I can see you guys totally don't get it. There are absolutely no assumptions about consciousness involved - only that fact that we know it exists, in every person. It forms in the developing mind, in the developing brain, somewhere either in the womb or possibly later, I don't know.

Steph: "This observer-"function" - how come it doesn't simply cease to exist, once your brain goes to mush?"

It does! It dies when you die, since it IS you. Or rather it's what makes you you and not somebody else. Just goes kaput! And Pffft - it's gone forever never to exist again.

Why do you think something has to continue on? That's the religious baggage, the magic idea that you find impossible to accept. What Im trying to get across is that NOTHING continues. Nothing is carried through. Something completely new comes into existence, a shiny new baby awareness, just like all the billions of others, but just as has already happened once, it somehow is you. Whatever made this you you - why can't it happen again, and again, and again? Maybe it has happened dozens or thousands of times already, and will continue to, until there is no more life in the universe. It's already happened at least once that you're aware of, so you know it happens. I'm just saying why do we assume it only happens once? We don't know that it does. THIS is all I'm saying.