part of his exploration of the "hard problem of consciousness" - the challenge of explaining how and why we have subjective conscious experiences. 

Chalmers was referring to research showing that when people are consciously perceiving or thinking about something, there tends to be synchronized neural activity oscillating at around 40 Hz in relevant areas of their brain. For example, if someone is looking at a red apple, neurons representing red and round and apple all start firing together at 40 Hz. 

The mystery is how these synchronized 40 Hz neural firings (the "water" of the brain) give rise to the subjective conscious experience of redness or appleness (the "wine" of consciousness). There's a puzzling explanatory gap between the physical brain activity we can observe and measure, and the felt quality of inner experience.

So in this metaphor, the "water" is the neural correlate - the 40 Hz oscillations. The "wine" is the actual taste of conscious experience - the redness of red, the smell of a rose, the feel of a hug. We know the two are tightly correlated, but we don't know how the physical "water" transforms into the mental "wine." That's the perplexing mind-body problem Chalmers is highlighting with this question.

It cuts to the core of the deep mystery of consciousness - how does subjective experience arise from objective physical processes? Why does it feel like something to be a brain of a certain configuration? These questions continue to vex philosophers and scientists studying the nature of mind and consciousness. The precise link between neural activity and phenomenal experience remains elusive, making consciousness one of the biggest outstanding puzzles in science and philosophy.