Conscious creatures enjoy being phenomenally conscious. They enjoy the world in which they are phenomenally conscious. And they enjoy their selves for being phenomenally conscious. But “enjoy” is too weak a term. In the case of human beings, at any rate, it would be truer to say: they revel in being phenomenally conscious. They love the world in which they are phenomenally conscious. They esteem their selves for being phenomenally conscious. Moreover (…) for conscious creatures there is real biological value in all this. The added joie de vivre, the new enchantment with the world they live in, and the novel sense of their own metaphysical importance has, in the course of evolutionary history, dramatically increased the investment individuals make in their own survival.
— Humphrey, Nicholas. Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011.
