If we are as we seem to be—organic mechanisms with consciousness—how did we come to be? Why did the universe generate life forms such as us? Was it an accident? Is consciousness an accident?

There are two central questions here. First, how did life come to be? Was it an accident of chemistry or were there forces in the mechanism of the universe that caused it to generate life? Second, once life came to be, how did consciousness also come to be? Why did we with our many questions come to exist? Why is the universe not populated by organisms with simpler brains and far fewer questions?

For the time being, I will leave the first and most difficult question to others.[1] It may be that the creation of life as we understand it was an accident of chemistry. For now I will say only that when the Big Bang created the diversity of matter and energy that came to form the macrocosmic universe, it perhaps was not surprising that such diversity included the raw materials of evolution, awareness, consciousness, and self-examination of the universe itself.

The second question is marginally easier to address than the first. It comes down to how and why natural selection generates beings with consciousness as we know it. Is consciousness an accidental artifact of evolution or is there a mechanism or principle that biases natural selection toward the evolution of consciousness?[2]

Does natural selection select for consciousness?

It may be true that consciousness, once it exists, is a trait that increases reproductive success. A gradual and incremental evolution of consciousness may be a natural result of the increasing survivability of species that develop efficacious systems for maintaining awareness of the outside world and the potential threats and opportunities that can be found there. That by itself may be sufficient to explain the existence of consciousness as a survival mechanism. But is it enough to explain conscious intellectual life as we know it? Or does some other characteristic or refinement of consciousness result in life forms that ask philosophical questions?

Does natural selection require organisms that want to live?

A rock does not care about its survival. It does not have “wants”. So we ordinarily do not think of a rock as having consciousness or a desire to ask philosophical questions. Nor do we think of a rock as being subject to natural selection.[3]

At a certain point in the development of the universe, however, organisms appear that are subject to natural selection. They live and die and pass on hereditary characteristics to successors. It may seem obvious, but simultaneously or at some subsequent point, organisms appear that not only live and die and exist, but also have a desire to exist—to eat, to mate, to create a future. They want to survive and not to die. That “want” is almost certainly a trait that evolution selects for success.

Admittedly, it may play only an indirect or minor role in evolutionary success. The simple desire not to die surely must be present in all surviving species with any sense of awareness, so it is likely neither a differentiator among species or organisms, nor a statistical predictor of reproductive success. However, it is perhaps a precondition to the success of species like ours. Does that precondition help explain not only rudimentary consciousness but also the development of intellectual life as we know it?

“I don’t want to die”

To have the desire to live and not to die, an organism needs a definite boundary between itself and the external world, including other organisms. It must have at least some nebulous sense of self or “I”—the thing that does not wish to die. It also needs some awareness of “death” as loss of that thing. The desire to live and not to die therefore bears within it some fundamental questions about existence:

• What is I? What is self?
• What is death?
• What does it mean for “me” to “die”?
• Is it possible for me not to die?

These basic questions are germinated within the most basic desire of any living organism—the desire not to die—and they are the recognizable seeds of philosophy and intellectual life.

As other traits evolve to make an organism more successful, the seeds of expanded consciousness grow and develop along with the intellectual capacities of the organism. They accompany the evolution of bigger brains that enable the manipulation of tools and the environment. They are there when language is created, hovering in the back of the conscious mind, ready for expression in the culture that language enables.

Organisms use their big brains to survive and build better, and the process of survival itself encourages the introspection that drives intellectual development. The one simple desire—wanting not to die—puts life on a path toward expanded consciousness. Even if the will to live is not a differentiator among species, it is a necessary ingredient for natural selection, and it may open a door that cannot then be closed, leading inevitably to full consciousness, self-awareness, and intellectual self-examination. The will to live may or may not make us stronger, but it does make us more philosophical.

Consciousness may be no accident at all

All in all, there may be a clear path from that first moment of wanting to full sentience and human consciousness. Natural selection may be a biological and philosophical exercise, a way for the universe to evolve its own understanding of itself.[4] If that is true, then the gradual evolution of consciousness is a natural and expected result. It is not an accident. It is grafted onto the roots of the origin of species.[5]

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[1] Thomas Nagel in Mind and Cosmos frames both questions and offers a far-ranging discussion of the pros and cons of philosophical theories that purport to answer them. Nagel (2012).

[2] Or is this one of an infinite number of universes with all possibilities realized in at least one? Hmm…. I am with Thomas Nagel on this possibility. “Well, there is the hypothesis that this universe is not unique, but that all possible universes exist, and we find ourselves, not surprisingly, in one that contains life. But that is a cop-out, which dispenses with the attempt to explain anything.” Nagel (2012), p. 95, footnote 9.

[3] Although it may be worth considering whether there could be some inorganic equivalent of natural selection that guides the evolution of substances and particles and processes in a way that is comparable to how natural selection guides the evolution of living things?

[4] “Each of our lives is part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.” Nagel (2012), p. 85. “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” Carl Sagan.

[5] For the perspective of a neuroscientist on the biological origins of consciousness, see Seth (2021), p. 281. “The totality of our perceptions and cognitions—the whole panorama of human experience and mental life—is sculpted by a deep-seated biological drive to stay alive. We perceive the world around us, and ourselves within it, with, through and because of our living bodies.” (Italics in original.)