[angoragoats]

And to respond to your edit:

The study you cited doesn't appear to have anything to say about the general appearance of consciousness, so I don't think it's really relevant to our discussion here.

> We still do not understand the evolutionary emergence of consciousness and why it appears to be so rare, so I’m not going to act like I have the answers there.

Yes, I agree 100%. But because of this, I don't think you're correct in claiming outright that consciousness transcends evolutionary necessity (this is a positive claim that requires evidence). It's OK to say we don't know!

[coffeecantcode]

That example I gave of the emergence of consciousness being a result of a growing brain was just an example and not necessarily what I believe, but it was on based this article from 2016:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.00821

Which really just breaks down consciousness potentially being a byproduct of having a drastically higher number of neurological connections than lesser developed animal brains.

So combining the two, the growing brain, caused by an increase in size of the visual cortex to detect snake patterns, increased the number of neurological connections and as a result the brain gradually became consciously aware. That’s just one theory that I used.

And I 100% agree it’s okay to say that we don’t know, we don’t. And I don’t! But that won’t stop me from thinking about it like, a lot.

Edit: spelling

[angoragoats]

So do you agree with me that the statement "consciousness transcends evolutionary necessity" is not necessarily correct?

[coffeecantcode]

From that point yeah, “transcends evolutionary necessity” like you said, is a positive claim.

More accurate to my intent would be “consciousness is untethered by evolutionary necessity” maybe?

[angoragoats]

This is just changing your phrasing to say the same thing. It's still a claim unsupported by evidence.

My contention is that the absolute most we can say about the topic of the evolution of consciousness is "we don't yet know how or why consciousness evolved."

[coffeecantcode]

And we’re not in disagreement there, my grounds for originally giving the example was only in the fact that consciousness is a prerequisite for spirituality to occur. I was really only saying that it is unique to humans and allows for abstract thought on the human condition.

I respect your contention but I think we’re going in circles over semantics now.

[angoragoats]

> consciousness is a prerequisite for spirituality to occur

Using your definition of spirituality, this is a tautology.

I don’t see how we were going in circles; I was simply trying to get you to realize that something that seemed important to our discussion which you claimed as “fact” is about as far from fact as can be. Take care!