How does a lump of meat (humans and animals) have feelings and thoughts and consciousness?

Question: How does a lump of meat (humans and animals) have feelings and thoughts and consciousness?
- Keywords:
- Royal Society of Chemistry: Find out more on:
  
  animal
  
  humans
  
  philosophy
Asked by to Kate, Kieren, Nicola, Rowena, Roy on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
- Kate Nicholson answered on 13 Mar 2014:
  
  Good question. If anyone has the answer let me know too.
- Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 14 Mar 2014:
  
  Feelings can be thought of as triggers, giving us the right chemical response to deal with situations to survive. They can be learnt from our experiences so they can also be wrong! Humans have a big bit at the front of our brains which is thought to give us our self consciousness and sense of self and this can be used to monitor and change feelings that don’t make sense like being scared of something harmless. The left/right side of the brain theory is that the right side deals with full pictures and new information and the left with specific thoughts processed in a formulaic repetitive way. So you need to keep feelings in the right side of your brain to change them before you get stuck in a rut with behaviour.
  
  I am not a psychologist but have read some psychology books so this may not go far enough for you. I can recommend some books but they are loooong. Hope my answer is okay to start with!
- Nicola Rogers answered on 15 Mar 2014:
  
  I don’t know – I also often wonder about this

Question: How does a lump of meat (humans and animals) have feelings and thoughts and consciousness?