In his Seed article Questioning Consciousness, author Nicholas Humphrey asserts that if we are to understand the phenomenon of consciousness, we must begin to formulate better questions. Humphrey has written on the problem of consciousness and has been be promoting some new vocabulary and arguments to address this challenge.
The basic question that people have struggled with is this: How does the brain elicit consciousness? Obviously, this is a very hard question to answer. It requires the brain to reason about its own function and within the very constraints of those brain functions.
Naturally people want to find a mechanistic picture and the notion that the brain is a processing system that accepts inputs and delivers outputs is normal. But outputs to what? Well, your consciousness- your eternal, first person, live on the scene, internal-telecast of stimulus and response.
Humphrey defines “Sentition” as real world brain activity. Presumably this includes the sum of electrical and chemical activity that operates within the brain’s distinctive architecture. Humphrey goes on to define more language to describe our perception of sentition-
The real-world brain activity is the activity that I call “sentition.” In response to sensory stimulation, we react with an evolutionarily ancient form of internalized bodily expression (something like an inner grimace or smile). We then experience this as sensation when we form an inner picture—by monitoring the command signals—of just what we are doing.
Sentition has been subtly shaped in the course of evolution so as to instill our picture of it with those added dimensions of phenomenality. Sentition has, in short, become what I call a “phenomenous object”—defined as “something that when monitored by introspection seems to have phenomenal properties.”
While it may seem trivial, the definition of appropriate terms to describe key attributes of consciousness is critical to how we think about it. New terms may be better as they are not burdened with common usage that distract from the problem.
This article in Seed is not a seminal work. It is a short essay on consciousness and an introduction to some interesting ideas for hackers like myself who realize that the field is very significant. I believe that a comprehensive theory of consciousness is as important as the ToE the physicists are looking for- Theory of Everything.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
How can the past ever comprehend the present or future? You’re an entity that emulates a sense of self based on past events. It’s impossible for you ever to experience the present or future directly. It is quite possible that you’re just experiencing the illusion of consciousness, which if you think about it, is the illusion of choice (I believe Leibnitz uses the analogy of a metronome). How do you know random events ever occur? If they don’t occur, then you can’t possibly be making any choices. Who says reality shouldn’t ‘feel’ that way?
That’s the Newtonian view of you.
But a bifurcated cat mixed up with quanta provides a more likely solution.
My guess is that wavefunctions from future realities interfere with past events or in some way quantumly entangled with the present or past you, you think you are. Obviously, the double-slit line experiment shows us that shadow worlds exist all around us (they ‘proved’ this by just using a single photon source. The alternating bands of light and dark reconstruct themselves. Likely because the photon is interfering with itself in other realities) Your consciousness is an artifact of these alternate realities. You are thus out of phase with present past or future.
That’s your bridge between the ‘dead past you’ reading this and the future/present you that never really exists. In a way the future is recreating the past you (which brings us back to all sorts of nasty causality questions).
It may even be we possess a part of the brain which senses future quanta (like whales have pieces of Iron in their brains to detect magnetic fields.) Probably some metal protein complex which is sensitive to complex quantum mechanical phenomena. The brain thus selects only those realities which re-enforce the conscious self.
I’m not sure which part of my evolutionary upbringing allows me to comprehend this topic. I need a banana.