Consciousness develops gradually from basic survival to complex cognition

• Consciousness manifests as any behavioral strategy that optimally allocates resources, starting from basic sensors in primitive organisms
• As sensory organs evolved, organisms gained more intricate models of their environment, indicating higher levels of consciousness
• Human consciousness involves creating a model of the world and oneself in time - evaluating the past and predicting the future to make decisions and achieve goals

The brain's hemispheres have specialized functions

• The left hemisphere emphasizes logical analysis, verbal skills, and tends to fabricate explanations to create a sense of unity
• The right hemisphere leans towards creative thinking, artistic abilities, and spatial awareness
• Damage to specific regions like the frontal lobe can dramatically alter personality and behavior, as seen in the famous case of Phineas Gage

Split-brain patients reveal independent consciousnesses

• Experiments with split-brain patients show the hemispheres can have conflicting intentions, attitudes, and beliefs unknown to each other
• The dominant left hemisphere often confabulates explanations for the right hemisphere's puzzling behaviors to maintain an illusion of unity
• This suggests we may have "a mute prisoner with a different personality, ambitions and consciousness" in our own heads

The question of free will remains unresolved

• The presence of an "interpreter" in the brain constantly generating explanations challenges the notion of true free will
• Experiments suggest the brain initiates decisions before we are consciously aware, making free will potentially illusory
• However, the concept of "limited free will" proposes a balance - we have some free will constrained by biological factors, unless impaired by severe damage
• Ultimately, explaining free will may require new physics beyond classical space-time to account for true openness to the future