Questions on Consciousness

[Venryx]

I have a question. Mostly it's to atheists, but I'd like to hear the opinions of others as well.

The short version of the question is simply, "If life's only purpose is survival and the passing on of genes, how did the mechanism for human consciousness ever evolve?"

The long version more or less follows the thinking pattern below.

Okay, so I think it's safe to say that some creatures have a consciousness (like humans) and others do not (like protozoans). The way I understand it, virtually every atheist believes that the mechanism for consciousness (the part of the brain which, if taken out, would cause an end to all consciousness) has evolved into the higher species, and that since it evolved it must have improved our ancestor's survival rate.

This can only mean two things:
....1. Consciousness itself affects the physical world and improves survival (and that's why the mechanism evolved).
....2. Consciousness doesn't improve survival but is the inevitable result of a highly evolved brain (so we find ourselves with it anyway).

If the first is true, then we would seem to be describing dualism.

If the second is true, then it becomes inexplicable why some sequences of matter result in consciousness (like in our brains) but others do not (like in the brains of protozoa). It also becomes inexplicable why consciousness happens to be so vibrant, colorful, painful, and so on, exactly at the times that the brain is in a certain state. Like, why should the feeling/sensation of pain just happen to come about in the exact situation where the brain is receiving signals of damaged cells? Or why do we experience the flavor of apple juice if our experience does nothing to improve our body's survival?

Now I'd like to make a distinction here. I'm not asking, "How does is a creature helped by being able to taste?"

I'm asking, "Why would licking an object, processing that information in the brain, and making a reasonable decision ever need to involve its accompanying experience: the taste/feeling/sensation of drinking apple juice?"

I'd like to know your thoughts on this kind of question.

[shunyadragon]

[QUOTE=Venryx;3417531]I have a question. Mostly it's to atheists, but I'd like to hear the opinions of others as well.

The short version of the question is simply, "If life's only purpose is survival and the passing on of genes, how did the mechanism for human consciousness ever evolve?"

The long version more or less follows the thinking pattern below.

Okay, so I think it's safe to say that some creatures have a consciousness (like humans) and others do not (like protozoans). The way I understand it, virtually every atheist believes that the mechanism for consciousness (the part of the brain which, if taken out, would cause an end to all consciousness) has evolved into the higher species, and that since it evolved it must have improved our ancestor's survival rate.

This can only mean two things:
....1. Consciousness itself affects the physical world and improves survival (and that's why the mechanism evolved).
....2. Consciousness doesn't improve survival but is the inevitable result of a highly evolved brain (so we find ourselves with it anyway).

If the first is true, then we would seem to be describing dualism.

From the scientific perspective you would be talking about evolution of the brain not consciousness. The mind, consciousness would be simply a function of the brain)

[phank]

The word "consciousness" is poorly defined. Unless it is considered to mean something specific, it fails to communicate anything.

In general, the mind is regarded as what the brain does for a living. And what this means is, everything with a mind must have a brain. But this does NOT imply that everything with a brain must have a mind, and currently I'm unaware of any surefire way to tell if this is the case. It does seem to be the case that sophisticated brains are very expensive, and there is no long-term evidence that such abilities are beneficial. They may not be - the homo branch of the primate clade has fared quite poorly - of perhaps a dozen species, only one survives and that one seems to be rendering its habitat uninhabitable. The eventual verdict may be that as an evolutionary experiment, sophisticated consciousness is a failure, a dead end.

Nothing that evolves "needs" to evolve. Evolution is a trial-and-error process guided only by what works, and nothing works for all that long. Everything is an experiment, and the experiment of intelligence seems to look not very promising. Our consciousness evolved the same way as any other characteristic - through the processes of selection and drift mostly. These processes have produced some amazingly useless features, some counterproductive features, and a lot of helpful features. No feature can be TOO harmful, of course, but evolution can explore a long way down blind alleys.

[pancreasman]

It is possible that what we understand as consciousness is an inevitable by-product of brain complexity of a certain order. Consciousness could just be the froth on the beer of your central nervous system. You may quote me.

[phank]

It is possible that what we understand as consciousness is an inevitable by-product of brain complexity of a certain order. Consciousness could just be the froth on the beer of your central nervous system. You may quote me.

Consciousness is thought of as being an emergent property of brain activivity, and brains evolved to have such activities because consciousness has been helpful in survival. You know, things like finding food, avoiding being food, stuff like that. There doesn't seem to be any real qualitative phase changes as brains become more sophisticated and produce more nuanced behaviors, as we look across the animal kingdom.

But there IS some evidence that such sophistication reaches a point of diminishing returns, or really several such points. One is, the biologic cost of maintaining a large and active brain. It's very expensive. Another is the physical limitation on sophistication and complexity - propagation delays eventually overwhelm even the most optimal architectures, etc.

An economist might say that if big brains and abstract symbolic thinking and complex linguistic capabilities and such were all that useful, they'd have evolved across the board and long since. So maybe they're not all that useful, or maybe they're damn hard to evolve for unknown reasons. But if success is measured in sheer volume of survival, then bacteria remain unchallenged. Even humans are 90% bacteria by cell count, and wouldn't last a day without them.