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I would argue that consciousness doesn't require a purpose. I woke up here, what was my purpose? If I don't decide that purpose, what does? How is that thing able to give me one and not be conscious in some way? Evolution has no purpose other than it's own continuation, which is interestingly also the only purpose I was born with. I'd say purpose is innate to consciousness, emergent with it, but not a precursor. The universe doesn't need me here. Does the process of evolution "learn"? I'd say empirically yes it does, but there's no organ or part of it that does the learning, learning is just innate as well. The system learns and the evidence of what it has learned are apparent in it's form. Go down the list, evolution, the biosphere, meets all these criteria except for replication. It hasn't replicated, but it does appear it is learning how to do so. So is the biosphere conscious in it's own way? I don't know, but either answer is problematic for your set of axioms, so I don't think they're correct. So let's get a little more curious. If I'm conscious, and I'm part of the universe, does that mean that the universe is conscious? And if so, was it conscious in some way before I opened memy eyes for the first time? On the first question I'd argue yes, it is conscious at least to the degree I am and with awareness at least as far as mine goes, seeing as I'm not merely inside the universe, but am an inseparable part of it. Further, though I don't know for certain if there are other conscious beings in the universe, I observe several around me that appear to have the same form and behavior that I have, I'd wager that my parents and such are also conscious, so the universe probably has a consciousness beyond just mine. On the second question, it's not so straightforward, but considering that this consciousness that I have comes from something in the universe I think a "yes" to this one would be more likely to be the right answer than a "no". It would appear that some constants, rules, traits of the universe not only allow for consciousness, but select for it via convergent evolution. There is, at the very least, something fundamental about the universe that emerges as consciousness somewhere inside it. |