Dear Philip,
your essay really covers a wide range of topics, and it must have been a pleasure to be able to concentrate in a single text the variety of things that have kept you busy in the last decades!
Talking about 'pleasure': the reason for the appearance and success of this 'trick' in the context of darwinian evolution (in sexual reproduction) is obvious. But you also write:
"Higher organisms such as ourselves have developed positive and negative emotions as one way of aiding survival but these also result in us setting ourselves goals that give us pleasure without affecting survival. These include the curiosity driven will to understand nature."
I wonder whether one can really say that human curiosity to understand nature is completely independent from survival-related goals, and, in that case, what origin it might have...
I like the final parts of your text, and in particular I fully agree with:
"Does this imply that a simulated mind is not conscious? No, our brain is just a wet computer whose workings can be replicated electronically. If an artificial intelligence is able to interact with the universe and be aware of itself then it is certainly conscious."
Although I tend to consider this as an obvious statement, I have recently experienced vigorous opposition against this viewpoint - still a form of human vanity? (but this is not too relevant to the focus of the context).
Best regards
Tommaso