I think you're referring to Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. I haven't read the book yet but I have listened to him talk about consciousness a couple of times.
I think consciousness is a misleading concept. It's not that much of a mystery, really. It's just self-awareness, as you say. Its definition doesn't allow for it to describe a non-human entity though, as far as I know. Nonetheless, it's just a term for our awareness of the world(ourselves included).
I'm not much of an expert but if I were to guess I'd say we are only giving this so much thought because of our own thoughts. Is it not that we constantly talk to ourselves in our minds, basically? That may create a false impression that we're talking to someone else. With that view in mind, maybe there is no self to speak of, or at least our own minds doesn't recognise such a thing and it couldn't either. We are always talking to ourselves in our minds as if we were talking to someone else. The "self" is nothing more than an imagined "other". This is why someone is able to kill himself but then his body feels the need to fight back no matter what, at the last moment. The point is, we could never be aware of ourselves - that doesn't make any sense- and we aren't. We may be technically aware of ourselves but not really.
As I said, I have no idea what I'm talking about and hope it didn't sound too unscientific. Just some thoughts on the matter.
I think consciousness is a misleading concept. It's not that much of a mystery, really. It's just self-awareness, as you say. Its definition doesn't allow for it to describe a non-human entity though, as far as I know. Nonetheless, it's just a term for our awareness of the world(ourselves included).
I'm not much of an expert but if I were to guess I'd say we are only giving this so much thought because of our own thoughts. Is it not that we constantly talk to ourselves in our minds, basically? That may create a false impression that we're talking to someone else. With that view in mind, maybe there is no self to speak of, or at least our own minds doesn't recognise such a thing and it couldn't either. We are always talking to ourselves in our minds as if we were talking to someone else. The "self" is nothing more than an imagined "other". This is why someone is able to kill himself but then his body feels the need to fight back no matter what, at the last moment. The point is, we could never be aware of ourselves - that doesn't make any sense- and we aren't. We may be technically aware of ourselves but not really.
As I said, I have no idea what I'm talking about and hope it didn't sound too unscientific. Just some thoughts on the matter.
