How is it possible for me to be conscious of myself? How can a molecule in my brain or foot or whatever feel that it exists? I assume anyone would agree that an atom is not self-conscious, that neither is a rock or a cell or an insect... a baby human? Yet it seems, somewhere along the line of increasing brain capacity one becomes self-conscious. How is it that when a system such as myself becomes complex enough it becomes self-conscious? If we assume that a unit, one thing, can only be conscious of other things, is it that somehow we are many things conscious of each other, who mistakenly think of themselves as one thing. Is self-consciousness just an emergent property? Is it an illusion? These are extremely important questions for me as I think so much hinges on self-consciousness: the concept of soul/spirit and mind-body duality, free will, death.........

You ask specifically about self-consciousness. However, most philosophers would say that the problem of consciousness is posed by consciousness of any kind, and not only by consciousness awareness of the self. After all, it seems natural to suppose that many mammals (and small human babies) are conscious (‘sentient’), in the sense that it is ‘like something’ to be them, even though they are not sophisticated enough to think about their own (or anybody else’s) mental life. The problem of the ‘emergence of consciousness’ seems already to arise for this basic kind of non-reflexive consciousness, even before we get to self-consciousness. As for the emergence of basic consciousness, I think it makes a crucial different whether or not you think of consciousness as something over and above the material world. Your reference to ‘the concept of soul/spirit and mind-body duality’ suggests that you take consciousness to be non-material. If you do think of consciousness in this dualist way, then it will...