Comment 20 by Al Denelsbeck

To my mind, too few people stop to ask the right questions. Though, "Why do we have self-awareness?" might be a good question, we should always recall the trap of potential assumptions and be able to ask, "Why do we think we have self-awareness?"

Yes, spot on! There is an awful lot of question begging going on. Before we ask how it is possible for X to exist, we first need to understand why we have a belief that X does indeed exist, especially when the supposed evidence for X existing is our thoughts and feelings.

One example I like to quote of how our thoughts and feelings are really hopeless when it comes to understanding how our minds work is the fact that centuries ago, many people believed that feeling came from the heart. If we can be that far out (nearly a foot) about where our mind is, this should lead us to distrust our thoughts and feelings about awareness as being any sort of reliable evidence.