Why? The Purpose of the Universe

by Philip Goff

Natural selection is only interested in behaviour, as only behaviour matters for survival. A meaning zombie, by definition, would behave just like a real human being, and thus would survive just as well as a real human being. Natural selection has no interest in the quality of your inner life, so long as you’re going to do the kinds of things that’ll make you live longer and pass on your genes. On the face of it, therefore, we cannot explain in evolutionary terms why we are not meaning zombies.

Ignores the evolutionary advantage of memes, which require communucation and memory skills beyond our genes.

yet it’s hard to see how our standard scientific account of how we came into existence—Darwinian natural selection—could explain the existence of experiential understanding.

I don't agree. See previous note on the role of memes in evolution.

What is important for survival is functional understanding, not experiential understanding.

Nope.

The first step to solving the meaning zombie problem is to deny micro-reductionism. If the basic laws of physics determine how I behave, regardless of whether or not experiential understanding emerges, then natural selection will not care whether or not experiential understanding emerges. It is only if the emergence of experiential understanding makes a difference, only if things with experiential understanding survive better than things whose behaviour is wholly determined by underlying chemistry and physics, that we can start to make sense of an evolutionary explanation of the emergence of experiential understanding.

But what if micro-reductionism is only possible with more variety than we are able to manifest, either in a single brain, or all the brains in the universe?

Empirical science tells how things behave, but it remains silent on why things behave as they do. We assume that inanimate entities are simply compelled to behave as they do. But it is consistent with observation to suppose that particles are engaging in a very rudimentary form of what organisms do: following their conscious inclinations.

Why only exists at higher dimensions of time and memory. Do particles have this capacity? The fundamental difference is behavior driven by memory. In this way, Buddhisn is consistent with nature,being here and now without attachment. Interesting that Buddhism depends, for most, on the attachment to teachers and previous experience!