On 3 February 2015 at 20:36, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote:
On the contrary, if consciousness were an epiphenomenon that would explain > why it evolved: it is a necessary side effect of intelligent behaviour, > and was not developed as a separate, useless add-on. > I still have no idea what you mean by an epiphenomenon in this context, or how you deal with Jason's point that any references to 'consciousness' in the discussion would then be a mystery. The canonical examples of epiphenomena are such things as the whistle of a steam engine. But such things are only 'epi' in the sense that they are peripheral to the primary function of the 'phenomenon' in question (e.g. the steam engine). It doesn't imply that they are 'immaterial' or in some separate ontological category: the whistle, of course, consists of standardly 'material' atmospheric pressure and rarefaction. Consequently, as per usual in these supposed analogies, this peculiar sort of 'epiphenomenon' seems to be exclusively invoked in the case of consciousness. David -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
