DNA Proves Existence of a Designer

[Angrboda]

C'mon people, we're slowing down here!  Everybody needs to pitch in and do their part so we can reach 1K as soon as possible!

Do you feel like you have a fairly good grasp on what conscious self-awareness is? Would you like to chime in? Scientists have speculated that consciousness might be an emergent property generated by computations in our brain. The paramecium, however, appears to be conscious, but has no brain. Thoughts?

I know basically nothing about paramecium, so I can't speak intelligently to that subject. For my part, I am persuaded that consciousness is an aspect of a material process, though I freely admit the evidence is not conclusive. It's entirely possible that we are simply fooling ourselves due to biases and paradigms which we have largely inherited. However, on the other side of the coin, the evidence for competing hypotheses as to the nature of consciousness is extremely poor, and in many cases outright laughable. That doesn't in and of itself mean the hypotheses are wrong, but failing they step up their game, there is little 'reason' to take them seriously. It's a very deep subject which most people are content to merely skim the surface regarding, and only just long enough to find justification to believe a view they already had.