Let’s be honest with ourselves and start at the beginning.
For us and many other animals it starts with a unique egg and sperm and not so much a plan as an imperative.
Grow, survive, prosper.
The imperative within me came out of the momentum of half a billion years’ worth of 100% successful generations building upon each preceding generation. Always learning and refining.
“Self” begins with your biology interacting with the physical world around us. Senses + body + brain, constantly interacting with the real world, exterior and interior.
Let’s be realistic, how could any creature possibly feel like anything other than what it is? How can any creature not feel itself, since itself, and its own needs, are all that it knows?
Can Other Things Be Conscious?
Panpsychism makes no sense.
What is the point of consciousness, when there aren’t any decisions to be made? Which is the case out in the cosmic realm of particles and energy and gravity.
