Is the Cambrian Explosion the End of Phyla Evolution?

[Nereid]

Canute:*SNIP
It is generally thought that it is impossible on the behavioural evidence to distinguish with certainty between 'mechanical' human actions (physically determined stimulus-response mediated via the brain) and self-willed actions resulting from the excercise of freewill.
*SNAP *SNIP
I'm suggesting that we should do this [redefine science as a whole in order to include conscious experience], since we know from our own experience that when we are not conscious we don't exhibit behaviour.
*SNAP *SNIP
Zombies are defined as entities that behave precisely as human beings do, doing the washing up and talking philosophy and science and so on, but who have no inner subjective experiences.

Clearly, then, zombies exhibit behaviour. Further, perhaps 'we' (conscious homo saps) can exhibit behaviour while not conscious? Consider sleep-walking. Consider highly trained habitual action (e.g. operating a lathe, doing the dishes, taking the monthly backup, playing the 1,000th concert, shooting the 10,000th enemy of the state) - whence the expression 'on auto-pilot', and 'mechanical' actions.

Why does this matter? One reason: to help us formulate tests that we might do (if only in principle) to determine the importance of 'consciousness' to behaviour.

 

[Nereid]

(Canute wrote:) Science (regardless of the views of individual scientists) takes it as axiomatic that consciousness is non-causal.

This statement is almost meaningless to me. Science doesn't assume anything is non causal. And what can "science" even mean, except the opinions of the scientific community? Treated perhaps as an ongoing dialectic, but still.

http://www.culture.com.au/brain_proj/CONTENT/CHAPTERS.HTM tells me there've been several conferences since. Has any PF member been to one of these conferences?

A quick scan through the papers suggests that some understanding of the biological aspects of consciousness is already 'in the bag', and so a very tentative answer to the question 'how did consciousness in humans evolve' would be 'not known yet; however it's likely tied up with the evolution of the brain'.

 

[Nereid]

zombies

Canute and Fliption have introduced the concept of a zombie: "... entities that behave precisely as human beings do, doing the washing up and talking philosophy and science and so on, but who have no inner subjective experiences."

If we take a class of very intelligent zombies, get them to read up on consciousness, mores of modern social discourse, etc, then ask them, individually, the following questions:
- do you understand the concept of 'consciousness'?
- do you feel pain when your finger is pricked?
- have you ever felt any kind of love?
- are you conscious?

How will they answer? How could we tell if they whether they were lying or not? How will their answers vary, one from the other?

If phoenixthoth, Mentat, Nereid, or anyone else builds a machine which they claim is conscious, how do the rest of you test the claim? BTW, the machine will answer 'Yes' to all the above questions.

(except the one about 'love' )

 

[Canute]

http://www.culture.com.au/brain_proj/CONTENT/CHAPTERS.HTM tells me there've been several conferences since. Has any PF member been to one of these conferences?

A quick scan through the papers suggests that some understanding of the biological aspects of consciousness is already 'in the bag', and so a very tentative answer to the question 'how did consciousness in humans evolve' would be 'not known yet; however it's likely tied up with the evolution of the brain'.

This is off topic but needs an answer.

Scan the papers carefully and you will see that there has been no scientific progress on explaining consciousness. Even the hunt for the neural correlates of it is being criticised by some.

I really do not understand how you can claim that science has made progress on explaining something it cannot yet define or prove to exist. Anyway, how on Earth can science explain how consciousness arises from brain when idealism is unfalsifiable?

(Hypnogogue is going to Tucson this year).

 

[Canute]

Canute and Fliption have introduced the concept of a zombie: "... entities that behave precisely as human beings do, doing the washing up and talking philosophy and science and so on, but who have no inner subjective experiences."

If we take a class of very intelligent zombies, get them to read up on consciousness, mores of modern social discourse, etc, then ask them, individually, the following questions:
- do you understand the concept of 'consciousness'?
- do you feel pain when your finger is pricked?
- have you ever felt any kind of love?
- are you conscious?

How will they answer? How could we tell if they whether they were lying or not? How will their answers vary, one from the other?

You miss the point. Zombies are hypothetical entities that cannot exist for logical reasons. Therefore human being cannot be zombies as biologist usually assume.

If phoenixthoth, Mentat, Nereid, or anyone else builds a machine which they claim is conscious, how do the rest of you test the claim? BTW, the machine will answer 'Yes' to all the above questions.

It is impossible in principle to tell if a machine is conscious or not (or any other human being). This is known as the 'other minds' problem. It is not only impossible to prove that our ancestors were conscious, it is impossible to be sure the one you love is. This is why being unable to prove that the consciousness of our ancestors had any effect on their behaviour is not a reason to assume that it did not.

