Ancient viruses may be responsible for consciousness

What does it mean to exist? The French Enlightenment philosopher René Descartes famously observed that every self-aware being is able to declare, figuratively if not literally, the Latin statement "Cogito ergo sum" — that is, "I think therefore I am." Descartes profoundly transformed the world of Western philosophy with this idea — namely, that being able to think is a prerequisite of being deemed "conscious," "alive," possessing of a soul, or however else you wish to put it. Yet Descartes' axiom fails to teach us something else that we all would like to know: Even though it helps us define what it means to be self-aware, it does not explain why some things are self-aware while others are not. Considering that the answer to this question could very well crack the secrets of the human soul itself (Descartes described it as the "mind-body problem"), the stakes are high for anyone who advances new theories.

Yet ever since Descartes and the 17th century he inhabited, many philosophers and scientists have offered a number of conjectures. Many major organized religions argue that after one dies, there is an afterlife; panpsychists argue that all matter is inherently self-aware, with consciousness being analogous to a form of energy; and even the avowedly non-religious are often drawn to a belief in ghosts (such as "The Shining" director Stanley Kubrick), sometimes leading to morally dubious pseudoscience.

Ancient viruses may be responsible for consciousness