Where does consciousness come from?

One way to put it might be 'organically evolving complexity'. A view presently favored by scientists regards all of experience as precipitating within a vacuum of infinite potential. I prefer to think of it as boundlessly evolving experience, ranging from ephemerally emergent infinitesimal quarks to our self-evident perception of a fifteen billion year old cosmos, in which complexifying experience is seen as ever-entangling within the infinite possibilities of erstwhile nothingness.

A minority of scientists go so far as to hypothesize a 'multiverse' where the boundless possibilities of emergent experience proliferate as real alternate universes. That view is not for me, as I see no need to accord realism to the boundless alternatives that might otherwise have eventuated within all available possibilities. And, of course, the so-called multiverse is, by definition, unobservable, rendering it beyond the realm of science.

In any event, reflective self-awareness – consciousness, if you will – seems an inevitable eventuality amidst boundlessly evolving proliferation within infinite possibilities. And that's where we now-living humans abide.

Tom
('word-salad' master-chef)