maybe, I should say not chemically reducible.
Maybe you should, because it tips your hand at what you're trying to do. As I wrote above, you're hoping to reduce H to a caricature of simplistic processes -- a "dumb" organism -- so that you can amplify what you see as a contrast between brute organic life and the supposed nobility of your "awareness." Your argument relies, if not quantitatively then at least qualitatively, on creating the impression that some "particular awareness" is a miracle that demands a transcendental explanation.
As I and many others have said, the sense of self -- just as any other thought -- is a product of a functioning brain. As such you can, in a simplistic sense, "reduce" it to electrochemical reactions in the brain in response to communicated stimulus. Science, under H, has absolutely no problem considering it that way, and notes that Beethoven's 9th Symphony,
Mein Kampf, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the 9/11 hijackings all had roots in similar neurochemical processes. As much as you want to reduce all of that to mere high school test-tubery, it simply will not fit unless you ignore all that life under H really is. You demand that your noble spirit must have more noble origins than "chemistry," but that's only because you have a cartoonish notion of what life processes must be.
When I come home from work every night my dog jumps up and wags his tail. Knowledge learned elsewhere (encoded electrochemically as well as structurally in the brain) and experience acquired over repeated encounters (also similarly encoded) has taught me that means he's pleased to see me -- or rather, that results I favor follow behavior on my part that attributes that meaning in that way. The dog engages in behavior that it pleases me to interpret as affection, and if I respond as if it were affection, overall pleasant results arise. The photons reflecting from my dog pass through my lenses, cause photochemical changes in my retinas which translate into electrical impulses that combine in my brain with other impulses to energize and transform electrochemical pathways. The result of these energizations is a complex ballet of motor instructions (movement) and the release of chemicals that affect the reactions that are occurring. I subjectively experience these reactions as pleasure. But all that is "physical." No magic required.
For many generations we interpreted this phenomenon as necessarily magical because we collectively lacked the the knowledge of how such things could arise via processes with which we were familiar. As our knowledge grew, the magical explanation grew less and less necessary. As we became able to observe the processes at work, we realized that they could indeed arise out of the previously unimaginable complexity we were finally able to observe. We can model the behavior of complex pattern-recognizing, rule-making systems and see how they work. We can see such other complex patterns arise in organisms we know don't have souls, such as what happens when a crow skis down a snow-covered roof on a jar lid, solely for the pleasure of it. From this we were able to conclude that yes, the brain and nervous system alone are capable of producing the behavior we observe and the feelings we feel.
Your problem is that you are so emotionally attached to the notion of a soul that you are unable to ennoble any other concept. So you resort to ham-fisted attempts to "reduce" science and the processes of life it knows about to brutish caricatures of stimulus-response. The rest of us are able to recognize that nobility arises simply where it arises and that we can marvel at it even if it isn't magical or supernatural. I don't have to believe in some unevidenced mumbo-jumbo to fully enjoy the electrochemical processes that congregate in the form of petting my dog. Calling it "chemistry" doesn't make it any less noble or less valid. It's obvious that for some reason, H terrifies you. Fine, but you don't succeed at proving some alternative by calling H names.
