[ExI] Where is Consciousness located?

[Lee Corbin]

Stathis writes

> there is no reason for evolution to favour a conscious
> being over a philosophical zombie.

In reading your other posts, I don't have any reason to
think that I disagree with you on this subject, but the
above is amusing.

I think that there is ample reason for evolution to favor
a conscious being over a philosophical zombie since
the latter do not exist, and probably are impossible!

Suppose not.  That is, suppose that evolution could
just as easily have contrived non-conscious beings
who were every bit as efficient as conscious ones.
Then perhaps she did.  It may be, for example, that
Asians resemble everyone else in all ways except that
they're not conscious.  The only way to avoid such
idiocy is to strongly question the idea that non-conscious
intelligent entities exist.

> This would imply that consciousness is a corollary
> of human level intelligence.

That is, you propose that consciousness is a necessary
corollary, and I agree. From a third-person perspective,
the only perspective that it makes sense to discuss,
the only perspective that it makes sense to discuss things
from, a highly intelligent being must have verbal access
to its own states.  If it does, then it is perfectly capable 
of complaining bitterly to the world when its internal
states are not satisfactory.  And that's exactly the situation
we always see.

(Evolution doesn't waste resources on supplying trees
with consciousness since there isn't anything that they
could do with it.)

Lee