In a short essay, Bernardo Kastrup argues that consciousness cannot be the product of evolution:
Consciousness Cannot Have Evolved
I disagree, but I’ll leave my objections for the comment thread.
677 thoughts on “Consciousness Cannot Have Evolved”
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But the world in our head is a model, no?
Whenever I look at it that way, it seems wrong.
But how could it be otherwise? Consider the visual system and the raw data it transmits to the brain; cones and rods fire on the (effectively) two-dimensional retina according to wavelength and intensity of light being reflected or emitted from whatever is in our visual field. The model we think we see must be in the stimuli from the retinal cells and the third dimension reconstructed from the differing sight lines of our two eyes.
True ,as a matter of efficiency. It uses whatever light the laser transmits, equipment at z end detects. Earlier fiber optics did use visible light to transmit short distances
You asked “ Newton believed that colours are somehow “hidden” in white light. In what way do you think this has been applied to technology?”
The Reader’s Digest version : Newton broke down visible light into colors. Further study led to discovery that visible colors resulted from different wavelengths of light. This and the detection of light( electromagnetic radiation) which was outside the narrow range of the human eye led to the discovery that different wavelengths had properties that could be useful scientifically. Each step built on accumulated knowledge.
Yadda, yadda, Bell Labs created an economic viable technique to construct the fiber, and the knowledge that light had different wavelengths had different properties allowed economic viability. 1310nm and 1550nm the most commonly used.
Not sure about any use of the emotional effects of color used in fiber optics, my acupuncturist does use some lights to do woo stuff.
Both, transport and payload.
petrushka:
Alan:
The answer is yes, and it’s already been done. Just make something that exhibits chaotic* behavior.
*In the technical sense of that word.
It detects different wavelengths. Seems dependent on being wavelengths to detect
Exactly, we assume if those wavelengths are detected in the light from a object ,it is a product of a specific thing.
The structures in our eye detect it.
phoodoo:
Don’t play dumb, phoodoo.
No. The calculator does the arithmetic and comes up with the one answer. There’s no choice in this case. It’s easy to see why this doesn’t qualify. The definition requires “two or more alternatives” and that doesn’t hold here.
You are already caught up in a computationalist way of thinking.
Or stochastic, or both at the same time. This is why I think it is possible, even likely, to build devices that are intelligent, without understanding what they are doing.
How about you doing more to make this thread entertaining?
I was hoping to see an actual discussion. One or more posts where you interact with what the author of that article actually wrote and where and how you agree or disagree. I thought it would be interesting.
I don’t have a problem with consciousness evolving. I can’t wait for consciousness to evolve further. How about you? 🙂
ETA: I was actually interested to see what you had to say, but you’ve said so little.
Was that a conscious decision? If your consciousness is evolving, could you vote yes next week?
Is human consciousness evolving, and if so, how would we know?
If we cannot answer that question, can we hope to answer whether or not non-human consciousness has evolved?
Does keiths agree, disagree, or simply choose, due to his evolved consciousness, to remain silent?
ETA: keiths, if your consciousness is more evolved than mine (likely), or my consciousness is more evolve than yours (less likely), how can we hope to communicate?
ETA: Assuming your consciousness is more evolved than mine, will you leave more offspring?
He was initially very optimistic that he could prove that consciousness could have evolved… He got stuck, though:
Nobody can agree what consciousness really is
He has no mechanism to explain the (irreducible?) complexity of brain/consciousness phenomenon; why would evolution producd the brain mass the great majority of it can be removed or be disfuntional?
One condition does not equal two outcomes. You have already agreed to that. So by definition, there are not “alternatives”.
That is the problem with your argument.
Well, isn’t the number 3 an alternative? Or the number 4? Is the reason you are calling them “not” alternatives, is because they are wrong, and the computer is programmed to give the “right” answer? Isn’t this the whole point? The computer can’t choose right or right, correct? And why can’t it?
Well, we could imagine a scenario where they could. Lets say the computer has a random aspect to it. Sometimes it can choose the right answer and sometimes it can choose the wrong answer, or sometimes it can just say fiddlesticks. Now EVEN with this random aspect to it, the computer STILL only has the ability to create ONE outcome for one condition. Now why is that, if it COULD give many answers? Well, that’s simple, because whatever we use to create the randomness, also creates DIFFERENT conditions each time. See how that works? The random generator “changed” the condition, it didn’t maintain the same condition, and thus different condition creates different outcome.
And just to avoid further confusion, we can accept that two conditions can result in the same outcome (i.e 1 1 or 4-2 can both provide the same output) , that is not the same as ONE condition, TWO different outcomes. The only way you get two different outcomes is if some of the conditions have changed.
