(May 18, 2025 at 11:48 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: You'll find it very easy for me to believe that evolutionary biology determined the nature of our consciousness as the function or range of biological machinery. If our brains can make it, though, it stands to reason that any comparable structure could as well, whether it's of biological or evolutionary origin or not.
Yes, that is one possibility. My own opinion is that you can't have consciousness without an evolved self, and you can't have an evolved self without life.
I talked with one scientist (an atheist) who believed that our consciousness is our self. I had to disagree with him, since I think the self is much older evolutionarily. Self-seeking (surviving, thriving, propagating) is essential to life in any form, conscious or not. Consciousness is simply another evolved means to the same ends.
What seems like consciousness in machines is more like performing certain programmed functions whether they serve any particular self-interests or not. The self-interests which may be programmed into them are optional and not essential.
