Honestly, we don't know yet—and there are real reasons to think this question is harder than most.

Science has made genuine progress on what philosophers call the "easy problems": which brain regions correlate with awareness, how attention works, why certain anesthetics knock us out, how perception gets constructed. Neuroscience keeps mapping these mechanisms in increasing detail.

The harder question is what David Chalmers called the "hard problem": why is there subjective experience at all? Why does processing information *feel like* something from the inside? You could imagine a brain that does everything ours does—reacts, reports, learns—without any inner experience. The fact that there *is* something it's like to be you isn't obviously explained by describing neurons firing.

People disagree sharply on whether this gap is:

- **Temporary**: Once neuroscience matures, the "hard problem" will dissolve like vitalism did when biochemistry advanced.
- **Permanent but real**: Consciousness genuinely can't be reduced to physical description, suggesting we need new frameworks (panpsychism, dual-aspect theories, etc.).
- **A confusion**: The problem is an illusion created by how we introspect; there's nothing extra to explain.

My honest take: I don't think we currently know which of these is right, and people who claim certainty in either direction—"science will obviously crack this" or "science obviously can't"—are overstating the case. It's possible consciousness will yield to science in ways we can't yet imagine, and it's possible our concepts are fundamentally inadequate to it. Both remain live options.

What draws you to the question?
