Every scientific experiment requires an observer; every measurement is made by one. But the observer itself remains elusive. Andrew T. Jaffe uses the example of a scientist within a dream who can discover the physical laws of the dream world but can't use the scientific method to discover they're dreaming. This isn’t a gap science will eventually fill because the observer isn’t just another object. Consciousness is fundamental; it is prior to the world that science describes.

Last night, you undoubtedly became someone else. You were back in some random school frantically rushing to class to take a test you had forgotten about, or back living in a house you had not visited in decades. You may have been conversing without any shock or alarm with long-deceased friends or family or facing challenges that bore little resemblance to your waking life. While the dream lasted, nothing seemed unusual. Your dream identity felt totally normal. Then you woke up!

Many people dismiss dreams as just an odd byproduct of sleep. Others label dreaming as an evolutionary development to allow mammals to practice activities or take on challenges they may encounter during waking life so they are better prepared. I think dreams reveal something profound that most of us rarely stop to consider. The person you believe yourself to be is surprisingly unstable. Your age, memories, relationships, and even personality can shift instantly in dreams. The autobiographical self that seems so solid during the day can disappear completely without your noticing. But throughout the dream, something remains remarkably constant with waking life: there is still an observer having an experience. Whatever that observer is, it appears less attached to the identity it inhabits than we typically assume.

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Every experience you have ever had, whether waking or dreaming, shares one remarkable feature. There has always been someone there to have it. Interestingly, this phenomenon is rarely investigated. Science has become extraordinarily successful at explaining the world before us. It has traced the origin of galaxies, explained the evolution of species, mapped the circuitry of the brain and the DNA of the body. Physics has uncovered laws governing matter and the movement of light with astonishing precision. But every scientific explanation begins with an assumption so obvious that it is rarely acknowledged: there is an observer.

All experiments require one, each measurement is made by one, and every theory is conceived by one. The observer itself remains elusive. Philosophers call one aspect of this mystery the hard problem of consciousness: why should physical processes be accompanied by subjective experience at all? Neuroscience confronts another challenge in the binding problem: how do countless disparate neural processes become the single unified experience each of us enjoys every moment? Beneath both questions lies an even simpler one: who, or what, is the observer?

Neuroscience has taught us through brain imaging which regions become active during various activities like perception, memory, language, emotion, and decision-making. Researchers are adept at identifying neural activity that consistently accompanies conscious experience. But, as of now, there is no place they can point to and confidently say this is where the one having that conscious experience can be found.