6 ideas
The proto-self is a coherent, moment-to-moment collection of neural patterns in brainstem and somatosensory regions that map the physical state of the organism: internal milieu, viscera, musculoskeletal frame. It is not conscious and not a knower. It is the stable reference against which every change gets registered, and the self is built on that reference.
Core consciousness arises when the brain builds a second-order map that represents two things at once: an object, and the change that object causes in the proto-self. The mapped relationship between organism and object produces a wordless 'feeling of knowing', a transient core self that exists only in the here and now. Every new object encounter regenerates it, pulse by pulse.
Extended consciousness stretches the self across time by drawing on autobiographical memory: stored records of past core-self experiences and anticipated futures. It depends on core consciousness and cannot exist without it, but core consciousness survives when extended consciousness is lost. Language, planning, and identity sit in this layer, not in the foundation.
An emotion is a public, bodily response pattern (changes in viscera, hormones, facial expression, posture) triggered automatically by a stimulus. A feeling is the private mental image of that bodily change once it is mapped in the brain. Knowing that you have a feeling requires core consciousness on top of that.
Patients in akinetic mutism or absence seizures stay awake with open eyes but show no sense of self or of objects. These cases show that wakefulness, core consciousness, and extended consciousness are separable, with each layer depending on the one beneath it.
Consciousness evolved to serve life regulation. An organism that can map its own internal state, and how external objects perturb it, can plan responses beyond automatic reflexes. On this view, the mind is best understood as an extension of homeostasis, with feelings as the readout of whether life is going well or badly.