Both Douglas Hofstatder's I am a Strange Loop and Jeff Hawins' On Intelligence maintain that our consciousness is the sum total of the operations that take place in the brain, and that the I that is observing your hand, is just the result of recursive patterns within one's brain.

But I would agree with this. Consciousness is the sum total of the operations (or most operations -- things go on when you're unconscious) while my self-awareness is some subset. 'Rercusive patterns within one's brain' and 'simulations of reality' sound like they could be the same thing to me.

Later edit: Aha! I think I understand your point. I didn't intend to define consciousness in any limited way.

It's not me "looking at my hand" -- if by 'me' I mean my conscious self.

Place much more emphasis on the word 'self' than 'conscious'.

That is, my conscious sense of self never gets to look directly at a hand -- it only gets to experience a simulation of me looking at a hand.