Dear Grispos,
Thank you for addressing consciousness in your essay. I am of the opinion that physics must address this issue.
In your essay you note that an ultimate theory for physics would illuminate the ways that nature works to organize the various level...from quarks...to conscious awareness.
I agree with you that one of the two main problems remaining is to explain "the emergence of consciousness", and , specifically, "how does consciousness come out of elementary particles?"
At this point it should be remarked that, for at least a century, no one has been able to propose any theory at all that would explain how particles become aware or give rise to awareness. Many believe this mystery will never be explained. It is easy to construct logical automata from basic materials -- proteins, silicon, or neural nets -- and simple to describe "learning principles" whereby features are recognized and information is stored and recalled.
But it has been to date impossible to conceive of any way in which awareness, awareness of self, of others, of beauty, of evil, of justice, of color, of anything. And even less, of a means of attributing "free will" or "volition", the ability to spontaneously act.
At some point one must ask whether we are going about things wrong.
Instead of continuing to beat our heads against the hard fact that no one has any idea how to make matter aware, why not investigate new approaches. For example, in 2006, having worked on the problem for many years, I finally convinced myself that consciousness is best conceived as a "field", rather than an "add-on" to material constructions (the 'Lego block' approach).
I then asked myself how, if consciousness is a field, would it exert force in a physical world, as when I raise my arm. To my surprise it did not take much guessing to arrive at a fascinating conclusion, and an outline of this is in my essay. For three years I have encountered more and more success with this approach, and no one has been able to 'shoot it down'. I invite you to read my essay in hopes it may be of use to you.
Thanks again for bringing the problem of consciousness into this physics contest.
Edwin Eugene Klingman