A failure or success?

Many philosophers believe that consciousness is an illusion –
an idea of something that decides on everything and everyone.
I would say consciousness is very limited, but it is no illusion.

Our consciousness is an emergent property that can not be reduced to a lower level. Compare with a digital photograph consisting of one million pixels. If we enlarge the photo so that we can see the individual pixels, then we don’t see what the whole picture depicts.
Similarly, consciousness is a pattern in the brain as a whole.

Consciousness is the overall activity of billions of nerve cells that cooperate. The process is slow and can only handle small amounts of information, but it performs an important function: It can prevent us from doing bad things. Consciousness is like a referendum for nerve cells in the brain.

Our single minds are very limited. Fortunately, the brain knows it, so it rewards cooperation. Cooperation with other people starts the brain’s rewarding system, we thrive when we do things together.

A man can be an expert in something very distinct, but he cannot be an expert in the general area of decision-making. Democracy is based on the recognition that we make better decisions together than the best a man can make by himself.

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