On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 6:08 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
> From blindsight, synesthesia, and anosognosia we know that particular > qualia are not inevitably associated with the conditions they usually > represent for us, so it seems impossible to justify qualia on a > functionalist basis. Just as a computer needs no speakers and video > screen inside itself, there is no purpose for such a presentation > layer within our own mechanism. Of course, even if there were a > purpose, there is no hint of such a possibility from mechanism alone. > If there was some reason that a bucket of rocks could benefit by some > kind of collective 'experience' occurring amongst them, that's a > million miles from suspecting that experience could be a conceivable > possibility. > > Rather than 'consciousness', human beings would benefit evolutionarily > much more by just being able to do something mechanically conceivable > things like teleport, time travel, or breathe fire. Awareness doesn't > even make sense as a possibility. Were we not experiencing it > ourselves we could never anticipate any such possibility in any > universe. Since there is no evolutionary advantage to consciousness it must be a side-effect of the sort of behaviour that conscious organisms display. Otherwise, why did we not evolve as zombies? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
