http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=consciousness
This has some very good discussion on the issue.
Personally, I believe in the materialism view of conscieness, as an illusion created by evolution. All it is, is the always changing state of chemicals in the mind. Your personality is a combination of two things:genetics, which makes sense - if your parents had personalities to get them laid, than its obviously better to imprint them onto any offspring, and environment. It's all cause and effect. If something happens in your childhood and you see a bad result, than your personality will reflect that. As it is all in neverending electro-chemical signals, it exists in your mind as that is the place where memory is stored and thinking occurs.