The pain isn't being induced by the needle. The pain is the direct result of the skin being punctured.

(January 15, 2023 at 9:24 am)Tomato Wrote: The pain isn't being induced by the needle. The pain is the direct result of the skin being punctured.

Sure, and the sun doesn't really rise in the east. And?

And take up eastern meditation if you want to do away with feeling pain.

(January 15, 2023 at 9:24 am)Tomato Wrote: The pain isn't being induced by the needle. The pain is the direct result of the skin being punctured.

By the way, since you want to be really technical, even what you said isn't quite accurate.

So we are talking about whether consciousness could evolve or not. I guess we should first define what is consciousness and what in it could not evolve. Also, do other beings have consciousness, like gorillas? And if gorillas have consciousness could it evolve or is it unexplained?

(January 14, 2023 at 9:20 am)Dmitry1983 Wrote:

(January 14, 2023 at 6:13 am)GrandizerII Wrote: Either way, your argument isn't a compelling defeater of human evolution. 

It's a good argument to be skeptical of the theory of evolution. It's not settled science as atheists claim

To those who are vested in the preconception that evolution is bad thing to believe, any rotten straw, indeed anything they can even pretend to be a straw, they will grasp and assert it to be the life preserver, no, life boat, no, argosy, no, indeed the very ark, that will preserve the light of right creationist faith until the hopeful day they are sure will come when they imagine the flood of evidence for evolution will recede.

And yours is really not even a straw, but merely something you pretend to be a straw.   And that day will very nearly certainly never come.

(January 15, 2023 at 9:16 am)GrandizerII Wrote:

(January 14, 2023 at 4:09 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: Last I checked the ability to plan for tomorrow was a survival advantage. Other organisms can only adapt as quickly as evolution changes them from generation to generation. Conscious organisms can adapt their behaviour from one instant to the next while evolution is still tying its sneakers.

I agree with you that planning for tomorrow has practical utility. I don't think even Dmitry is disputing that.

The question is whether phenomenal consciousness (that which involves qualia) has any practical utility.

Can you explain how we'd do any planning without consciousness? No self-awareness, no awareness of the future, no planning for any self in any future.

Quote:Let's consider the example brought up by Dmitry: pain induced by a needle. Whatever do we need to have this awful feeling of pain for? Is our body being conditioned/primed to avoid/prepare for such similar pain-triggering stimuli in the future not sufficient to keep us surviving?

Pain is little more than a damage indicator. Don't do this, it hurts. About as complicated as a check engine light. There's some pretty obvious survival advantage to avoiding an unnecessarily punctured hide.

And if pain is DMitry's bar for qualia then he's just thrown humanish p-zombies out the window. Every organism down to and including single-celled organisms exhibit some level of distress when damaged. It's about as fundamental a reaction as you can find.

does planning really require self-awareness? Could planning not be the mere product of a set of algorithms that programmatically identify and schedule a series of actions that would achieve an end goal, an end goal which is also defined by algorithm?

when you throw a baseball your brain plans and then program for execution a series of muscular actions. is consciousness involved?

(January 14, 2023 at 11:00 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(January 14, 2023 at 9:22 am)Dmitry1983 Wrote: Prick yourself with a needle

Daniel Dennett:

https://open-mind.net/papers/how-our-bel...-h-bassler

He says that he doesn't deny existence of qualia in the end of this paper.

(January 15, 2023 at 9:06 am)GrandizerII Wrote: there is difficulty coming up with a good evolutionary theory of consciousness.

Therefore skepticism towards evolution is justified.