Can Evolutionary Theory Explain Human Consciousness?
- Thread starter Nikolai
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goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
weltweit said:
Dasein. That's the only different bit I've understood. Heidegger describes it best.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Nikolai said:Can Evolutionary Theory Explain Human Consciousness?
Evolutionary theory can explain a lot about humans .... and it is conceivable to see how we evolved from higher apes and going back further bacteria, and further still carbon and hydrogen atoms or whatever. I don't have much of a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is conceiving how the human consciousness is purely a product of evolution.
Some evolutionary biologists would claim that the human conscious has evolved from language, some would claim that it is definitely a product of evolution but they don't know how... and others claim that human consciousness is not (totally) a product of evolution.
A good thought experiment is to think of a twin earth full of human zombies, exactly the same as us but not self-aware....! This is possible I think - ie - humans do not have to be self-aware.
Hmm
Why: do you think consciousness is, like, something really special?
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
Johnny Canuck2 said:Why: do you think consciousness is, like, something really special?
Of course it is. To us. It's like a bat trying to get a handle on echo location. How the fuck did I evolve this. Or a bird starting to ponder on aerodynamics. Surely this isn't feasible, but here I go... woooooaahhhhhh!!
The willingness of human beings to suggest that it isn't, as some noble blow against the arrogance of man, is utterly perverse. We don't just exist. Part of our existence is defined by our understanding of our own existence. This is what conciousness is. This is why man is indeed an animal but a very special sort of animal. That's why conciousness is something really special.Johnny Canuck2 said:Why: do you think consciousness is, like, something really special?
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
nosos said:
This is where you have to break consciousness down. Many other animals have self-awareness. Please try and be more specific.
I'm pissed and it's half two in the morning...
I'd certainly accept other animals have self-awareness in a sense. However human beings are self-interpreting language animals. We don't just have self-awareness in the sense of understanding that if a bus hits me rather than the other cat then I'll die and it won't. We have self-awareness in the sense of self-interpretation: we understand ourselves to be a certain way, we think about who we are, we think about who we could be and we mourn who we are not. There is not just a 'I' here instantiated in my body. We see ourselves as having 'inner depths', sometimes we reveal them to others and other times they remain obscure even to ourselves. We're able to step back from our involvments in the world to think and wonder about the reality we find ourselves thrown into. We're able to ask second-order questions and draw qualitative distinctions between our different ends that give our lives meaning. We're able to disengage and other animals can't. That is, in short, why we speak and they don't. In a chicken and egg kind of way.
I'd certainly accept other animals have self-awareness in a sense. However human beings are self-interpreting language animals. We don't just have self-awareness in the sense of understanding that if a bus hits me rather than the other cat then I'll die and it won't. We have self-awareness in the sense of self-interpretation: we understand ourselves to be a certain way, we think about who we are, we think about who we could be and we mourn who we are not. There is not just a 'I' here instantiated in my body. We see ourselves as having 'inner depths', sometimes we reveal them to others and other times they remain obscure even to ourselves. We're able to step back from our involvments in the world to think and wonder about the reality we find ourselves thrown into. We're able to ask second-order questions and draw qualitative distinctions between our different ends that give our lives meaning. We're able to disengage and other animals can't. That is, in short, why we speak and they don't. In a chicken and egg kind of way.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
nosos said:
Just poured myself another glass of wine. But surely language only exists because we engage. And many other animals communicate. The latest research with bonobos really gives me pause for thought about consciousness. I'd say it's only our capacity for written communication that separates us. 5,000 years ago humans would have had very little concept of past or future, verbal narratives of being would have been their only way of seeing themselves. It's the symbolism of representation that differentiates us. But that makes a world of difference.
