Comment by canadiantim

You’re right that the experience of the smell of coffee is associated with a bunch of different molecules entering our nose and stimulating receptors there. These receptors then cause an electrochemical cascade of salts into the brain producing neural patterns which are associated with the experience of the smell of coffee. But this is all just association. The conscious experience of the smell of coffee, or red for that matter, is different than the associated electrochemical cascades in the brain. They’re very highly correlated but very importantly: these electrochemical cascades are just associated with qualia but are not qualia themselves. Only qualia is qualia, only red is red, though red, the smell of coffee, etc are very tightly correlated with brain processes. That’s the distinction between consciousness and the brain.