This is your theory of the mind being the same as the computer. You have already agreed to it (see upthread where you did) , as such there is no room for choice and alternatives in that view. The calculator doesn’t have alternatives ONLY in the same way you don’t. If I add a random generator to the computer, it STILL doesn’t have alternatives. It just LOOKS like an alternative, because you can’t see the random generator condition.
It isn’t.
If I add in 50, or 10,000 factors for the computer to calculate (you know, like an automated car does!) , its is still just a sophisticated calculator, just doing higher math, so it appears like it is choosing. The results of its calculations cause it to do this (swerve, stop, etc..). The result of the calculations do not cause it to decide, do the one you like…Either swerve or stop, depending on, feeling…Nope. The result of the calculation=the cars response. No choice. No alternatives.
This is confusing. Are you asking whether consciousness evolved (and since all conscious organisms evolved, surely it did) or whether consciousness is currently evolving.
My very layman’s understanding is that the sort of evolution we could evaluate would entail a branching event, so we could compare the branches. But hominins haven’t branched for 200,000 years. Best guesses right now are that the Neandertals and probably Denisovans (our nearest relatives) didn’t quite think the way we do, but we lack the technology to call up one of these extinct people to administer a psychological test.
Whether our species will experience another branching event is unknown, but the smart money is on us not surviving long enough for this to happen.
My pocket calculator can solve quadratic equations, which have more than one correct answer.
Flint,
So how does it choose which one to give you, mood?
Wait a second, branching events are happening all the time, you just can’t see them. If you were alive 200,00 years ago, could you see it then?
Allan Miller has already explained it, everything is just one big branching event that we could never see. This is how evolutionists use the “it takes billions of years” excuse.
phoodoo,
Let’s assume that you’re right about computers and self-driving cars. That is, they don’t make real choices and decisions.
How do you know that people do make genuine choices/decisions?
How does that work exactly?
Joe: You seem to be assuming that algorithmic processing will be accompanied by conscious experience and that more sophisticated processing will result, perhaps, in a more complex form of experience in some sense. But the article linked by the OP denies both of these claims.
Here is a quote from the article:
Kastrup claims there is nothing about phenomenal experience that affects fitness, so there is nothing for the mechanism of NS to latch onto, so there is no reason for increased fitness to be accompanied by any difference in consciousness or indeed by consciousness at all.
Evolutionary history might be simply a set of p-zombie organisms as far as science can tell.
In response, the papers I linked upthread by Humphrey and Dennett do postulate a fitness-enhancing function for phenomenal experience.
I don’t know that. Probably one can’t know that.
But, if its an illusion, its a darn good one.
And they still do. Endoscopes transmit light reflected off the area under study up the cable to a device with a display or to an eye. In what way does this depend on Newton’s colour theory as opposed to Goethe’s?
In what way do colours result from wavelengths? Both colour and wavelength are effects of the interplay of light and matter.
And it can detect different wavelengths because of the substances that are emitting the light. It is the same whether we are talking about wavelength or colour, both are the products of light being attenuated by matter.
Yes, wavelengths are a product, an effect, as much as colours are.
It is true that in pure darkness we can see nothing, but it is also true that in pure light we would see nothing. Vision requires the interplay of light and darkness. That is what we detect.
Even if we could develop machines with algebraic understanding this does not mean that they would have geometric understanding in addition to this.
I was thinking about this from my personal experience. I did not have the best of teaching at school when it came to mathematics. I was taught the algebra of Pythagorus’ theorem and given the usual problems to work out which consisted of triangles with the lengths of two sides given. I soon learned how to work out the length of the third side and so I became proficient in applying this knowledge.
It wasn’t until some time later that I discovered the geometry behind it. It hadn’t dawned on me that by multiplying the length of the sides I was actually calculating the area of squares and that these squares had a set relationship.
This new level of understanding was a revelation which filled me with joy as I could now see the reason why it worked. Machines are quite capable of making the algebraic calculations but I cannot envision why they would even need to take the additional step that I took.
So I should really thank my uninspiring teacher for leaving me to work out the reality behind the theorem for myself. (To be fair to him, maybe he did explain it but I was off school that day for some reason.)
It happens often, but here is one example:
This is not working up from a “sure starting point”, “being careful about premature assumptions” or avoiding “jumping to conclusions”. This is you flat out dismissing a sizeable chunk of modern day research, because it is supposedly “reductionist”.
I see. Then, despite the long and winding path we have travelled so far, you have not answered my most burning questions yet: What do we gain by not prematurely assuming to know where the distinction between object and subject lies? And why should I not consider facts that came to me by “thinking about what I perceive”?
Right. So we observe that other minds are always associated with the physical structures called brains. What can we reasonably say about his without “jumping to conclusions”?