Oh completely. The error of the western philosophical tradition has been its monological bias. Our individuality emerges against the background of a social whole. It's only because we find ourselves thrown into a web of interlocution that we're able to come to develop self-understanding. Language is a intrinsically public thing. This is basically what I take the big insight of Heidegger to have been. We're not Cartesian selves buffered against the world. The whole reflection bollocks is just a certain sort of capacity (disengagement) we've developed.goldenecitrone said:
I'd certainly say that explains some of the incredibly interesting changes in human self-understanding that have come about over the last couple of centuries. There's an American sociologist who makes the (in my view) incredibly interesting argument that the philosophical development of different cultures was deeply influenced by their relationship to written communication: our capacity to abstract and think of the universal comes from it. However when did writing become widespread? When did printing become widespread? How have flows of information changed within society? It's not just the capacity for written communication, it's how widespread it is. I think it's actually quite a recent thing in many ways.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
nosos said:
I was thinking about how far back we can imagine ourselves. I could imagine being alive at the beginning of the twentieth century, purely because my grandparents were alive then, and possibly back to the mid nineteenth century. But before that I can't really imagine myself. Obviously I could see me now back in Roman times, but how it would have been then to exist I can't really grasp despite all the literature and historical knowledge of that time. I don't think people could have been that different, but then again I can't imagine the thoughts of someone then. And going back further, I really have no idea. Could you?
http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Self-Making-Modern-Identity/dp/0674824261
Have you heard of this book? You will really like it. It's written by a largely Heidegger and Hegel influenced philosopher and it's far and away the best discussion of these issues I've ever come across.
Have you heard of this book? You will really like it. It's written by a largely Heidegger and Hegel influenced philosopher and it's far and away the best discussion of these issues I've ever come across.
The speed of technological evolution can be measured by a study of the widespread dissemination of information.
But I think you're barking up the wrong tree if you think that we have a far more evolved consciousness to our forefathers.
Many of our basic questions are the same.
But I think you're barking up the wrong tree if you think that we have a far more evolved consciousness to our forefathers.
Many of our basic questions are the same.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
nosos said:
Sounds interesting. Will give it a read. Now, this is one consciousness that's going to turn down low for the evening and drift off into the night. Sleep well.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
goldenecitrone said:
It's just what we have. The only reason that this is a problem, is that we take the thing, and try to use it to understand itself.
It's looking into a mirror, trying to see the mirror, but all you can see is what's reflected.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Can evolutionary theory explain human consciousness?
Yes of course it can. Perhaps to state the obvious, if human consciousness confers an advantage then humans with it will tend to proliferate in the long run via natural selection.
But that does not explain what human consciousness is or what evolutionary advantage it might confer. And it does not explain if all humans on the planet now have the same consciousness which might be unlikely.
Yes of course it can. Perhaps to state the obvious, if human consciousness confers an advantage then humans with it will tend to proliferate in the long run via natural selection.
But that does not explain what human consciousness is or what evolutionary advantage it might confer. And it does not explain if all humans on the planet now have the same consciousness which might be unlikely.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Wrt to what human consciousness is and how it differs from other complex life forms:
I accept I have not read Hegel, Sartre, Hartmann, Merlo-Ponty or Heidegger and I dont really know what Dasein meins, except in basic translation from the German, "being there".
If anyone wants to have a go at defining human consciousness in their own words I would be grateful as it will be some time before I read any of the above.
I do not dispute humans are as humans do and humans seem to do things that are significantly different from other animals. While we attempt to store and pass on the sum of human knowledge to the next generation, which on its own is a normal animal trait, we (at least recently) do this with writing, printing and formal education. We arguably communicate at a higher level than other animals with complex languages, and we build things. It could be argued that we build things on a scale (not meaning size) not seen in other animals since the dawn of time.
Does that mean we have to have a more developed consciousness than other animals? It is said other animals cannot count, but how does a duck know when one of its six ducklings has gotten left behind? ducks may not know about primary numbers but they seem to be able to count to six. That we have a sense of self? Does a lion not know that these are its claws and it wants to sink its claws in to that antelope, or that its tooth hurts?
I can't help thinking the human experience differs because we developed agriculture and building and thus the abundance of food clothes and shelter. Then the economic systems that we developed permitted the arrival of the idle rich who not needing to work or hunt for sustainance were freed to think about such things as the meaning of life, or how to build a faster wheeled chariot.
