Many thanks for that fascinating link. I am particularly bemused by the authors arguments on behalf of "distributed" cellular consciousness which he calls democratic polyzoism. I think, in biological terms, there is a lot of merit in it. But I think it is an incomplete model.
It could appear that your cell phone was supporting a similar polyzooic ability to originate stories and explanations. This would be better than trying to pin down "a single 'me' cell" component which was driving all the others. But there is an error -- almost the inverse of the Watchful Watchmaker error -- in mis-identifying the scope of the system such that significant components and interactions are left out of the explanation.
John: I think any question should be askable, even the unanswerable ones; but obviously those more based on the cumulative wisdom of a specialized field will be of interest to those in that field. Senior physicists are more interested in questions raised by their peers than by, say, freshmen who haven't done the legwork necessary to know what to question. Questions have to also be meaningful in the context they are asked. Posing the question "How do you KNOW the whole of existence was not brought about in seven earthly days" is not a meaningful question in this sense of the word. Too many extraneous premsies embedded into it.
The problem of intentionality in form is, I think, a real problem. The individual organism does intend to survive, and the toolmaker must intend the tool before he can bring it out of the stone or wood. These may be different kinds of intention or different orders of qualia. But one of the reasons the ID crowd has difficulty is that they couple their proposition of theproblem of intentionality in forms with their prefabricated answer of some sort of deus in machina, which obliviates the rationale pretended by the question.
I think the kinds of questions posed by the link PP pointed to -- about how consciousness works and where -- are part of this complex of things we do not understand fully. For example, most studies in consciousness focus on perception, rather than the projected consciosuenss that describes intent. But it is obvious that life above a minimal level is not wholly passive, nor wholly reactive, nor wholly intentional but a combination of all these in degrees. It perceives, it reacts, and it intends. And, occasionally, it reasons! Tadaaa!