  Subjective Experience (SE) is part of the ancient mind-body problem, which
continues to be one of deepest mysteries of science. Despite major advances in
many fields, there is still no plausible causal link between SE and its
realization in the body. The core issue is the incompatibility of objective
(3rd person) public science with subjective (1st person) private experience.
Any scientific approach to SE assumes that it arose from extended evolutionary
processes and that examining evolutionary history should help us understand it.
While the core mystery remains, converging evidence from theoretical,
experimental, and computational studies yields strong constraints on SE and
some suggestions for further research. All animals confront many of the same
fitness challenges. They all need some kind of internal model to relate their
life goals and actionable sensed information to action. We understand the
evolution of the bodily aspects of human perception and emotion, but not the
SE. The first evolutionary evidence for SE appears in vertebrates and much of
its neural substrate and simulation mechanism is preserved in mammals and
humans. People exhibit the same phenomena, but there are remaining mysteries of
everyday experience that are demonstrably incompatible with current
neuroscience. In spite of this limitation, there is considerable progress on
understanding the role of SE in the success of prostheses.
