[ForHackernews]

> it's very likely that nature didn't evolve conscious brains by accident, it's probably a byproduct of making an intelligence that can reason about itself and its environment.

Strictly speaking, everything in living nature is an "accident". Natural selection acts on "accidental" random mutations. It's not a directed process.

[fuligo]

I'm not sure the original comment deserves this clarification, you'll be hard pressed to find someone on this forum who didn't already know about the nature of mutations.

The point is though that while the mutations themselves are "accidents" and the result is always characterized by a certain randomness, evolution as a problem-solving algorithm isn't itself accidental. While some (or even many) if the characteristics of an organism might be incidental, some major features tend to have a good reason for being selected. Self-awareness, I assert, is such a feature, because it carries implications too large not to have an effect on selection.

[ForHackernews]

> Self-awareness, I assert, is such a feature, because it carries implications too large not to have an effect on selection.

You might assert that, but there's virtually no evidence to support that assertion, and interesting philosophical arguments to the contrary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

Now, if what you mean by "self-awareness" is just the ability of an organism to monitor its own condition and respond accordingly, then we're in agreement, but I find that a very uninteresting assertion and it means that we're not really talking about "consciousness" except inasmuch as a thermostat is conscious: http://consc.net/notes/lloyd-comments.html

[Retra]

P-zombies are not an interesting philosophical argument anymore than "Angels dancing on pins" is an interesting argument.

[ForHackernews]

Parent comment is asserting that consciousness/self-awareness is an evolutionarily important feature, that consciousness is favored by natural selection.

P-zombies are vivid counterexample that points to the possibility of epiphenomenalism. There's no reason to believe that consciousness is a necessary feature for an organism to respond to its environment in a survival-enhancing way. In fact, there is some neurological evidence that suggests nerve impulses to take an action precede conscious awareness: http://www.consciousentities.com/libet.htm

[Retra]

P-zombies don't exist, so they are not a counterexample to anything. In fact, they cannot possibly exist, so they don't even point to the possibility of anything interesting.

>There's no reason to believe that consciousness is a necessary feature for an organism to respond to its environment in a survival-enhancing way.

The reason to believe this is that systems with "consiousness" are a strict superset of systems with "responding to the environment." They are not unrelated ideas, and in fact, the ability of an organism to survive is closely tied to this kind of behavior.

I have never heard anyone try to defend P-zomies unless they were simply unaware of what the word 'meaning' means, or how our words acquire meaning. If you know how this works, you should be able to easily see why P-zombies are a meaningless idea -- an incongruous hypothetical. (Like "what would we be talking about if I didn't exist?")

Same goes for Searle's Chinese Room argument. If you assume something that is impossible, it is easy to conclude any ridiculous thing you like. P-zombies are impossible. They are not anymore useful than any other self-contained contradiction.

[ForHackernews]

> In fact, they cannot possibly exist

I don't understand how you can be so confident of this. How are you defining consciousness? How are you measuring it? What makes you believe with such emphatic certainty that I am a conscious being and not a p-zombie? (or, if you prefer, a bot that easily passes the Turing test)

> They are not unrelated ideas, and in fact, the ability of an organism to survive is closely tied to this kind of behavior.

That's what I'm saying, consciousness is not a "kind of behavior". There is nothing behavioral about your inner experience as a conscious entity.

[Nogwater]

The mutations are random, but the selection isn't... it's governed by the environment.

[aikah]

You realize that randomness and "accident" are man made concepts, they don't exist in nature. Something we can't predict isn't random at all, with enough data one could forsee anything, even the fact that you were about to write that message and the exact words I would use to answer you.

It's beyond science, but I don't believe in randomness or chaos, which doesn't mean I believe in religion either( which are just a collection of myth, which says absolutely nothing about the fundamental nature of 'god').