Why do you think consciousness is a concept? Certainly the concept of consciousness is a concept. But consciousness the referent of the concept is not supposed to be a concept! Consciousness is everything you are experiencing in this moment. The feeling of being the ghost in the machine. The observer behind your eyes. The first-person point of view. The words I'm writing are concepts, but the thing I am trying clumsily to write about is not a concept.
Consider solipsism. I am not saying that I believe it's true. But it does have unlimited explanatory power, once you take the primacy of consciousness as an axiom. You are the one and only consciousness, and all of reality is your waking dream. Water-tight theory of everything!
There are probably other explanations for what it might mean for matter to arise from consciousness, that are not precisely solipsism. But a common idea is probably that we do not have access to what is real. We only have perception. In that sense, it is matter that is purely conceptual, while consciousness remains real in the sense immortalized by Descartes.
Mind you I don't specifically subscribe to any of these views.
Consider solipsism. I am not saying that I believe it's true. But it does have unlimited explanatory power, once you take the primacy of consciousness as an axiom. You are the one and only consciousness, and all of reality is your waking dream. Water-tight theory of everything!
There are probably other explanations for what it might mean for matter to arise from consciousness, that are not precisely solipsism. But a common idea is probably that we do not have access to what is real. We only have perception. In that sense, it is matter that is purely conceptual, while consciousness remains real in the sense immortalized by Descartes.
Mind you I don't specifically subscribe to any of these views.