In the OP you're speaking about intellect, not consciousness. This is a very common approach in the West but it gets us nowhere. It is this sort of thinking that reduces consciousness to information processing, which is the claim that all the mystics of all time were deluded and fraudulent. Well, maybe, but it's a massive speculative leap that seems entirely ad hoc. . .

I don't buy Price, Gould or Dawkin's analysis. Altruism is grounded in empathy and it is this that has to be explained. Altruism an empathy cannot be explained within the paradigm of these people. The only explanation for empathy I know, especially cross-species, is the unity of life and consciousness.

Great discussion by the way. I've just arrived from a forum where not one thread is of this quality.

You have an unusually low view of philosophy. But I suppose you're right for some so-called philosophers.

Some folks do seem to fear what they might find out, but they are not philosophers. Philosophy cannot be concerned with what we like and don't like.

Hi TVCL.I see you've tried to get to the bottom of this issue but I;m not sure it needs so many words. Logic cannot prove a truth about Reality, (as Aristotle points out) but it can find truths for us. I cannot see where 'usefulness' enters the picture. A thing is useful only if we use it, such that usefulness is not a property of information or things. A hammer is not useful if we only have a screw.

. . 25. Therefore, it is the goal of possessing an understanding of the truth that makes sense that justifies adherence to logic; it is the usefulness of logic for the end of achieving this goal that justifies adherence to it and makes it necessary in our search for truth.

I'd agree with this. For this reason metaphysics is a science of logic.

You make a good argument against paraconsistent logic, since we cannot understand the results it produces.

Jack Cummins ; " I simply wish to ask the question of what is the purpose of philosophy?"

To learn the truth.

Unless you're asking about university philosophy, which appears to have no purpose. .