The last leap to the cortex is crucial, because this wrinkly top layer — Consciousness

"We declare the following: “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”"

"There’s no need to call it “higher” consciousness. A better term is “total” consciousness, the ground state of everything in existence. Account for consciousness and you explain everything. No models are needed. The everyday mind is the arena of consciousness. Stick with it, experience it deeply, and be self-aware. Only then will reality be fully comprehended, absent any model at all."

"In contrast, a second definition may be determined by the beginning of consciousness at 24-36 weeks gestation. This is brain birth II, which parallels the personalist overtones of the higher brain definition of death, with a sufficiently well-developed neural organization to serve as the substratum from which self-consciousness and personal life subsequently emerge."

"Consciousness becomes a matter of philosophical debate; its not scientifically reliable."

"[T]o emotionally experience pain, we must be cognitively aware of the stimulus (a cortical process), and this in turn requires that we must be conscious. The key question then is not about the anatomic completion or functionality of nociceptive pathways in utero, but whether the fetus is ever conscious and thus aware."

"Consciousness is a strange thing; no one has yet succeeded in defining it. One of its characteristics is that we are the only species fully aware of its own mortality. Other animals fear imminent death, and express that terror—we humans can daily contemplate a finite life, and it seems reasonable to assume that the knowledge of death (as distinct from the fear of death) gives us a very different attitude toward life."