Subject: Re: OT: what does an expanding universe mean?
I have learned that consciousness and intelligence -and by extension, cognition- is an emergent property of brains. A single, or even a few brain cells don't give you much. Get billions of them all interconnected, and you get awareness...

What you say you learned is what ONE school of thought says regarding the so-called "hard" problem of consciousness. That a complex brain creates/produces/causes consciousness, that it's a by-product. But actually this is a very open and heavily discussed field of not only philosophers but equally of neuroscientists.