< Modernism, Post-modernism, and Neo-modernism.
I never suggested that we currently understand all of these processes. I do not think we currently understand everything (otherwise we would have been able to simplify all of physics into one equation, which we have not yet done.)
To respond to the body of your comment, consciousness emerges just from a certain level of computational complexity. A camera is analogous to an eye, not to a conscious mind. Likewise, computers and AIs are capable of "imagining" (rendering, in various forms) images like the one you described. The comparative simplicity of computers dictates parameters be exceedingly specific, whereas our consciousnesses are capable of much better input parsing - however, on the other side of this, vague parameters mean you and I will not produce an identical image.
And again, if something has no measurable effect on the physical world, it is irrelevant. If it can't be measured in any way, it has no effect on the physical world. For all intents and purposes it does not exist.
And you're correct that practical approaches to the world must consist of a patchwork of perspectives, as you so eloquently put it. This is simply due to a lack of understanding on our part. To analogize again, this is similar to the apparent irreconcilability of quantum physics and general relativity (the main obstacle to that aforementioned equation of everything).
Can we take it for given that consciousness is a product of computational complexity? I don't see, at least at first glance, why this should be the case. In fact, it's easy to conceive of an extraordinarily complex computer or artificial intelligence which exhibits nothing we can call consciousness. Even if it did, it would remain to be explained at what point and why it had become conscious in the first place.
Consciousness is not merely rendering. A program which parses inputs to produce representations can hardly be called conscious, and even many combinations of such programs will have to have their emergent consciousness, if it even exists, explained. That's precisely my point about the camera and the eye—perceptual and/or representative modules, for lack of a better word, are not conscious in themselves, so why should amalgamating a boatload of them produce consciousness? I'm not saying this couldn't be the case, simply that the likelihood of such emergence is not, it seems to me, self-evident.
Furthermore, it seems suspect to suggest that if something can't be measured, it has no effect (although the reverse might be true). Does this follow? Subjectivity could be a troubling case in this regard, since it absolutely has effects on the world and yet might very well be the paradigmatic case of immeasurability.
A psychological subject describes a dream which her therapist records in writing. Is this not an effect on the physical world (both the verbal description and the physical record) which has its origin in something which is possibly, for the sake of argument, immeasurable (her subjective experience of the dream)? After all, if the dream didn't exist, it couldn't be described, right?