I believe it's important to discover the areas where
   consciousness can be analyzed and picked apart. A lot of study
   regarding the visual systems has been taking place for over 150
   years now. It is one of the best studied. The chemical detectors
   of smell is one of the LEAST studied, unfortunately, with
   hearing somewhere in the middle.

   How our machinery operates is a valid and interesting study, and
   I'm glad there are lots of people working on it.

   Yet will they construct a consciousness? It's possible, but I
   still believe a study of consciousness has to recognize that it
   is a consciousness that is studying the consciousness.

   That's the nature of the hard problem: the objectivity of
   academics and the sciences gets in the way at that point.
   Consciousness is subjective. How can we know if we've created
   consciousness objectively if we cannot perceive from the point
   of view of the subjective?

   Is it possible to go from objective to subjective while
   remaining objective? *that's* quite the hard problem, unless
   you're a Psychologist. That's their domain.