 

[Canute]

Let me see if I understand you.

1) You want it acknowledged that "consciousness" could have had an impact on human evolution. Ok, that is fair. It can't be ruled out 100%. It cannot be disproved. It also cannot be proved.

Quite so. However to me the fact that currently human beings feel pain, fall in love, eat when they feel hungry and like to avoid death suggests that they probably did in the past also.

OR
2) You want the study of consciousness included in the study of evolution. Historically, that's not possible.

Don't see what you mean there.

There is no way to know if any conscious decisions made in the past actually impacted the evolution of man.

There's no way to know if they do now either. Yet here we are with skyscrapers, genetic engineering, discussions of consciousness and a strong sense that we make decisions consciously. Are you saying that human beings were not conscious in the same way in the past? If not why not?

Are you just wanting some type of disclaimer on evolutionary theory saying "this is the best we can do based on the facts present, but maybe "consciousness" might have had some impact, but there is no way to tell"?

I have never known of anyone passing on their genes successfully while unconscious, (although Hollywood actors seem good at pretending to do it). Why would a 'zombie', if there were such a thing, have sex? So maybe consciousness does have some impact on our behaviour, or did we stop evolving when we became conscious?

 

[Zero]

The reason that a "zombie" would have sex is the same reason why everything has sex(or its equivalent): biological imperative.

 

[Canute]

The reason that a "zombie" would have sex is the same reason why everything has sex(or its equivalent): biological imperative.

Speak for yourself. Personally I find it enjoyable.

 

[Zero]

"Finding it enjoyable" is part of the biological imperative...love and lust are hormonal, remember?

 

[Canute]

"Finding it enjoyable" is part of the biological imperative...love and lust are hormonal, remember?

In that case you cannot argue that consciousness plays no part in our evolution.

 

[Evo]

OR
2) You want the study of consciousness included in the study of evolution. Historically, that's not possible.

Don't see what you mean there.

There is no way to know if any conscious decisions made in the past actually impacted the evolution of man.

There's no way to know if they do now either. Yet here we are with skyscrapers, genetic engineering, discussions of consciousness and a strong sense that we make decisions consciously. Are you saying that human beings were not conscious in the same way in the past? If not why not?

I'm saying that there is no way to determine if or how any conscious decisions impacted human evolution.

I have never known of anyone passing on their genes successfully while unconscious,

I'm referring to unconscious thought/behavior as in doing things without thinking about them, not unconscious as in "knocked out"

There was an excellent article on "consciousness" posted in the biology section that I think can help clarify the difference.

Here is an exerpt from that article.

Living on autopilot

People talk without thinking all of the time.

Literally.

If you doubt it, think about this: When you're talking, do you construct each sentence first in your mind, piecing the words together? Or do you simply talk, the words tumbling out in proper sequence and syntax?

For the most part, it's probably the latter. You don't think about each word before you speak it. "Your brain," says Koch, "takes care of that quite well without any conscious effort on your part."

Speaking is, in profound ways, a "nonconscious" behavior. It is a mental operation not directly associated with conscious feelings, sensations or memories. It just sort of happens, seemingly, on its own.

The same is true about much of life. Surprisingly big chunks of it, Koch writes in his new book, "The Quest for Consciousness," happen without us being consciously aware they are happening.

"We all do things every day, virtually every minute, that do not involve conscious thought, from tying our shoes, to driving to work or working out, to cooking dinner," said Koch. "These actions are essentially routine, automatic. You do them without thinking and often have no direct memory of them afterward."

Neurobiologists call these actions "zombie behaviors," activities that occur without conscious input or self-examination. They have been a subject of scholarly debate for more than a century, serious grist for philosophers and psychologists like Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. Increasingly, they are also the stuff of science.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20040324-9999-news_lz1c24zombie.html

 

[hypnagogue]

Evo, you are talking about higher-order consciousness while Canute is talking about the more general phenomenal consciousness. http://publish.uwo.ca/~mcintosh/consc.htm that goes into a bit of deeper detail. I imagine I'll check out that biology thread and address this issue in more detail over there, however.

As for the issue of evolution and consciousness. I find it unfortunate that some firmly on the materialist side continue to badly misrepresent the philosophical problems of consciousness, although on the whole it has been a pretty fair discussion.

For my part, I don't think evolutionary theory as it stands is much the worse for its exclusion of consciousness. Here we should be specific: by consciousness we really mean phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experience, as the other aspects of consciousness (including at least higher-order consciousness, discriminatory consciousness, responsive consciousness-- see link) are not in themselves problematic in principle for a purely physicalist theory.

