  To make accurate inferences in an interactive setting, an agent must not
confuse passive observation of events with having intervened to cause them. The
$do$ operator formalises interventions so that we may reason about their
effect. Yet there exist pareto optimal mathematical formalisms of general
intelligence in an interactive setting which, presupposing no explicit
representation of intervention, make maximally accurate inferences. We examine
one such formalism. We show that in the absence of a $do$ operator, an
intervention can be represented by a variable. We then argue that variables are
abstractions, and that need to explicitly represent interventions in advance
arises only because we presuppose these sorts of abstractions. The
aforementioned formalism avoids this and so, initial conditions permitting,
representations of relevant causal interventions will emerge through induction.
These emergent abstractions function as representations of one`s self and of
any other object, inasmuch as the interventions of those objects impact the
satisfaction of goals. We argue that this explains how one might reason about
one`s own identity and intent, those of others, of one`s own as perceived by
others and so on. In a narrow sense this describes what it is to be aware, and
is a mechanistic explanation of aspects of consciousness.
