> Decoupling awareness and its contents

What do you mean?

I don't understand what you mean by "the evolution of everything else in the universe", either. Consciousness isn't required for the evolution of living beings. Or do you mean something else?

When I say evolution here I mean a change in state, not Darwinian evolution.

I'm drawing a distinction between humans, who seem to have the ability to make choices, with the prevailing scientific world view, that everything is the result of mindless causal forces.

I suppose you could hold the epiphenominalist view that consciousness is a side effect with no causal agency, but then you have to explain why things that hinder survival/reproduction feel bad, and things that aid it feel good. If consciousness was truly an epiphenomenon there is no reason why there should be any concordance between survival value of events and their phenomenal character.

I think you have it backwards: if there is no reason for consciousness to have any concordance, then it can go either way. And there is evidence of lots of evolved traits that have indeed gone "either way". Or it could be that consciousness is not a blind side effect but actually provides survival value. Or maybe it is a side effect but it's harmless. There are lots of possibilities.

In any case, it seems this is a diversion from the main argument: if you aren't aware of a process, then it's not a conscious process on your part by definition.