The reason the ommission of P-consciousness is not terribly problematic for a theory of evolution is that it is still an open issue whether or not P-consciousness is causally efficacious in any way; that is, whether or not it is epiphenomenal. If it is shown one day to be causally efficacious, then certainly it must be taken into account by an evolutionary theory, but it would seem premature to say that a theory is incomplete for ommitting a phenomenon whose causal relevance is yet to be determined.

In particular, the purported causal role of P-consciousness would seem to be readily filled by causal mechanisms that are already part of the physicalist model of reality. This is precisely why the philosophical notion of the 'zombie' is a useful one-- because it would seem that we can describe the behavior of an organism (in particular, a human) in purely physical terms without needing to invoke P-consciousness at all. Canute has said:

Zombies are hypothetical entities that cannot exist for logical reasons. Therefore human being cannot be zombies as biologist usually assume.

But the logical plausibility of zombies is precisely what makes them a compelling tool in the philosophy of mind. No one supposes that zombies actually exist in the real world, but that is besides the point. We might say that zombies are logically possible but cannot exist in our world (or so we presume) as a consequence of the contingent laws of our world.

So, for instance, the concern Canute raises in the following quote is not particularly troublesome for a physicalist theory of evolution:

One advantage of including consciousness in evolutionary theory is that we would then have a reason for why human beings care whether they live or die and thus evolve.

A physicalist theory can still tell a relatively straightforward causal story as to why e.g. a primitive human might run from a tiger. On this view, sensory inputs from the tiger enter the human's brain and activate a series of neural impulses which ultimately stimulate his muscles to engage in a 'run away' behavior. Importantly, P-consciousness has not been invoked here, nor need it be for a coherent causal picture to be painted. The adequacy of this causal story as a complete depiction of reality ultimately depends on whether or not P-consciousness is epiphenomenal.

Of course, this still leaves us with an impoverished understanding of P-consciousness itself, be it epiphenomenal or not. But evolution is concerned with telling a causal story about the development and propogation of genes. If P-consciousness is not involved in that causal story then evolution is not obligated to talk about it, even if the fact remains that P-consciousness itself is an explanandum in its own right in need of explanation under any circumstance.

 

[Canute]

Hypno - A very excellent post.

I agree that the current theroretical model of evolution does not need to encompass P-consciousness or assume that it is causal. This is clearly true since at the moment it does not do these things.

However this limits the relevance of evolutionary theory at a time when we ought to be making it central to our thinking. Evoltutionary theory as an explanation of our past is interesting but not very useful. However if we can learn from that past we may be able to apply its lessons to the actions we are taking now that will affect our future. However as it stands that theory is of no use at all in this respect, except for messing around with genes in 'pin the tail on the donkey' style.

The evolution of the species ought to be a political matter IMO. As it stands it is so esoterically physical that it is of no use whatsoever in this regard. Yet P-consciousness is important, or may be. As Popper said "

“Men frequently outlive their beliefs; but for as long as the beliefs survive (often a very short time), they form the (momentary or lasting) basis of action. “ (The Problem of Induction 1953)

For most philosophers there is no human behaviour withour beliefs. Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory denies this completely. As a result it has no relevance to anything much unless one is a biologist, and certainly not to current events.

The current theory is based on the assumption that humans are not conscious (not P=conscious anyway) amd that in any case consciousness is non-causal. As you say there is no evidence that could force this assumption to be changed. However there is nothing to stop us changing it voluntarily, for there is no evidence against the other assumption either. We can toss a coin.

Because we do not accept the causal efficacy of P-consciousness (at even the simplest level of having it as opposed to not having it) we get stuck on this sort of problem:

“There’s a price top pay in becoming more complex; the system is more likely to break, for instance. We need a reason why biological systems become more complex through time. It must be very simple and it must be very deep.” (Stuart Kauffman quoted in Roger Lewin's 'Complexity')

As I pointed out before it is odd sort of science we do when many physicists say we can create universes but virtue of being conscious, but biologist say we cannot even have sex on purpose.

 

[Evo]

Evo, you are talking about higher-order consciousness while Canute is talking about the more general phenomenal consciousness.

Yes, the post was to explain this to Canute.

I'm referring to unconscious thought/behavior as in doing things without thinking about them, not unconscious as in "knocked out"

This was to clarify an earlier post about behavior being both "conscious" and "unconcious".

P.S. Excellent post Hypnagogue.

 

[Nereid]

Thanks hypnagogue, cleared up a lot of questions I had about consciousness, especially a scheme for classifying it, and relating it to things which may (or may not) be observed.

Are you going to Tucson this year?

 

[hypnagogue]

Are you going to Tucson this year?

Yes I am... just days away now! Very exciting.