Human societies that have not created this idle rich type of individual, freed from the need to hunt and forage, like perhaps the native australian aborigonal, have not evolved in their way of living at such a rate as western industrialised humans have. Are they therefore conscious in the same way a western human is?
I accept I have not read Hegel, Sartre, Hartmann, Merlo-Ponty or Heidegger and I dont really know what Dasein meins, except in basic translation from the German, "being there".
If anyone wants to have a go at defining human consciousness in their own words I would be grateful as it will be some time before I read any of the above.
I do not dispute humans are as humans do and humans seem to do things that are significantly different from other animals. While we attempt to store and pass on the sum of human knowledge to the next generation, which on its own is a normal animal trait, we (at least recently) do this with writing, printing and formal education. We arguably communicate at a higher level than other animals with complex languages, and we build things. It could be argued that we build things on a scale (not meaning size) not seen in other animals since the dawn of time.
Does that mean we have to have a more developed consciousness than other animals? It is said other animals cannot count, but how does a duck know when one of its six ducklings has gotten left behind? ducks may not know about primary numbers but they seem to be able to count to six. That we have a sense of self? Does a lion not know that these are its claws and it wants to sink its claws in to that antelope, or that its tooth hurts?
I can't help thinking the human experience differs because we developed agriculture and building and thus the abundance of food clothes and shelter. Then the economic systems that we developed permitted the arrival of the idle rich who not needing to work or hunt for sustainance were freed to think about such things as the meaning of life, or how to build a faster wheeled chariot.
Human societies that have not created this idle rich type of individual, freed from the need to hunt and forage, like perhaps the native australian aborigonal, have not evolved in their way of living at such a rate as western industrialised humans have. Are they therefore conscious in the same way a western human is?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It is very difficult for humans to compare their experience with that of other animals. We have crude tests such as the mirror test, but we also make huge misjudgements. It came as a surprise to discover that octopuses are clever. It was thought that birds' brains were incapable of complex problem solving; then crows were observed making tools, and it is now believed that the organisation of birds' brains is radically different from that of mammals. I think we need to be very tentative and cautious about drawing conclusions regarding other animals' minds.
It is more fruitful, I think, to consider just humans. Using the mirror test as an indication of awareness, humans pass this test between the ages of one and two. This coincides with the beginnings of language. Some here have mentioned that consciousness as we know it only developed a few thousand years ago. Julian Jaynes puts forward this argument in his book The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. He looks at the earliest literature, such as the Bible, Homer and Gilgamesh, which are all very much action-based. Any inner thoughts of characters are described in terms of the gods telling them what to do. Jaynes hypothesises that the inner voices of the ancients, like those of schizophrenics, were in fact the product of the different hemispheres of the brain talking to each other. Through trade and other communication with different groups of humans, they could see other points of view and the hemispheres of the brain found other ways to communicate. In Jaynes's view, in a situation sufficiently stressful, we are all liable to hear voices in this way telling us what to do.
I am sure that Jaynes is not right in all the particulars. At one point, for instance, Gilgamesh despairs because the gods won't tell him what will happen to him after he dies, which is not the despair of an unconscious being. However, his ideas are a powerful challenge to our ideas of consciousness, I think. Schizonphrenics often describe entering a psychotic episode as 'losing myself' - an unintegrated brain leads to a loss of consciousness. We should not consider consciousness as simply present/absent. It is certainly something that develops well after birth, and continues to develop. I am more conscious now than I was when I was 10, and when I was 10 I was more conscious than I was when I was 2. More uncomfortably, by this reasoning I am more consicous than a person my age with Down's syndrome. I am perhaps more conscious than someone my age who is very superstitious.
