If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)

[bennyboy]

The problem with mind is that it is "extra" if it is assumed to be a representation of brain function and nothing more. It's easy to see why a brain would develop the ability to process information from its environment and produce behaviors that would promote the promulgation of its DNA. It's easy to see why the human body would cry to relieve tension, or sigh in relief. It's not at all easy to see why any of these (purely mechanical) processes need the body to be a sentient agent with actual experience of qualia. Why evolve such a wondrous property when in theory a "dead" mechanical system should perform all the same functions?

Sense data and its interpretation is a pretty common life function and also seems to lie at the very heart of what we experience as qualia and consciousness. From there, it doesn't seem too great a leap to see self awareness, strategic planning, cooperation and communication as adaptions. It isn't a slam dunk and you're certainly welcome to go on thinking qualia is something seeded into the universe by a galactic entity with qualities beyond our imagining. But I'm not tempted to follow you.

The only quality of consciousness which you might think still qualifies as a mysterious extra could be sapience and what seems to be an ability to reflect and change course consciously against what otherwise might be our immediate inclination. But even that would have obvious survival value and seemingly just an accentuation of other features of being a creature with perceptual, cognitive awareness.

Yes, but there's awareness as a function, and awareness as the experience of qualia. If qualia is only the experience of brain function, then it is not adding anything to the evolutionary fitness of a species. The purely mechanical function of converting photons to patterns, and matching patterns to stored patterns, and producing behaviors, can be done by robots.