"Consciousness used to be the crazy aunt in psychology's attic. Behaviorists and cognitive scientists alike practiced denial, but the squeaking floorboards troubled our dreams of a truly scientific discipline. Now, the old lady has been given pride of place in the parlor, with all the respectable scientific furnishing of societies and journals. But let's face it--she's still weird."
http://www.slate.com/id/2275645/pagenum/all/
My first comment will be on the lack of disclaimer. You should have made a posting that said if you want rock your mind and give yourself a headache in the process proceed, otherwise do not click. I find that it is really hard to comment on this link because so much is being said. The writer of this article does a terrific job of propping an idea up then poetically points to the flaws and the discrepancies within the theories involving the BIG C. I find that I don’t feel comfortable making a conjecture or even a guess on how and why the BIG C exists. In truth, I don’t think we will ever know. I find that I do agree that consciousness is intertwined with the perception of the self. I don’t think any organism is capable of encoding information and not processing it in relation to itself. While we may shut off when viewing and diving into a movie, I do think when credits are being shown, we attempt to relay the new found information to ourselves. We mull it over, we think about the relevance of what we just saw, its impact on us, we hold it like a new toy examine it and its importance to the self. And in my simple way I guess that to me is consciousness us in relation to the world, and the world in relation to us. But I don’t think I can say more than because of my submission to modesty and a fear of stepping into the unknown.