On Jul 5, 1:07 pm, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > On 05 Jul 2011, at 11:42, Alberto G.Corona wrote: >. > > Are you sure you don't confuse consciousness and conscience. I think > that solitary primitive animals felt pain, and are thus consciouss > (although not necessarily self-conscious). > Hi again
Right Consicence may be a less sophisticated version of self-consciousness.. I think honestly that all attemps of explaining conscience in terms of a certain degree of complexity or as a certain property of neurons or tissues goes the wrong path. Broadly speaking, this is like a medieval scientist trying to explain a video game console in terms of the complexity and colourfulness of the printed circuits. These views ignores the work of the hardware designer that creates the machine and the programmer that make the algorithms. In living beings the work of the hardware designer and the programmer are done by a guy called Natural Selection. and this guy builds things for a purpose: Survival. What is conscience for? A self preserving being with a central nervous system (an animal) must stablish a clear distinction between its body and the environment in order to preserve itself. If he do not know the status of each of its parts in relation to the environment, he can not determine the priorities for self preservation: does he must avoid a predator? does he must eat something? etc. The effect of the activity set of all these central nervous systems is the conscience in the most basic manifestation. No degree of "complexity" or neuronal-like machinery will manifest conscience without the proper algorithms (and the sensors-actuators too). As Theodosius Dobzhansky said: Nothing in Biology (and i suspect, nothing in anything) Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution. Honestly: Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
