Well, it is kind of science week. All of us walk around with a little voice in our head talking to ourselves. The essence of consciousness is self-awareness. We know what we see, what we hear, what we say, what we feel, what we think. There is a part of our brain that is constantly monitoring and reporting on what is going on in the rest of the brain. Why this occurred from an evolutionary perspective is interesting to speculate on. It must relate to some ability to better solve problems and innovate. There is no “consciousness” without self-awareness, without an awareness of what we are perceiving and doing. The act of studying our own thought processes is often referred to as meta-cognition, and it is a fascinating research area. I think it is what separates us from other living creatures and what drives us crazy and allows us to reach the heights we have reached.
Here is an interesting article regarding the mechanisms that may underlie consciousness. The authors hypothesize that consciousness, or what I prefer to think of as self-awareness, is underpinned by memory processes and that its essential function is to allow the aggregation of information for planning future actions. The article is an excellent summary of how consciousness might function and what its purpose is. Since I believe that self-awareness is the essence of being human, if you want to understand who we are, this is a research topic to follow. (CBN Article)
