If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)

[bennyboy]

Okay, let's take the example of consciousness. Is evolution a better explanation of why there is consciousness rather than nothing like it? EVEN IF consciousness has evolved, it doesn't explain why there is such a thing as qualia at all. Our quacking duck only tells us that there are ducks which quack (to abuse your metaphor badly).

The main philosophical problem with evolution is that it requires a framework. If there is consciousness, it can only evolve in a framework which has the capacity for consciousness. So the question is this: did a framework which has the capacity for consciousness "just happen," or is there an intrinsic connection between reality and the capacity for consciousness?

I think the latter makes more sense: consciousness is not an accident, but is intrinsic to the nature of reality. That's not to say all things are conscious, but to say that the framework in which we exist could not work without that capacity. It seems strange to me that such a framework could arise out of a parent system that didn't also include that capacity.

Are you implying personal consciousness or a "mother nature" type consciousness?

I'm saying that personal consciousness is only possible if the framework accomodates it. You couldn't have a purely mechanical universe which also had consciousness-- unless the capacity for consciousness is already intrinsic to the framework.

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The problem is that while you can dig up bones, and maybe even DNA, you can't dig up subjective experiences like "beauty" or "morality."

I don't think that anyone's suggesting that we go out with a shovel and dig in the earth for subjective experiences. We're simply digging elsewhere, with more appropriate tools. -If- those experiences boil down to biology, evolution will have it's say. If they don't...then what? Obviously not a question that I have an answer for. But it puts it into perspective.

Evolution is the increasing persistence, over time, of traits. To say an animal has evolved physically, we can look at fossils and see the kinds of changes that happened over time. But how would we do this with consciousness? How would we know what, if anything, organism X experienced, and in what way its experiences persisted over time in the guise of species evolution?