How "reincarnation" might work?

[Ben Davis]

That sounds like a good distinction.

The thing that puzzles me is... how consciousness "makes" the experience. I know it's probably a poorly formed question. But the experience... Where is it? How? Why?

That's exactly one of the directions that neuroscience is currently investigating. The only answer we have at the moment is "Well, it's definitely 'in' the brain..." and that's no real answer at all. Like with most scientific subjects, the answer to the question 'how' is also likely to give us the answer to the 'why' or even be the 'why'.

An illusion, of sorts. But I've come to the conclusion that things are as real to any particular observer as they appear to be. So it's real to me, in some sense. It's all that I know is real! Even if it's not what it seems to be, which I know already it isn't.

We know it's as real as any other sensory experience. How 'real' is smell? It's a sensory representation of the quantity and composition of particular types of airborne chemical combinations. Likewise our 'consciousness' might be a sensory representation of our gestalt neurological processes. The best we can do at the moment it chalk it down to 'qualia' and support the scientists in their investigations into some proper answers.

Do others experience? It seems obvious that they must do... but again, how... where...? Like me? My brain just can't comprehend it. I know consciousness is the experience... it just doesn't quite feel satisfying.

Since humans share similar physiologies, and so many other sensory experiences are shared, we can reasonably assume that all humans have a Gaussian distribution of experiences of 'self'. Studies in to conditions like autism and the various types of psychopathies and sociopathies have given us real insight in to how different expressions of self have real-world impacts so we can demonstrate there are different subjective interpretations. We don't know much about the neurology to associate with those different ranges of qualia, that I know of; maybe there are others on the board who know what's going on at the cutting edge.

I can be pretty good at being scientific and detached on most subjects. This one tests me the most.

I feel you bro. I think I'm lucky that I have a very definite and well formed sense of self, I know that I am and who I am but knowing that that's probably just my brain making things up as I go along leaves me with a certain cognitive dissonance. So maybe I'm unlucky.