Your response made me reconsider two of my claims. Evolution _can_ provide a teleology of both humankind and of consciousness. The latter may be understood as a genetic trait which provides extraordinary survival fitness, and so existence, to the former. We and our traits arise from, and have been fashioned to function within, the system of evolution. The traits, and us, want for no more purpose than this - just as the output of any function wants for no more purpose than the input parameters.

Life, though - that system and its output, holistically - still lacks self-evident purpose. (Which is not to say that it must have one.) Why was this function written? Is it merely the output of a higher-order function? (Involving cosmic turtles?)