Why believe in the primacy of consciousness? What I mean is where is the evidence for such an idea? Of course there is a philosophical argument that all you really know if you own consciousness. Although I do think there are many holes in that argument.

A 13.7 billion year old universe was just fine without human consciousness.

and yes, show me evidence of this consciousness construct, not new-agey psychobabble.
the best model we have is measuring electro-chemical impulses during certain states of consciousness.

I am perfectly open to the idea that there could be other things underlying normal matter. I just don't see why consciousness always pops up as one of those things. A 13.7 billion year old universe was just fine without human consciousness.

animals don't have the prefrontal cortex at all.
for this reason, they lack the ability to make things up, conspire, and engage in political
shenanigans. they operate on basic social instincts.

and yes, show me evidence of this consciousness construct, not new-agey psychobabble.
the best model we have is measuring electro-chemical impulses during certain states of consciousness.

no, but it does make for more empirical, repeatable (in some cases) observations.
more tangible than other methods, like surveys.

objective vs. subjective
that's what separates science from religion.
the ability to measure and make empirical observations, reproducibly.
that is a better means of showing correlation, than merely speculating.

The only thing we know for certain to be real is that “something” has subjective conscious experiences, and we ordinarily call that something “self”.

Science is the study of the content, structure, patterns, and relationships of subjective conscious experiences. Subjective conscious experience seems to be all we have and all we are.

Science doesn’t study the physical world. The physical world as we know it is an abstraction used to make sense of the stream of our subjective conscious experiences. We cannot say whether or not a physical world exists outside of consciousness. (Which also means we can’t say whether or not our physical bodies exist.)

So we can be certain that subjective conscious experience exists, yet we can’t be certain that physical reality exists.

Science is the study of the content, structure, patterns, and relationships of subjective conscious experiences.

I remember reading once in this forum more or less the following:

burnt: Matter is first.

gibran2: Consciousness is first. All we know is that we are having a subjective conscious experience.

burnt: Consciousness needs a "place" to exist. To have a "subjective conscious experience" you need a place to have it.

gibran2: Yeah you're right.

no.
science applies objective (not subjective) observation, so as to rule out bias.
this way, it may be observed by all.

this is why we seek evidence, and not anecdotal speculation

The only thing we know for certain to be real is that “something” has conscious experiences, and we ordinarily call that something “self”.

Science is the study of the content, structure, patterns, and relationships of our own conscious experiences. Conscious experience seems to be all we have and all we are.

Science doesn’t study the physical world. The physical world as we know it is an abstraction used to make sense of the stream of our own conscious experiences. We cannot say whether or not a physical world exists outside of consciousness. (Which also means we can’t say whether or not our physical bodies exist.)

So we can be certain that our own conscious experience exists, yet we can’t be certain that physical reality exists.