RE: A hypothesis about consciousness
February 11, 2017 at 12:03 pm
(This post was last modified: February 11, 2017 at 12:37 pm by Won2blv.)
(February 11, 2017 at 5:05 am)bennyboy Wrote: Good ideas, but they are not original to you for the most part.
I honestly don't expect anyone to take my word for this but I concocted all of this yesterday. Then after I got excoriated on Reddit, I did some googling and found this article from a Princeton professor https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ed/485558/
He is uh... a little more qualified at explaining it
(February 11, 2017 at 8:46 am)chimp3 Wrote: @won2blv: You are using the term "fully self conscious' but does this describe a theory of mind? Humans are not the only animal to exhibit this awareness. Chimpanzees also have this trait. So there was probably not any " Eureka" moment but a process of brain building over millions of years.
I think that it took billions of years for very simple organisms to evolve brains. Brains and functions of the brains, like all evolutionary advances, started out as very rudimentary in structure and ability. I believe brains popped up because of an advantage of having memories. Memories allowed for organisms to process information and in turn, make decisions.
So as I said in the post, I believe that we have had consciousness for millions of years. All animals with brains are conscious. Our branch of the tree though, strengthened that muscle, and it only was able to because of the 2 massive extinctions in the last 50 million years. Otherwise, our brains, would by necessity, never develop fast enough because it was too deadly to not focus merely on physical advancements.
It could explain also why some animals have amazing hearing, amazing smell, and other crazy abilities that amaze humans. The consciousness of those animals kept leading them in the direction of their strengths.
So I know this is a drawn out answer, but I am not saying that humans are unique in consciousness, just that they're unique in being able to create intangible thoughts.
Monkeys have also shown an ability to make tools, but I would argue that it is only because the creation is tangible and testable to the outer body. A monkey does not have the idea to make a hammer, but it does need to crack open a shell so it tests different ways and then remembers the best one.
(February 11, 2017 at 3:17 am)ignoramus Wrote: Sounds reasonable.
As the mind got more evolved and complex, it was able to take itself off autopilot ...
So basically consciousness is just the ability for an animal to have the mental capacity to override it's own innate subconsciousness.
Animal logic!
Yeah exactly, I think of our brains as manufacturing plants. For millions of years, that plant had one basic product, survival. But human brains were able to get so efficient at the survival part, that it upgraded to automation to run the survival part of its brain. So whats a manufacturing plant to do when they have their bread and butter working away, ensuring them that they keep producing their most important product? Venture Capitalism.
The brain became like a venture capitalist. Taking more risk, looking for information not previously known, and inventing thoughts that could be tested. I mean for every one of those to be as simple and rudimentary as possible. Like just simply seeing mud soften and then harden, it would be the first minor observation that would eventually lead to more and more advanced building material
