... and what it's like to be a bat.
What? Explain?
Thomas Nagel's paper "What is it like to be a bat?"
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/ahyvarin/teaching/niseminar4/Nagel_WhatIsItLikeToBeABat.pdf
I'm not sure I agree with his points or his "scientism" terminology, but my takeway was "there are things going on with conscious experience that our current scientific understandings simply aren't close to understanding and explaining yet."
I've just gotten to the end of Udacity's CS262 course in programming languages. It's been pretty good. Wes Weimer, the lecturer, seems to be a really cool guy. There's a quote from HPMOR in the final exam, which I thought was pretty cool.
In the last part of the last lecture, Weimer gives advice on what we should learn next. You can watch it here.
He advises that you learn the following (paraphrased):
I thought that was all really useful (except maybe the last two). I've learned up to his required level of philosophy, cognitive psychology, and religion and ethics. I'm working on the physics and gender studies.
(Incidentally, I strongly recommend Udacity for learning programming. It's really good.)