> But we have argued that consciousness may have evolved to facilitate key social adaptive functions. Rather than helping individuals survive, it evolved to hel

> But we have argued that consciousness may have evolved to facilitate key social adaptive functions. Rather than helping individuals survive, it evolved to help us broadcast our experienced ideas and feelings into the wider world. Or it was a side-effect of creating empathy (mirror neurons,) which is useful to not short-sightedly do eye-for-an-eye, thereby killing off your social context every Thursday. Perhaps this allowed us to become more aggressively competitive/greedy, while still preserving family social cohesion. If you (1) can feel empathy but (2) it still feels a little bit different from your own emotions, it doesn't seem far-fetched that it would lead to self awareness. The (2) could happen simply because the eyes' bandwidth is much higher than story telling is, making your own experiences feel more nuanced.