Trying to simplify my Consciousness hypothesis

[DLJ]

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I think that the center of my theory is that our consciousness is our oldest evolutionary system. Whatever makes us, "living" is our consciousness. It was obviously very, very, very, rudimentary in the early stages, but so was the eye and the heart.
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That all depends on what one considers consciousness to be. I think you need to decide upon a working definition.

Yes, its roots are in the early molecular structures that formed proto-cells (everything is) but consciousness as a system (of pattern recognition and event detection) is a fairly recent evolutionary adaptation.