RE: A hypothesis about consciousness
February 12, 2017 at 3:32 pm
(This post was last modified: February 12, 2017 at 3:46 pm by Won2blv.)
(February 11, 2017 at 8:32 pm)emjay Wrote: I just went for a walk today, trying to be mindfully aware of my surroundings... while listening to my MP3 player... and I noticed that it's impossible to separate the sound from the meaning... once you know it... or the things you see, from what they are. But, if you watch a foreign TV programme in a language you don't understand, then it really is just sound with no meaning. So I think consciousness is all about understanding... as soon as its contents are understood... then that understanding becomes somewhat inseparable from the qualia. I don't mean understanding in the sense of knowing the causes (necessarily) but understanding in the sense of becoming familiar with an environment, such that you have expectations about it... ie in a place you know where to go, and in music, you can predict the next part of it. And reason, I'd guess, is an extension of this process. But I'd never really thought of it like this before... that just the actual qualia represents understanding - in the sense that you can't separate the meaning from it - unless it's not known... something new... then you either passively come to expect it, and/or your reason comes in and and tries to make sense of it... to fit it into the overall understanding.
Yeah I see what you're saying.
I just think that what humans have wrong about their intelligence and consciousness, is that, we believe that our consciousness is a unique accident. When in reality, consciousness is just another boring advancement of evolution that started out with a very basic evolutionary advantage, that if you can find more efficient ways to survive, then you can expand your survival adaptations to more areas.
When you look at organisms that have little cognitive ability, they only know how to react to their surroundings, like a jelly fish with tentacles. It is basically the id. Its one of the oldest, if not the oldest, survival mechanisms.
When organisms evolved consciousness, it became more and more sophisticated over millions of years. When other animals were using their conscious to become, faster, stronger, and everything in between, early human ancestors were using their conscious to become smarter. Humans might not be the fastest, strongest, or most vicious animals, but they learned how to start controlling the environment around them.
So this is how humans developed, what I believe is our superior sense, discovery. You mentioned that if you watched a program in another language, it would be sound without meaning. But thats not true, you would be cognizant that there is meaning, but you just don't understand it. Knowing that there is meaning is the first step, then after that, you have the ability to understand the meaning of that language if you chose to.
Scientist and great thinkers have used this sense of discovery. They knew there was meaning, but scientist rarely have a "eureka" moment of explanation. These scientists and great thinkers have a sense of some kind of meaning, and when they figure out the meaning, is when the discovery becomes becomes another evolutionary advantage to controlling the environment around them.
Just think of the huge advantage, in an evolutionary way, that having fire brought to humans. There is no doubt in my mind that natural selection was preferential to the brains that could discover, the brains that could then understand the discovery, and then the large majority of brains that just trusted both because they simply just understood that their lives were easier with them.
(February 11, 2017 at 8:17 pm)Khemikal Wrote: We also conceptualize based upon what we see, feel, smell, hear and taste.,..evcen when we attempt to describe or address things we take to be "beyond" such mundane concerns. Take, for example, the invisible red thread of asian myth.
The thing that connected us all, spiritually, to the all..as it were....was something familiar to weavers...string. It was invisible, but apparently red. Our imaginations aren't quite as unbounded as some seem to think. The possibilities, when you actually consider what it is any given person is conceptualizing, are all mundane and familiar. This isn;t to say that we haven;t got something™ that other animals don;t have...but it may be quantitative, not qualitative..in difference.
You know how when you're trying to learn something but you can't understand it, but then someone uses an illustration and it suddenly makes sense? I think that basically sums up why different cultures threw in arbitrary details, like red. Humans started using more and more symbols to represent the ideas that were becoming more and more cognizant. But while some could understand without the symbols, the majority needed the symbols to make sense, because they have brains that are conditioned to understand the tangible.
And I would just say to your last point about qualitative vs qualitative. Humans have learned from thousands and thousands of years of discovery, that there is always more to discover. Humans have also learned that discovery, usually, is a benefit. I just don't think the quantitative or qualitative, the advantage is efficiency.
It is a beautiful evolutionary advantage, whereas other animals keep adapting to their strengths, they end up going extinct when the ever changing ecosystem, changes too fast for them to adapt. Humans on the other hand, developed the ability to adapt without having to wait for thousands or millions of years to pass. Of course, that begs the question about their advancements bringing their own demise, but that is a completely new can of worms
