RE: Trying to simplify my Consciousness hypothesis
February 14, 2017 at 5:46 pm
(This post was last modified: February 14, 2017 at 5:48 pm by bennyboy.)
(February 14, 2017 at 2:37 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote: I never understand the mystery about consciousness.
As far as I'm concerned it's just an evolutionary by-product, a side effect. We don't need to be conscious but we just are. I guess consciousness is the side effect that naturally happens when brains get complex enough.
And the whole "How can consciousness emerge from the physical?" thing is just a complete equivocation. Mental can be physical. It's not a contradiction.
Why would evolution arrive at a by-product which cannot be seen, cannot be measured, and is known only to exist through subjective agency? Saying "consciousness is useful" is pretty meaningless when consciousness is only a collection of material interactions. Why wouldn't a brain just take in data, process it, and output behavior, without the organism ever knowing what it's like to experience hot chocolate in early fall or whatever?
This is the real problem-- if physical interactions are sufficient to explain behavior, then why would the universe give us this added "bonus" of being aware of those physical interactions?
