But your body is just a robot suit for replicating nucleic acids and you can follow an unbroken chain of those chemical reactions all the way to the first microbes. Which were still "optimizing for survival" without any intelligence beyond following chemical gradients.
If you say that means even microbes have some amount of qualia then I can't dispute it. Pure physicalism may necessitate panpsychism of some form.
But your body is just a robot suit for replicating nucleic acids and you can follow an unbroken chain of those chemical reactions all the way to the first microbes. Which were still "optimizing for survival" without any intelligence beyond following chemical gradients.
If you say that means even microbes have some amount of qualia then I can't dispute it. Pure physicalism may necessitate panpsychism of some form.