Second, consider the ruthless process of natural selection. View this process in the light of the fact that, as we have seen in the last chapter, not all of the activity of the brain is directly accessible to consciousness. Indeed, the ‘older’ cerebellum – with its vast superiority in local density of neurons – seems to carry out very complex actions without consciousness being directly involved at all. Yet Nature has chosen to evolve sentient beings like ourselves, rather than to remain content with creatures that might carry on under the direction of totally unconscious control mechanisms.
...more
