In the beginning was the word

For consciousness to be what it is the brain must be able to take its own activity as an object. The brain must have a meta-mechanism by which it partially re-represents its interaction with its environment. This re-representation creates a feedback loop to the original activity. It is this feedback loop that makes possible the experience, if not the reality, of free will. The re-representation is accomplished through language, such that if there is no language there is no consciousness -- as the split-brain research reveals. Language in its re-representation creates a self to whom the activity of the brain belongs. It is that creation of the self that makes us feel that there is something it is like to be me because that is the story that the brain tells itself. Consciousness itself is that story. There may also a proto-consciousness, a potentiality or readiness state, anticipatory of the word, a state of simple synchrony between the original brain activity and its re-representation.