The gene that explains 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.

"There is a real possibility that we're basically walking around as virus-controlled meat bags. We are aware of ourselves, but the only reason why we're aware of ourselves is to help the viruses that control us by making up part of our genome."

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.