[odyssey7]

Starting from evolution as the cause for the fact that our physical bodies present sensation to our awareness, I have to assume there’s a reason for that to happen.

The obvious answer is that pleasure, pain, ideas, memories, etc. all exist to drive the behaviors that are advantageous in evolution.

It’s possible that there’s a deterministic set of gears in how sensation drives behavior, but the role of experience in driving physical action would be at least one of those components.

So if we take evolution as the cause of life as we understand it, then consciousness is at least a component of physics itself.