| I have trouble understanding the purpose of consciousness. Some argue that it improves survival because an animal that has a certain type of mental model of the world will perform better. So, evolution has produced a brain which "tricks" the animal by constructing what amounts to an elaborate 3-D video game for that animal to play so the animal will make good "decisions." Of course, this argumentation presupposes that a "decision" means something. These same scientists typically argue that behavior is essentially deterministic, assuming one could model the brain completely. But if that's the case, wouldn't it be more efficient not to construct this elaborate video game and instead have the system operate based on a set of complex rules, sort of how one would build an expert system or neural network? It seems to me possible that consciousness is bound up with "free will." Perhaps animals evolved consciousness because it enabled them to harness some sort of property of the universe that improved decisionmaking precisely because it could improve on the results of a rule-based expert system. This would rely on some concept of non-determinism. Obviously I can't explain a mechanism for the above, which is a key reason a scientist would reject it. Still, I find existing explanations for the evolution of consciousness lacking. Also, determinism is drastically at odds with our experience of life, though that doesn't necessarily prove anything. |
I've come to a similar conclusion. Recently it was discovered that photosynthesis utilizes some quantum effects. We should at least consider the possibility that the nervous systems of some animals have evolved to take advantage of similar effects.
It stands to reason that if a certain physical phenomenon can be invoked through folded proteins, then at some point, evolution as we know it today will take advantage of it. But we don't know whether this is consciousness or even related to consciousness at all.