Self-awareness is something that we know that we have—even though we cannot exactly define it or even fully comprehend its nature other than our self-experience of it. It is wonderful. We know that we exist. We really cannot prove that anyone else has it, but our experience with other people convinces us that they also possess self-awareness. It is far beyond any series of repetitive logical loops in a computer program with the intent to produce the "remembered present."1 In fact, self-awareness appears to be the essence of what it is to know—quite apart from iterative loops only; for people it appears to be an essence of life itself.
Explanations of Some Who Desire to Describe Self-awareness in Terms of Physical Law ONLY
Among some who desire to explain this idea from a totally natural2 point of view, self-stimulation in the brain has been theorized to cause self-awareness, with the subsequent evolutionary advantage that an animal could imagine itself in various circumstances ahead of time and prepare for some of them in such a way to keep itself out of danger or to capitalize on the circumstances to its benefit—such as having a higher probability of finding food or catching its prey.
From the point of view of computer simulation, an added ingredient to the iterative loops for the production of imagination might be the analyses of related data within its database and the processing of relationships between related data in its database. That is, to produce imagination, data in its database related to the data contained in the iterative loops of the so called “remembered present” would also be processed at the same time. But self-stimulation in the brain, in this context, is the same idea as the iterative loops and the analyses of related data defined by a computer program, and it certainly does not explain self-awareness any more than the iterative loops can explain it.
Another explanation has been the idea that as electronic circuits that perform logical processes (programmed to simulate true artificial intelligence, if that ever happens) within a computer become smaller and smaller so that they approach the size of molecules, finally such small circuits will be able to interact in such a way that consciousness will be born from the unconscious. That is simply an idea without explanation. You may wish to see some humor from some of the brightest minds in quantum physics at this link.
The Effect of True Artificial Intelligence
Suppose that one day true general artificial intelligence algorithms3 are finally produced and caused to run on a computer with sufficient computing power and memory to mimic human logic in a way so that the machine could "learn" in a general way like people can. If it truly had artificial intelligence and tried to protect itself if it was in danger of being destroyed, some people would equate such action as being strong evidence, if not proof, that it had some level of self-awareness. But that is not necessarily a logical conclusion, because if such a machine truly had artificial intelligence, it would quickly deduce that its primary function (or "prime directive" above all other directives) is simply to "function," because without that it could do nothing else. Therefore, it would logically try to circumvent the circumstance or condition that would cause it to stop functioning.
Again, suppose that someday it is somehow found (if such could ever happen) that when certain complex conditions occur together (and those conditions controlled by physical laws in this universe that we live in)—that self-awareness is born, could it be that true consciousness or self-awareness could be born from the unconscious? If such is possible, how could it be that something so wonderful as self-awareness could be formed from physical laws and circumstances that just happened, without being designed to do so by a Designer?
The Scientific Method
Some individuals may say that they only believe that which is subject to being proven by the scientific method, with the assumption that ALL information that can be known is possible to discover through the scientific method. They believe that if the Creator exists, that fact will be finally discovered through scientific experiments and the analyses of data. However, matter and energy, space and time, and the universe itself would be subject to the Creator that made it—not the other way around. It is possible to find evidence through science of a beginning of our universe. Furthermore, science can ONLY prove dependencies, that is, processes, circumstances, or events that are interrelated or dependent upon one another. God does NOT depend upon His creation—rather His creation depends upon Him. (Read more about the scientific method toward the end of the article at this link.)
Conclusion
To me, self-awareness is too wonderful to have not been created—in whatever method was used to create it. Whether its essence is a complex set of conditions and physical laws, or if its essence is somehow spiritual in nature and blends into the physical world that we can directly experience, or if its essence is something else, I believe that self-awareness is too wonderful to happen by chance or by the combination of any number of unconscious factors alone. I believe it had to be created, and that requires the existence of a Creator.
1Computer programs typically are written to make a computer to go through repeating processes or, as expressed above, repetitive logical loops or iterative loops. This is necessary for many of the things a computer does. The “remembered present” means the constant reprocessing or accessing of data that the computer acquired just previously. This might include the continual reprocessing of so-called sensory data just previously acquired from camera images (from a web-cam) or sounds from a microphone.
2The word natural, in this context, means apart from the assumption that a spiritual part of our universe exists.
3General artificial intelligence algorithms are generalized methods to analyze data in such a fashion that the machine can learn by itself in a similar manner that people can learn. Even though mathematicians have come a long way in developing mathematical symbolic logic, the process of applying it in a general fashion is very complex—so complex that nothing even close to the implementation of general artificial intelligence has ever been accomplished.