On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> Telmo Menezes wrote: > >> On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Bruce Kellett < >> bhkell...@optusnet.com.au <mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote: >> >> Telmo Menezes wrote: >> On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Bruce Kellett >> >> Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* >> arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? >> >> No, Darwinian evolution is my favourite scientific theory. >> >> What I am arguing is that we don't know if consciousness is an >> evolved trait. It is perfectly possible to imagine darwinian >> evolution working without consciousness, even to the human >> intelligence level (producing philosophical zombies). >> >> For example, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, >> then evolution is something that happens within consciousness, >> not a generator of it. >> >> >> That is probably the strongest argument against computationalism to >> date. >> >> How so? >> > > So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and > then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? > I think you are going to have to do better than that if you want comp to > be believed by anyone with any scientific knowledge. Anyone with any scientific knowledge will be agnostic on comp. There is no basis to believe it or disbelieve it. Maybe it is unknowable. What we can do is investigate the consequences of assuming comp. > You really are calling on dualism to explain consciousness -- the > homunculus in the machine..... I am not trying to explain consciousness. I don't know what consciousness is or how it originates. What I am claiming is that current science has nothing to say about it either. Telmo. > > > Bruce > > -- > 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. > -- 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.
