The Philosophy of Mind: Zombies, "radical emergence" and evidence of non-experiential

[Edwardo Piet]

I'm afraid to upset the balance of this thread, since there are two main participants.  But anyway, this is my kind of discussion, so forgive me for wading in.

Does consciousness improve evolutionary fitness?  It depends on what you mean by "consciousness."

Thank God for that. Someone who realizes that semantics is important. It definitely matters what we mean by consciousness.

 If you mean that a system is capable of responding to the environment, then obviously, yes.

What makes you think consciousness is required for that?

 If you mean that the system is capable of experiencing qualia, then yes IF qualia represents information beyond anything which could be represented physically, or no IF qualia is a mirroring of state.

What do you mean by "a mirroring of a state"?

The consciousness I'm speaking of is qualia. I don't see how qualia is useful. As, for instance, it would be possible in principle for an organism to react to being damaged or attacked without actually experiencing pain.... and I can't think of any kind of senses that are any less evolutionary useful without qualia. Qualia appears to either be some sort of byproduct of brain complexity, or something more fundamental than that, to me.

We can take a speculative look at all the things the body does in arriving at a behavior, and ask-- do ANY of these require us to experience them?
-Trigger neurons in response to physical stimulus.  No.
-Cascade a huge number of neurons due to dendrite-cell mappings, release of neurotransmitters, etc?  No.
-Affect the likelihood of behaviors based on hormones.  No.

It should be immediately obvious that we can go through the whole list of electro-chemical and mechanical processes going on in the body, and determine that none of them require subjective experience.

We agree completely here.

Nor can simply conflating subjective experience to brain function solve this problem.

Agreed.

 Can we study the brain directly?  Yes.  Brain systems?  Yes.  Neurons?  Yes.  Specific neural firing patterns?  Yes (at least in theory).  Obviously, none of these things can be called qualia-- because if we can interact with A directly, and not B, then A is not B.

True, unless those things are identical to qualia. The identity theory for instance. The idea being that, our first person experience is just those things in first person form. What is your view on that?

That is my view, but I also don't know of any evidence of the non-experiential. So I have this 'crazy' position that perhaps it's consciousness all the way down.

I'd also say that the use of evolution to justify a view on consciousness is malformed.

I agree.

 I could say the existence of a man-loving God would benefit our evolutionary fitness.  Then I could, without any justification, conflate any physical properties I observed as correlates of the presence of God.  Sun comes up?  God!  Spooky feeling in church when I'm half asleep from a long sermon?  God!

Well, I think the point is that consciousness may help creatures reproduce... it may be genetically selected for by natural selection.

I don't think it is. I think it's either part of the intrinsic nature of matter or it's a byproduct. I think perhaps human consciousness on a higher level is a byproduct, of brain complexity, but consciousness itself doesn't appear to have a function... it's just a by product of functioning.

Unless you can show that there's something intrinsically different about a qualia-experiencing system and a non-qualia-experiencing system which can affect behavior, then you are talking about magic, not material.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Do you mean that the idea of radical emergence is some sort of magical idea? I would agree with that. I don't have any evidence of the non-experiential.

What do you think of my opinion list in the end of the OP?