In this talk I will develop Rafael D. Sorkin’s heuristic that a partially ordered process of the birth of spacetime atoms in causal set quantum gravity can provide an objective physical correlate of our perception of time passing. I will argue that one cannot have an external, fully objective picture of the birth process because the order in which the spacetime atoms are born is a partial order. I propose that live experience in causal set theory is an internal “view” of the objective birth process in which events that are neural correlates of consciousness occur. In causal set theory, what “breathes fire” into a neural correlate of consciousness is that which breathes fire into the whole universe: the unceasing, partially ordered process of the birth of spacetime atoms.

There will be three introductory 45 minute talks on non string theory approaches to quantum gravity.