On 03 Apr 2012, at 02:06, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 6:08 AM, Craig Weinberg
<[email protected]> 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.
Consciousness comes from the conjunction of an (instinctive,
preprogrammed, or better pre-engrammed) belief in a consistent reality/
god/universe/whatever, and the existence of that reality. The side-
effect comes from the fact that the logic of communicable belief is
different from the logic of the communicable-and-true beliefs.
Evolution, being driven by locally communicable events, cannot give an
advantage to truth, that's true, but without truth, they would be no
communicable events at all. So consciousness has to exist to make
sense of the relative selection, by the universal mind, and the third
person plural type of reality needed for sharable physical realities.
It that sense, consciousness is not really a side effect, but is what
make evolution and physical realities selectable by the "universal
mind". Consciousness looks like a side effect, from inside, only in
the Aristotelian picture. With comp, and its platonist consequences,
we might as well say that matter and evolution is a side effect of
consciousness. Without consciousness the notion of physical reality
would lost his meaning, given that the physical reality can only
result from the shared dreams, lived by the universal mind multiple
instantiations.
And consciousness can be associated with a range of behavior, but is
not equal to any behavior. It is of the type of knowledge, and is a
fixed point on self-doubting (like in Descartes). It is universal and
exists, with comp, right at the "start" of arithmetical truth. It does
not need to be selected, fro it exists at the start, and eventually is
the one responsible for all possible observer selections.
The point here is difficult and subtle, and I am just trying to convey
it. It takes into account the universal mind, as David pointed on
recently, and which I have to endorse through thought experience with
amnesia, (or some report of real experiences with some drugs) and the
complete UDA reversal.
Otherwise, why did we not evolve as zombies?
OK.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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