Ayn Rand points out, on Page 17, in a footnote, of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, that lower-life forms live goal-directed lives in preserving their lives and perpetuating their species, but that goal-directness for higher functioning rational creatures as smart as humans are--well, their consciousness, their awareness and alertness, renders their goal-directedness to unfold in a more complicated way, as their consciousness necessitates that they operate in a teleological or purposive manner, and I assent. Here is her footnote: "When applied to physical phenomena, such as the automatic functions of an organism, the term 'goal-directed' is not taken to mean 'purposive' (a concept applicable only to the actions of a consciousness) and is not imply the existence of any teleological principle operating in insentient nature. I use the term 'goal-directed' in this context, to designate the fact that the automatic functions of living organisms are actions whose nature is such that they result in the preservation of an organism's life."
My response: For Rand consciousness is the biological mind. For spiritual believers like I am, consciousness is that and more--it is the mind and the mind's higher level of consciousness as a soul. And 'insentient creatures" might think and choose some of its actions and implementable intentions over time, and we likely are more driven by deep-seat, unnoticed but powerful basic drives also operate to guide human goals, even the purposive, more than we know, perhaps for a life time.
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