On 4 February 2015 at 08:23, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com> wrote:
> 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.

An epiphenomenon is a necessary side-effect of the primary phenomenon.
The epiphenomenon has no separate causal efficacy of its own; if it
did, then we could devise a test for consciousness. This, by the way,
does not imply that consciousness does not exist or is unimportant.

The parallel examples I would give are emergent phenomena such as the
economy. You might say this is not the same thing because it is
somehow obvious that the economy is "just" the behaviour of its
component parts while this is not obvious for the brain and mind. This
may be a valid point, but what is its significance, in the end?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

-- 
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.

Reply via email to