partial consciousness

What we call full consciousness is obviously only partial consciousness. Full consciousness of all brain activity would be overwhelming and useless. Compare our full vision to 360˚ vision.

two signals

Maybe when the brain decides to more our arm, say, it sends out TWO sets of signals. The first is the signal to the muscles to life the arm. The second, simultaneous signal would be to a part of the brain that would create the illusion of us having decided to move the arm. In this wey, we (our conscious selves) are the puppet of our brain (as is our body).

This explains for example the dual process of falling in love. The brain seeks a mate whose smells indicate a compatible immune system. At the same time, it creates on the feeling of being in love when we meet that special immune system.

free will as immmune-system booster

Human brains evolved a propensity for religion because humans who felt they lived in a meaningful, ordered world survived better. They were probably less stressed out.

What if consciousness and the illusion of free will evolved for similar reasons: to enhance well-being and reduce stress? We would be pretty stressed out if we had consciousness but it only served to let us witness the fixed choices our brain was making. Feelings of helplessness are very stress-inducing, so consciousness without the illusion of free will would not be an advantage. Consciousness and free will might have evolved hand in hand as those with a tendency to self-awareness and feelings of making their own choices survived better than those without these tendencies and feelings. They would survive better because the feeling of conscious free will reduced stress and boosted their immune system.

Perhaps consciousness evolved first as a result of language. Consciousness thus might have created advantages and problems. Maybe humans went through a phase where some of them had no feelings of free will (these presumably did not survive). Perhaps the free-will component is a recent evolutionary event. This is certain: ultimately the survivors were those who felt conscious free will. I can't think of a better reason for consciousness/free will than that of immune-system booster.

brain = internet

Why do we compare the human brain to a comupter when the human brain has 50 billion neurons and the entire internet has only 108 million web pages? Each human brain should be considered as the equivalent to an internet, or several internets. Consciousness thus resembles something like Google, getting a handle on all the postings of various neural groups.

ulysses

Ulysses can be read as an 18 part, homeric metaphor for brain function. Each chapter is a part of the brain. In parallel, all the chapters make a working brain. We read it sequentially, though. Or do we read it "re-entrantly", as Edelman would say???

michael jackson analogy

Consciousness is like Michael Jackson surrounded by his ever-changing entourage. Now that Michael is gone, the entourage keeps going somehow, and it's still his entourage! People in the entourage = neural circuits doing specific, mindless tasks.

dreams

If dreams are a harmless epi-phenomenon, maybe consciousness is too?

Are dreams meaningless because we are unconscious or are we unconscious because dreams are meaningless?