evolution

[Jehanne]

Is this enough to make evol go away?

This thread is proof that fundamentalist Christians experience cognitive dissonance.

[Ranjr]

Their beliefs create their facts, and that's bass ackwards.

[Jehanne]

Also ass-backwards.

[Disagreeable]

Consciousness doesn't need a purpose. It's a by-product of other things with a purpose. As is often the case in evolution.

Consciousness also aides with survival and the passing of one's genes, except when it comes to nuclear weapons and catastrophic climate change.

I don't think it does. We could act as if we were conscious without being conscious. Consciousness itself doesn't seem to add anything useful.

Hence why I think it's a by-product.

I'm talking about human consciousness.

Consciousness itself, of any form, runs a lot deeper. Alongside evolution rather than subsequent to it, IMO.

[Jehanne]

Consciousness also aides with survival and the passing of one's genes, except when it comes to nuclear weapons and catastrophic climate change.

I don't think it does. We could act as if we were conscious without being conscious. Consciousness itself doesn't seem to add anything useful.

Hence why I think it's a by-product.

I'm talking about human consciousness.

Consciousness itself, of any form, runs a lot deeper. Alongside evolution rather than subsequent to it, IMO.

Are you saying that the invention/discovery of fire was an unconscious act? And, after Homo erectus discovered fire 2 Mya, what did such do for evolution of bigger Homo brains?

[The Grand Nudger]

Consciousness also aides with survival and the passing of one's genes, except when it comes to nuclear weapons and catastrophic climate change.

I don't think it does. We could act as if we were conscious without being conscious. Consciousness itself doesn't seem to add anything useful.

It's unclear whether we could "act conscious" without being conscious, semantically and functionally.  

Do you think an attention model could be useful just as a body model is useful?

[Rahn127]

From an evolutionary standpoint, being conscious increases your odds of survival compared to being unconscious.

[Jehanne]

From an evolutionary standpoint, being conscious increases your odds of survival compared to being unconscious.

Also useful while at work, especially, in the construction and transportation sectors.

[Angrboda]

From an evolutionary standpoint, being conscious increases your odds of survival compared to being unconscious.

That's a hypothesis, not a fact.

[The Grand Nudger]

Might be in the same territory there as the difference between facts of evolution and the theory of evolution. It's an observed fact that self awareness is advantageous. You can see this in life and you can see it in machines. You can test the conjecture. We can build identical machines except for the presence, in one, of self monitoring inputs. We can render a human being unconscious or impaired and drop them in the jungle (or just watch them do it to themselves in the proverbial concrete jungle).

The hypothesis, here, is that this observable fact itself accounts for the existence and persistence of self awareness in living organisms up to and including in human beings.