Not necessarily.
How does it feel?
Complaining about someone who speaks in absolutes is an argument of the form "not necessarily," which is a generally weak argument. It's strong in formal systems, but we can rarely prove anything. Our knowledge comes along with a confidence measure and that measure is rarely fully confident, even if it is expressed as so in order to help emphasize a point.
"Really powerful argument spoken with more confidence than is realistic."
"Not necessarily."
"Okay, what about my actual argument?"
"It's not necessarily true."
"Yeah, ok, have a nice life."
Well, I don't like to think that all things are necessary; some things just are, even if we can't explain how or why.
Again, you have used a container metaphor to talk about reality. This leads to contradictions in any reasonable formal system. Reality is not an object. If it were, then it would have to be in a container. Have you ever seen an uncontained object? No. Have you ever seen an uncontained container? Nope. And just like that we get turtles all the way down.
We don't even know the basic architectures of our universe - whether it's open and infinite or finite and closed, a positively curved sphere or a negatively curved saddle, or even a flat torus. Surely there's no way we can know what lies beyond it all, at least not yet.
Consciousness evolved. The question is, what is its utility?
It's usefulness is in that we can have life, both experience it and have a means for preserving it longer. But that's only at our level of existence as we know it. Up above, assuming any of that exists, perhaps our minds could do so much more. I would even say that evolution is an integral factor here, as it makes changes that we can perceive, and can lift us up to higher states.
Nothing goes beyond physics. This is a god of the gaps-style argument.
Reason can carry us to the pinnacle, but only with sufficient faith will we jump off of the mountainside and fly up into the sky.
First, if you can't prove that something is correct then you should temper your confidence in it. Indeed, if it is Not Even Wrong i.e. not even testable you should spend almost no time thinking about it. Second, you should question the utility of your metaphysics. In order to do this you're going to have to define an objective function.
We don't need to expect scientifically verifiable results for everything before its time has come. Try telling the American Indians from times past to prove that the Earth is round, or that the Earth isn't the center of the universe; that under our present observations is the real fact, but people with limited perceptions would have no means of proving so. As such, they would need fundamental theories first to lay foundations for future explorations.
Pure theory lacks utility. Why are you theorizing. If it is to discover the truth, then your pattern of theorizing and believing without testing is deeply flawed.
Pure theories may lack immediate usefulness, but they also have promise for much more development beyond the world as we know it, can come to expand our horizons and vision.
