This is exactly the sort of problem that convinced me that consciousness/mind must be a fundamental part of the (multi/uni)verse, and not something that "emerge

This is exactly the sort of problem that convinced me that consciousness/mind must be a fundamental part of the (multi/uni)verse, and not something that "emerges" from matter. I find it terribly unconvincing that a specific arrangement of matter, or even an algorithm in software, just simply "spawns" a discrete consciousness from nothing. It might make sense if there was an underlying "consciousness field" or some such concept that the matter-arrangement tapped into in some manner.