Theory number 3.

[Angrboda]

It's not an argument from semi-ignorance. It's an argument from complete ignorance.


These issues are within my core specializations so I know them considerably better than you do, and you are buttfuckingly ignorant of:

a) biology and evolution
and,
b) cognitive science and consciousness in particular.

For what it's worth, the tetraform body plan likely emerged as a result of relatively few mutations, and having intermediates, as well as alternative body plans of similar complexity, likely in something analogous to a hox gene. This is why we have two arms, and it quite easily could have occurred as a point mutation (though probably more likely a result of a mutation of a transposon or similar). So even your own example demonstrates your profoundly ignorant and mistaken view of the subject.

Moreover, your argument appears to appeal to strands from irreducible complexity theory, as well as intelligent design. (I'll simply reference the Krebs cycle and blood clotting cycles as counter-examples.)

You appear, like many people, to conclude that consciousness is remarkable and mysterious because it is remarkable and mysterious to you. Most things you don't understand are mysterious to oneself, and your argument based on a series of assertions of incredulity is proof of nothing but your ignorance. I look at the origin of free will, as such, as having occurred, possibly, originating as a sort of 'scratch space' for anticipating where prey might go and developing effective responses to those potential moves. Needless to say, such a system is 'aware', but it's quite likely not aware that it is aware, nor is it conscious of a self. Matter of fact, the existence of a 'self' to be conscious of can be a very controversial question. Most people would likely want to draw the line at being aware that one is aware. The reason, most likely, having to do with speciesism. I see no reason why this aspect of our consciousness need be a defining property of consciousness in general. Moreover, we violate both self-consciousness and awareness of being aware on a regular basis. In the phenomena known as automatic driving, a person can drive from A to B without ever having been aware of the majority of decisions they made en route. Would we then say that they weren't conscious when they were driving? That's absurd. So common sense notions of consciousness are both regularly violated by margin cases (often revealed by brain trauma), and are founded on a poetic "awe" at the power and utility of the mechanism. In blindsight, though the person has no awareness of visual perception in a part of their visual field Yet they are aware of some information about that area of their visual field. In one case, you could wave a geometric shape in that area, and they could tell you the shape, but they do not actually "see" the shape. Are they conscious of the shape? It's not clear the question has a definite answer one way or the other. And what about Anton-Babinski syndrome. Hemi-neglect. Evil hand syndrome. Anasognosias. Split-brain subjects. Dreaming (is the lucid dreamer conscious that they are manipulating the dream?). Dissociative Identity Disorder. Fugue States. PTSD and reliving trauma. Phantom limb syndrome and therapy for phantom limb syndrome. Capgras delusion.....

The list goes on and on, and because of your ignorance, you don't know how to form intelligent questions, much less informed assertions.

In short, you have no business making any argument because you fundamentally do not know what the fuck you are talking about.

Fine. We need a cutoff point. I'll give you one. A bimetallic strip based thermostat is conscious. It responds to its environment, it takes action based on its responses to the environment, and its responses to the environment change the environment which ultimately affects its future behavior. A thermostat is conscious.

I fully expect you to disagree. Your disagreement doesn't interest me in the slightest. What I will expect however, is some reason why the thermostat does not pass as a conscious entity. What does a conscious entity posses, or do, that this entity does not do. And specifically, why possessing that property, process or capacity, is what we call consciousness (as opposed to, say, memory or blood circulation). No more handwaving about complexity. No more claiming a merely semi-ignorant argument, I'm considerably more confident that the difference between not knowing something and knowing it doesn't occur in a gradation of partial, intermediate steps than I am that you know that 'consciousness' can't arise over a short mutational chain (even if one were required; I refer back to the Krebs cycle, clotting, and other examples that incorporate considerable complexity, which arose by co-optation, repurposing of prior mechanisms, co-evolved traits, and the whole panoply of evolutionary effects which you who "doesn't believe in the theory of evolution" are buttfuckingly ignorant of).

Explain what additional properties or processes would be required for you to consider the thermostat to be conscious.