evolution

[Angrboda]

Let me offer up an example. There is a certain Australian beetle that recognizes its mates by certain features, specifically that they are brown, have a mottled surface, and are shiny. Unfortunately for this beetle, empty beer bottles discarded by humans are also brown, mottled, and shiny. This has led to no rare incidence of beetles attempting to mate with beer bottles. Now I'm sure this beetle if it could talk would explain that it is thrusting its hips toward its ersatz mate because it has consciously identified it as being a female beetle. However, we can be assured the beetle isn't doing so because his consciousness has sized her up as a suitable prospect but rather because a combination of feature detection and pattern recognition happening outside his consciousness has recognized what normally is a suitable mate, or so it has concluded, and triggered a mating response. The beetle's consciousness is just a slave to impulses originating elsewhere in its brain. Does the beetle mating with brown, shiny, mottled objects possess evolutionary utility? Yes, it does, because some of those things are actual mates. Does the beetle's consciousness feeling that it has found a female and that the thrusting of its hips, which it cannot control, will result in a new brood have evolutionary utility? No, it does not, because that feeling is epiphenomenal; it has no impact on whether the beetle will or will not attempt to mate with the beer bottle. The beetle may feel that it has consciously chosen to mate with the beer bottle, but that is an illusion because the real work of that decision occurred elsewhere.