Great point. Humans growing up without others we call &quot;feral&quot;<p>Have you read Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral mind? A psychologist analyzes historical signs of &quot;consciousness&quot;, like the transition in the Ilyad of men&#x27;s motivations shifting from parts of their bodies &amp; god puppeters to their &quot;will&quot;.<p>One of his interesting conclusions is that schizophrenic voices were these connections, or in hackerspeak, daemons or programs running. With so many programs competing for attention at once, the &quot;consciousness&quot; program was formed to &quot;decide&quot; how to spend its newly alloted attention.<p>Peter Watts, marine biologist, explores this in his Firefall series (fiction) - the idea of consciousness arising out of conflict. It fits nicely with the folk wisdom that in &quot;Flow&quot;, there is no sense of self.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0618057072" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0618057072</a>? : Origins of Consciousness
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0765328038" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0765328038</a> : Sci-fi featuring Consciousness as conflict as a central theme<p>.. why do I feel like this exact discussion has been repeated on HN before? Like different neurons of the HN-brain are running across this idea of &quot;automatic decision making&quot; and sending it up to the neo-cortex (front page), again, and again..