I still find myself thinking on Jeff Hawkins theory of Intelligence as he explains it in On Intelligence. He thinks that conciousness is simply the feeling of having a neo-cortex.

This begs the question, what is feeling it?

It is mind boggling to think that conciousness is simply an emergent factor of a complex brain, as it suggests that intelligence is inherent in the complexity of matter, in the very fabric of the universe.  But what is the process of its emergence, what is it in our brains that evolved to make this possible.

It is all to easy to see something we do not understand, something that we hold dear, and elevate its importance. Perhaps this is happening in our search for a material understanding of conciousness.

I tend to think that Jeff is going in the right direction, but to understand the source of conciousness we would need to dig a lot deeper.  I think it is likely to have evolved at some point when identifying a boundary between our own organisim and the world outside provided us with an evolutionary advantage. This is an ancient step, tied into the origins of the nervous system.

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