You are being inconsistent. It is true that colour is the way we perceive certain (mixtures of) light of different wave lengths. Yet now you insist that both colour and wavelength are “effects” or “products” of “attenuated light”. No, they are not. Wave lengths are out there as measurable properties of light in the external world, whereas colour is that thing where we have to take into account the subjective observer.
How come you, of all people, fails to see the distinction, after lecturing me about being careful to not prematurely assume to know where the distinction lies between object and subject?
My previous response assumed that consciousness needed to contribute to fitness so that it was visible to natural selection. Kastrup and you seem to be looking for a fitness effect of consciousness.
But it also possible to argue that consciousness is a spandrel; ie a by product or accident associated with certain types of brains/organisms. This paper does precisely that
Is Consciousness a Spandrel?
Abstract: Determining the biological function of phenomenal consciousness appears necessary to explain its origin: evolution by natural selection operates on organisms’ traits based on the biological functions they fulfill. But identifying the function of phenomenal consciousness has proven difficult. Some have proposed that the function of phenomenal consciousness is to facilitate mental processes such as reasoning or learning. But mental processes such as reasoning and learning seem to be possible in the absence of phenomenal consciousness. It is difficult to pinpoint in what way phenomenal consciousness enhances these processes or others like them. In this paper, we explore a possibility that has been neglected to date. Perhaps phenomenal consciousness has no function of its own because it is either a by-product of other traits or a (functionless) accident. If so, then phenomenal consciousness has an evolutionary explanation even though it fulfills no biological function.
What about Zeno’s Paradoxes involving consciousness?
Anybody considered that?
What?!!
Natural selection can see something we don’t know what it is, not to mention where it is?
This must be the first evidence of natural selection being truly omnipotent, and now, even omniscient…
It’s a hell of the thing that natural selection 😉
It was “ seeing” DNA before humans knew anything about it
Or maybe zombiehood would need to contribute to fitness if it were to be selected for. Maybe zombiehood is harder to implement than consciousness.
I don’t know what you mean by “harder to implement”, but it sounds like you mean consciousness would be selected against. They do summarize arguments against consciousness being something that can be selected for, but since it has been around for some time, they don’t think there are arguments for it being selected against.
Of course, you can deny that has been around for some time, but then the whole thread becomes pointless.
Oh, wait….
What about the claim that consciousness would a lot easier to understand if ‘consciousness’ was easier to spell.
Anybody considered that?
So, how does this apply to consciousness then?
Are you implying consciousness can be identified in DNA?
I don’t see any relation to Zeno’s Paradoxes.
If you do, feel free to let us know…
Are you trying to tell us you are at lease 80 plus years old and still can see? 😉
Neil,
Right, or even impossible.
Bruce, to Neil:
Not necessarily. It might just be harder to get to (in the sequence space) despite being fitter.
I’m considering it now.
Nope, don’t think it would lake much difference. It might have been better if the word were never invented as now we have the reification problem. Is consciousness (other than as a medical term) a real thing. It makes the argument as to whether consciousness evolved a moot point.
Anyway, we can list aspects of cognitive ability, communicative skills, sensory-motor abilities, memory and future-planning, cooperation. All these can have evolutionary bias and we see indications in the fossil record and in our closest living relative species.
What do you mean by the sequence space? Are you saying there is some genetic variant that is associated solely with consciousness?
I’m assuming as a premise for the thread that all healthy humans are conscious, not p-zombies.
(Aside: the paper does consider how its theme relates to various types of p-zombies).
My post was an attempt at mocking humour of the quoted post by arguing a non-sequitur, ie that the spelling of a word had to do with understanding and explaining the concept captured by the meaning of the word.
.
I’m not sure where yours is coming from with respect to that.goal.
BruceS,
I know. Mine started out that way too. I’m utterly with Joe F on evolution so questioning whether consciousness (whatever that is) evolved is a bit daft.
Bruce,
Perhaps I misunderstood you.
Could you elaborate on what you meant when you wrote:
Alan,
How does the latter follow from the former?
keiths:
phoodoo:
If you don’t know that, why assume it?
How about this take on consciousness?
NEW HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS THEORY RESOLVES ZENO’S PARADOX, POSITS LIFE IS A FILM
https://www.inverse.com/article/14334-new-human-consciousness-theory-resolves-zeno-s-paradox-posits-life-is-a-film
There is, in my view, a very plausible evolutionary pathway from our most recent common ancestor. I can enlarge on this but I’d be reinventing the wheel so suffice to say that includes an explanation for our cognitive abilities. There is no competing explanation for our cognitive abilities. So claiming cognition cannot evolve is daft.
J-Mac,
Thanks for the link:
Trying to understand ourselves! A better analogy than the donkey chasing a carrot on a stick. 😉