On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 5:52 PM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> >>> John argues that consciousness has real world consequences in terms >>> of being evolutionary selected >> >> >> >> Either that or consciousness is the side effect of something else that >> has real world consequences; if Darwin was right it can't be any other way. >> > > > You keep saying this. You also like to say things like "consciousness > is how information feels when it's being processed". I like that idea. It > shows that you can indeed consider alternatives to the binary choice above. > In this case evolution created a very complex scenario for conscious to > feel when being processed. But it did not create consciousness, > Evolution is only interested in intelligent behavior because only that and not consciousness helps get genes into the next generation. So how did consciousness manage to produce at least one being (me) that's conscious? There are only 2 possibilities: 1) Perhaps consciousness aids in producing intelligent behavior. If this is true then it would be easier to make a intelligent computer that was conscious than to make a Intelligent computer that was not conscious. It would also mean that the Turing Test is not only a test for intelligence but was also a good (although not infallible) test for consciousness too. 2) The only way to produce intelligent behavior is to process information, and perhaps it's just a brute fact that consciousness is how information feels when it's being processed. In my opinion #2 is more likely than #1 but if Darwin was right then one of the two must be true, But either way consciousness must be a biological spandrel, and if you ever run across a smart computer you can conclude that it's probably conscious too. John K Clark > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
