TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

Good use of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principal of quantum mechanics near the end of your comment (the more we can know about speed, the less we can know about position)... And of course it's always fun to see the word qualia being used.

Personally I think we're a meat glitch. That is to say, the survival of our biology is aided by having predictive models of threats, pattern seeking and problem solving capacities (what to do about such threats), and some sense of mappable logic/reason (which solutions are best), all of which requires coordination (a story to help make choices)... But we're essentially a meat glitch.

This internal illusion of possessing consciousness may have evolved in order to aid long term survival, and perhaps to reproduce and do the other things life forms do... I think Data and Dr. Crusher discuss the definition of life at some point, detailing the requisite processes.... Having an identity isn't listed as one.

I believe it's been theorised that some species seem to act more as hives, there have even been some examples of humans being able to act in hive like ways. The technologist Kevin Kelly wrote about some of this in the 90s giving an example where a crowd could hold up a red or green sided paddle to play a game of ping pong on a big screen... One side of the room vs the other... Green paddles being a way to beckon the on-screen paddle to that location. The game was playable and seemingly coordinated just by having the feedback loop of the screen and the crowd, that was enough to create an overwhelming sense of shared willful and purposeful behaviour.

Most of us place our identity within ourselves as individuals, some learn to place it within their families. Richard Dawkins seems to believe it's actually at the level of the genes (makes that case in his book the selfish gene)... But the fact that we can to some degree place identity in different ways and locations suggests something of its unreality... Of course whose in control of that, and whether shifting it can be willful and comfortable, let alone controlled by a transporter chief is another question.