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 Why did consciousness evolve? (6)

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StickinStone(649) pic



Why did consciousness evolve?

On the premise that everything evolved to what it is today, why did concsiousness evolve? Materialist scientist reduce everything to its physical explanation. This implies that we are atomotons that are puppets to chemical interactions in our brain. If this is the case, then our apparent free will and awareness is an illusion. What is the functional purpose of this illusion.

Since this is a scientific challenge, religion based explanations will not be considered valid in the context of this debate. At least not by me.

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If this argument is considered trolling, don't blame me. The chemical imbalance in my brain made me do it ;)

StickinStone(649) Clarified
1 point

The "My brain made me do it" defense has begun creeping into the courtroom.

1 point

I have been pondering this most of my life man, this is a mind boggling thought, and to tell you the truth I don't think our human brains can even comprehend the true reason, this is the soul reason humans make up Gods, to kind of fill in the blanks to what they truly don't understand.

The good thing is more and more people around the world are asking this question without the need to make shit up, we are at the age of truth and with any luck and critical thinking we might find the answer if our brains can even comprehend.

1 point

Social intelligence was a very important sexual selection pressure placed on our ancestors, that is what caused consciousness to evolve. Social intelligence is the ability to reference, determine, and predict the mental state of another, this started as very basic with the intent to "outsmart" other members by guessing why they did what they did. This progressed to the point where we look at ourselves to explain the actions of others and determine what they might do next.

I would recommend you read "The Red Queen: Sexuality and the Evolution of Human Nature.

If I didn't address your question I'm sorry, please clarify what you mean by consciousness.

Well said, but my issue is with the actual awareness experience. A computer could be made to be strategic through analysis of actions. This doesn't require that the computer actually "live" or "feel" the awareness process. What is the advantage to living? What I mean is, if we are simply a mass of cells, operating solely on causal relationships, than there is no advantage to experiencing life. Cold, un-living computers could potentially do the same, without the experiential part at all.

1 point

What is the advantage to living?

There is none, environmental pressures select for organisms that live long enough to reproduce. It's from that we see organisms who appear to want to survive, as the ones who did not failed to.

What I mean is, if we are simply a mass of cells, operating solely on causal relationships, than there is no advantage to experiencing life.

The illusion of consciousness and our arbitrary mechanisms for pleasure add personal meaning and enjoyment to a life that is overall meaningless.

Cold, un-living computers could potentially do the same, without the experiential part at all.

There is nothing preventing computers to sharing our illusion of consciousness once we have sufficient means to allow them.

I can go into more detail and provide arguments for any of these if you would like.

1 point

There's two sides to your question: 1) Is determinism incompatible with free will? 2) Why did consciousness evolve?

1) This is an overwhelmingly hard question which I haven't really studied in depth. I don't really know the arguments so I am not going to answer this question. However, I do know that compatibilists (those who believe free will is compatible with determinism) define free will rather loosely. For instance, they would argue that free will isn't an either-or phenomenon. Rather, free will comes in degrees, which I think resonates quite nicely with a phenomenological analysis of how we experience it. I will suffice to say that a lot of philosophers agree that free will is compatible with determinism.

2) Not everything in nature evolved because it was useful for survival. A lot of features of nature are so called 'spandrels'. These are characteristics which are by-products of evolution. They are characteristics that just happened to evolve while some useful feature was being selected for. Now, the human brain is arguably the most complicated organ in the world. Why our brains are so big is currently being debated, but it certainly didn't evolve because we needed consciousness. You said it yourself, consciousness is a rather useless feature of humanity.

Let's assume that our brain got its size because of a combination of sexual selection and complicated tool making. It just so happened that while our brain grew in size consciousness emerged. Consciousness is probably an emerging feature (google 'emergence'), not a feature that can be reduced to a single brain part, cell etc. Consciousness is a feature that emerges with complexity, so my take on it would be that consciousness is an emerging feature and a byproduct of the evolution of our brains. It wasn't selected for, it just came along with the rest of it.