It seems self-evident to me. Our consciousness has allowed us to out-compte pretty much anything on the planet and could take us to others. Surely consciousness - along with intelligence, our ability to plan ahead, empathise, speak and understand others and to put ourselves in their heads is such an obvious competitive advantage it barely needs thinking about? (Even if it does simply emerge fro the development of another useful feature such as language).
Unless I'm missing something, there's a gap in your line of reasoning.
If I've understood what you've posted so far, you share the view that your mind is wholly the product of the physical interactions within your brain. If we had access to sufficient knowledge and computational power, we would be able to explain thought processes and behaviour purely by referring to the chemical and electrical behaviour of the brain. All the planning, emphasising, and computing which you engage in is produced purely by these deterministic processes.
Given that the work needed to produce human behaviour, with its competitive advantages, is all done by these physical processes, why do we need to be aware of doing it? Why do we need to
feel the urge to do something, when what we're arguing is that both the feeling
and the reaction to it are produced purely by the physical nature of our brains.
If the mind is not some spirit responding to urges and emotions originating in the physical matter of our brain, then it's unclear to me why there should be the perception of anything responding.
Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.