It is more fruitful, I think, to consider just humans. Using the mirror test as an indication of awareness, humans pass this test between the ages of one and two. This coincides with the beginnings of language. Some here have mentioned that consciousness as we know it only developed a few thousand years ago. Julian Jaynes puts forward this argument in his book The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. He looks at the earliest literature, such as the Bible, Homer and Gilgamesh, which are all very much action-based. Any inner thoughts of characters are described in terms of the gods telling them what to do. Jaynes hypothesises that the inner voices of the ancients, like those of schizophrenics, were in fact the product of the different hemispheres of the brain talking to each other. Through trade and other communication with different groups of humans, they could see other points of view and the hemispheres of the brain found other ways to communicate. In Jaynes's view, in a situation sufficiently stressful, we are all liable to hear voices in this way telling us what to do.
I am sure that Jaynes is not right in all the particulars. At one point, for instance, Gilgamesh despairs because the gods won't tell him what will happen to him after he dies, which is not the despair of an unconscious being. However, his ideas are a powerful challenge to our ideas of consciousness, I think. Schizonphrenics often describe entering a psychotic episode as 'losing myself' - an unintegrated brain leads to a loss of consciousness. We should not consider consciousness as simply present/absent. It is certainly something that develops well after birth, and continues to develop. I am more conscious now than I was when I was 10, and when I was 10 I was more conscious than I was when I was 2. More uncomfortably, by this reasoning I am more consicous than a person my age with Down's syndrome. I am perhaps more conscious than someone my age who is very superstitious.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yes.Kizmet said:
Nikolai
Well-Known Member
Yeh there are different levels of consciousness in humans, right? That seems like an intuitive truth to me.
And they can change within an individual over a matter of minutes, do you not find that? Sometimes you can be lost in activities, and other times its just like 'what the fuck?!' Then again maybe I've been reading to much Sartre.....
But its this existential part of human nature that casts my doubts on whether evolutionary theory may need some re-thinking.....?
And they can change within an individual over a matter of minutes, do you not find that? Sometimes you can be lost in activities, and other times its just like 'what the fuck?!' Then again maybe I've been reading to much Sartre.....
But its this existential part of human nature that casts my doubts on whether evolutionary theory may need some re-thinking.....?
They are inter-related.
But I'm wary of using philosophical definitions of things.. preferring dictionary definitions.
More accessable, less arguments that way.
It serves this argument well to introduce a substantive difference between the two.
While I would agree that humans possess differing levels of awareness.. consciousness indicates a state that one either is in - or isn't.
But I'm wary of using philosophical definitions of things.. preferring dictionary definitions.
More accessable, less arguments that way.
It serves this argument well to introduce a substantive difference between the two.
While I would agree that humans possess differing levels of awareness.. consciousness indicates a state that one either is in - or isn't.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Kizmet said:
The distinction you make is still a little unclear to me. If one is totally engrossed in an activity, one is not conscious but may be super-aware. It is the goal of Japanese martial arts, for instance, to achieve a state of 'no mind' in order to maximise effectiveness. Is this the distinction you are making?
littlebabyjesus said:
Consciousness is of oneself.. and awareness is of stimuli.
Those aren't exact definitions.. because I don't think exact definitions exist.
But in the context of this debate that distinction allows you to draw conclusions about our relative position to other conscious beings.
I don't see how you say if one is totally engrossed one is not conscious.
I think the acheivement of super-awareness requires focus and that the no-mind is a tool to aid this focus.
But does this affect your state as conscious? I don't see how it can.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I don't quite understand your definition of consciousness now. If one is carried away with an activity, one is no more aware of one's actions at the time of acting as a stone. It is only in retrospect that it is possible to 'see' one's actions.Kizmet said:
Also, given that the most proficient way to act is by being in the present - 'in the zone' of modern sports terminology - I would suggest that the kind of consciousness that can result in, for instance, shyness, is quite possibly something of an epiphenomenological oddity that doesn't help us to survive. Thought of in this way, the consciousness that many consider to be uniquely human is a by-product of evolution, an unintended consequence, possibly even an evolutionary dead end, given how much better we perform tasks when our conscious selves butt out. Think of the small child still new to his/her consciousness who finds it difficult to control and is painfully shy in front of strangers because of it. Think of the tennis player who double-faults on match point.
