[ExI] evolution of consciousness

Spencer Campbell lacertilian at gmail.com
Thu Feb 11 21:40:58 UTC 2010


Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>:
> Unconscious animals like amoebas exhibit a low level of intelligent behavior. Those instinctive behaviors are encoded by DNA. In higher organisms we see nervous systems, and we see how the resulting consciousness increases the intelligence and flexibility of the organisms.

Much like how a laptop is more flexible than a PDA, which in turn is
more flexible than a pocket calculator. We are, to a substantially
greater extent than any other animal, general-purpose information
processors.

This does not relate to consciousness in any clear way.

The only roughly coherent theory behind the evolution of
consciousness, in my mind, is embedded within Pollock and Ismael's
paper on nolipsism. It goes: "we are conscious because we use de se
designators, and we use de se designators so that we can function
intelligently in every possible situation".

I don't like it, and I don't know if I agree with it, when it comes to
the question of subjective experience. I don't see why de se
designators should be special, among other symbols, in that particular
way. Even so, it's as close as I can come to explaining the
evolutionary origins of consciousness.

Great for explaining the illusory nature of the self, not so great for
explaining the illusory nature of consciousness -- since consciousness
is not an illusion. It might be made of illusions, sure, but it isn't
one itself. We can measure it. I'm not sure how we can measure it, but
if it's favored by evolution then we must necessarily be able to.



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list