We don't often perceive how we've changed, or think about it much when we do. And it's hard to remember what we used to be like, how we thought, what we thought. And even what we do remember, we know from experience, is inaccurate from an objective point of view. In fact, it's inaccurate from the moment it's recorded. God! Living is chaos. Consciousness is precarious. Best forget about it.
But wait.
There is indeed a self, says Damasio, “but it is a process, not a thing, and the process is present at all times when we are presumed to be conscious.”Just the other day, I found someone who argued that consciousness wasn't much good for anything from an evolutionary standpoint and that there's no reason to believe that something like human intelligence is evolutionary progress rather than just a dead-end side road. (Although I must say his reasoning that dung beetles or whatever would have consciousness if it was such a good thing didn't really resonate. Maybe the dung beetle is just waiting to see how it turns out for us.)
Anyway, now this:
the reason why conscious minds prevailed in evolution was the fact that consciousness optimized life regulation.”
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