[hacker_9]

I have three possible theories for this:

1. Evolution saw no need for it; knowing how our eye's classify light signals into objects and figure out depth etc are not important to survival. What is important is knowing exactly if you are looking at a predator as soon as possible.

2. Too much data for consciousness to handle; There is something like 1 million connections between each eye and the brain alone. Then there is all the parallel processing that must take place to match what we are seeing to the right memory. This process reduces the all the incoming signals to a single variable such as 'car', 'red' etc which can then be passed to our simpler, serial experience of reality.

3. A bit more 'out there': The physical dimension we inhabit is the result of the intersection between two planes, time and space, that seem to stretch to infinity in both directions (no beginning and no end). You could also say this for your own thoughts; do you truly know when a thought begins, or when it ends (no longer part of the brain)? We seem to exist in the middle of these planes, and perhaps that is all that is possible for the conscious experience (meaning, being part of the process of 'seeing' is just not possible).

[hashberry]

4. Consciousness wasn't supposed to happen as living organisms do not need it to survive and reproduce. But since humans are so successful: "It's a feature, not a bug!"

[oldmanjay]

What does "supposed to happen" mean in the context of evolution?

[ghurtado]

I believe what was meant was "not selected for".

However, this could well be argued at length: human consciousness has clearly played a big role in humans becoming the dominant species in the planet.

[mjevans]

My personal belief is that evolution moved from the slowly iterating biological cycle to a much more rapid external augmentation cycle.

We moved to evolving tools that augment our other natural capabilities when it became faster and more effective to focus on making better tools than better humans.