> But this solves the credit assignment problem in only very > limited cases. I think that consciousness (and other things) > evolved in order to do reinforcement learning in more general > situations. That is, the need for robust reinforcement > learning provided the selection pressure for consciousness. > > Bill
Clearly, this is part of the story. But I tend to be skeptical of neo-Darwinist "just so stories" when applied to very complex systems. I think that spontaneous self-organization (building on evolved and self-organized components) is just as important. Consciousness (i.e. intensive focused attention, as in human consciousness) was presumably the a result of self-organization, of spontaneous emergence between evolved subsystems that evolved for specific purposes. Then, once it was there, it was reinforced by evolution because of its usefulness in reinforcement learning and other things. But consciousness also has many aspects that are not directly explicable by evolutionary selection, in my view... Ben G ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
