On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi <[email protected]> wrote: > On 03.04.2012 02:06 Stathis Papaioannou said the following:
>> 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? >> > > The evolutionary advantage of consciousness, according to Jeffrey Gray, is > late-error detection. But the late-error detection processing could be done in the same way by a philosophical zombie. Since, by definition, a philosophical zombie's behaviour is indistinguishable from that of a conscious being there is no way that nature could favour a conscious being over the equivalent philosophical zombie. You then have two options to explain why we are not zombies: (a) It is impossible to make a philosophical zombie as consciousness is just a side-effect of intelligent behaviour; (b) It is possible to make a philosophical zombie but the mechanism for intelligent behaviour that nature chanced upon has the side-effect of consciousness. Though (b) is possible I don't think it's plausible. -- 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 [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.
