I am about to logon to vFRIAM so I will just say that the answer would be something lie:
"Everything that is ... is experience. To the extent that experience is OF anything, it is OF other experiences. Experiences can be "of" other experiences in two ways, in sequence, and "meta". If I experience another experience as a dream, that is a meta experience. Evolutionarily speaking, detecting agency is useful. It's useful, for instance, to detect whether an object is bright because it has a birght color or bright because it has a bright light on it. A lot of the circuitry in the retina is devoted to figuring that sort of thing out. Similarly, when, say, I find some experience annoying, it's useful to figure out whether that annoying feature of the experience is arising from me -- fatigue, etc. -- r for particular feature of the experience. Experiences that are tagge as arising from the self are forms of meta-experiences. Yeh. Something like that. Yikes! I am late! N Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University [email protected] https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Prof David West Sent: Friday, July 3, 2020 9:42 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Hard problem vs. free swill Jon, Not sure how Nick would respond, but it seems that your question assumes that evolution has some sort of "discrimination" that would allow it to choose between two or more different adaptational-complexes that have the same or closely comparable outcomes. We have consciousness and a sense of agency because it just happened that way, not because something decided it was necessary. davew On Fri, Jul 3, 2020, at 8:25 AM, Jon Zingale wrote: > Nick, > > Granted determinism, how might an evolutionary theorist or ethologist > approach the question of why we have the illusion of free will at all? > It seems to me that evolutionary theory can describe a deterministic > history just fine, but then I am unsure why we would ever need to > develop a sense of consciousness or a sense of agency. Couldn't nature > find a way to have us do the same without the added expense of reflected experience? > > > > -- > Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn > GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
