If i'm interpreting what you're saying correctly, and I like to think that I am, then you're saying that another couple billion years and the universe will be semi-aware of it's own existence, in a word, sentient.

Is it?

No. It's no closer to becoming the next kierkegaard than this knife is.

Why?

It just isn't. Our environment isn't sentient, doesn't think for itself, it's comprised of so many different little organisms, like perhaps our cells, but then you think, and we killed the passenger pigeon, and everythings ok. Try taking out your liver. Doesn't work. The universe is not dependent on any living thing for existence.

....why?

Because we interact with the environment, but the environment doesn't interact with us. We pick up sticks and make a fire, the forest doesn't collect people and make a company. I dont know about you, but generally in really specific terms, all the sentient beings i've seen have brains. The universe has a lot of dust and space in it, and maybe that's what someppl have in their heads. But i can garuntee you this universe is no closer to being self-aware than a rock.

God gives the universe reality, not you or your dog matey

wow, very interesting thought, but It seems to me that we had the ability to become sentient because we are living. The universe as a whole is not alive, does not grow, reproduce, have metabolism, respond to stimuli, or adapt to it's environment and therefore cannot become aware of itself.

life does exist in a sense to self-rectify the universes existance, and define its reality. However, from a human perspective, we cannot define reality to rectify our existance. It is impossible to fathom a universe so multi-facetted and multidimensional at our level of comprehension. Which, arguably, would have you wonder if the universe itself has failed in defining its reality with living creatures, or has it succeeded where we cannot.

It's all perspective baby. The universe exists regardless of our perception of it. This whole focus on consciousness is just another way to make humans seem important without turning to God

The universe becomming aware of its self? Well,.. umm.. No, but let's say that the spirit of earth is.

On what task than should the spirit of Earth be concentrating at this stage of it's developing mind? To know itself? Hm,.. that is not without danger. For how than would it avoid insanity and go selfdestruct when it calculates that the universe is a closed sysem without beginning, without end? For such a system holds no place for a Creator, and the spirit of the mainframe Earth will lose its trust in God. Than it may want to shut itself down, for it may think that it has fullfilled its purpose, namely to find the answer to the quesion "Is there a God?" and it found the answer: No, not as such!

Imagine that this 'super bio-computermind' by its own calculations comes to realizes that one of it's most powerfull assumptions (that it's reason for being lies with God,) turns out to be completely arbitrary and void of meaning, and that it can calculate and act no further on the basis of this single core axiom? Could the spitit of the earth than hold it together and stand firm within it's own mind, without the comfort of that grand and universal reason called God to protect its ego from the cold burning light of an unblinking universe?

If so, what do you thing, could it by itself find something els to calculate, could it go on an other quest? Maybe to find the answer to eveything? Mind you, it would than also have the task to simultaniously figure out the question to everything.

You know what? Some say we already know the answer to everything; it is 42! But what again was the question?

Lou.

That is a very interesting thought and i dont think other people here really understand what you are actually saying. Life is just one of the many ways that a universe takes to become self-aware.

"Are semi-conscious universes evolving towards a state of self awareness out there, in the multiverse?"

It is my belief that it is highly possible there are many universes who are already self aware, or atleast moreso than ours. I disagree with whoever said that universes can't be self aware as they are not living. First of all, I think that person missed the point entirely. Second of all, what is life? Because we react to stimuli, THAT WE KNOW OF, and we may breath in one way or another. We classify life based on what we know. There are many things we do not know, just take for example things such as dark matter, and zero point gravity. How do you use those? No one is entirely sure what all we can do with the things we continue to find out about our small universe. Whos to say that there isn't an already highly self aware universe somewhere else still evolving to an even higher state of awareness that we are entirely incapable of understanding in the first place? Thats my thoughts

Very interesting. Can u provide more pointers about this?

Our universe already has self-aware parts in the form of human beings. There are some who speculate that all of the isolated human beings are evolving toward a global self-aware super-conscious. Also, it is speculated that humans may develop a post-human super-intelligence. Some think the worldwide web is moving in that direction. I don't know if we are moving toward an omega point or not! I'm not sure it will be an improvement or the beginning of another dystopia?

Along the lines of science, yes a good thought, and it has merit. But anything could be anything.

That was an Hegelian concept from the Phenomenology of Mind. ..Schopenhauer disagreed, and believed Hegel rather pompous and too wordy without using sufficient reason.

Schopenhauer was also critical of Spinoza, for different reasons. He thought the logic of Spinoza in claiming that the universe itself is rather pantheisticly a manifestation of God was faulty, and based upon a concrete application of Descartres' logic and phenomenal reasoning on the ontological argument.

It seems probable that so many modern criticisms of Descartres are caused by his ideas and expressions about the ontological argument, that Schopenhauer gives him more credit for than to Anselm, who wrote later.

***

My answer to Hegel's Idea is no, yet for different reasons than Schopenhauer gave in the fourfold roots of reason. I think that the Universe is created for a reason known to God, and perhaps in part by man, yet I do not seek for a recurssive chain of causal regression to prove that, while Schopenhauer believed that the ontological argument of Decartres and the ideas of Hegel too were inducted application of faulty reasoning about the world. Schop thought that many proofs are simply definitions of a concept, or constructions without strict logical, analytical veracity.