I don't think so: you can explain consciousness as an emergent phenomenon as effect of a complexly operating biological computer without the need for any anything getting "affected" which implies some dichotomy and 'back and forth'. I think consciousness has more to do with the 'just being' awareness of it all and not about effective interactions.
Sure, consciousness itself can be explained thusly, and
life with approach/avoidance behaviors can evolve in a universe without consciousness, but my argument is that there is a tight enough correlation between biological events that aren't conducive to reproduction and subjectively unpleasant feelings that I don't think its by chance that we have an unpleasant
conscious feeling accompanying biological injury.
So if we posit that consciousness is due to integrated network activity, and that different patterns of activity give rise to different qualia, I would wager that a lifeform that evolved approach/avoidance behaviors in a universe without consciousness could have a pretty discombobulated subjective experience if their CNS was mirrored into our universe, and this would change their behavioral output.
In the same vein, I think the behavioral output of a human that was mirrored into the universe without consciousness wouldn't be identical, all other things being equal.
For example,
could a human that grew up in the universe without consciousness still be able to talk about consciousness? I feel that the fact that we are talking about consciousness right now is a strong argument for consciousness having an effect on "classical biology" (and thus there is some mechanism by which consciousness could exert selection pressure), but my additional argument to that argument is as follows:
1. There is some coherence between biological phenomena and subjective valence
2. Subjective valence has something to do with the pattern of integrated activity
3. Approach/avoidance behavior mediated by integrated network activity resulting in a gross behavioral output that is advantageous
could have evolved
without subjective valence being coherent with the biological phenomena
if the subjective valence didn't affect reproduction
However, because there
is such coherence between biological phenomena and subjective valence, I would argue that the subjective valence
did affect reproduction, and hence consciousness must affect "classical" biology in some manner. Where exactly the bridge is between these two worlds (if they are truly separate), I have no idea.
But I also think that just as I may be called upon to explain how a "two way street" works and provide a plausible/evidenced theory, people may also be called upon to explain how a "one way street" would work - that is, how biology would only produce consciousness and how consciousness would not be able to affect biology (and an explanation for how the word consciousness is even flowing through my fingers as I type this).
I should state that I don't think any of this gives us true free will (I think we are still technically at the hands of input -> output and prior causes etc).
Serotonin2A said:
I wouldn't describe the forces driving those changes as being interactions because that specific word makes it sound like the perception of pain had a direct influence on biology. There probably were lots of of animals without coherence between injury and the affective response, but natural selection would tend to favor the animals with good coherence
What I'm attempting to argue is that perception of pain (consciously) does has an influence on biology because its too chancy that biological injury produces unpleasant feelings without selection pressure having selected for coherence between biology and conscious experience - if consciousness doesn't affect biology, I don't see how this selection pressure could have occurred, and I would expect much less coherence.
For example, if consciousness didn't affect biology, it wouldn't matter if we experienced positively valenced feelings when injured, yet humans consistently feel negatively valenced feelings when injured.
I have a hard time believing that our central nervous systems evolved approach/avoidance systems (an integrated network) that also just happens to produce coherent subjective feelings. I hope this makes sense
^I agree with Solopsis here; I don't see the need for an interaction, or even how such an interaction would be physically possible. What you are saying implies that mental illness could eventually fix itself.
I hope this argument doesn't have a "mind over matter; will away your schizophrenia" type accompanying implication, but my argument is really trying to say that consciousness does somehow affect "classical" biology because otherwise the consistency of biological injury in humans being accompanied by negatively valenced feelings would need to be explained by chance.
The neural activity that gives rise to avoidance behavior would have to just happen to produce by chance subjectively negative feelings -
what are the usefulness of subjectively negative feelings if they can't exert an effect on biology?
How exactly would consciouness itself exert selection pressure? The presence of consciousness would, of course, favor natural selection because it would help to increase survival and mating. But I don't understand how consciousness itself could exert selection pressure? How would it be able to do that?
Unfortunately this is where the spooky Deepak chopra metaphysical answers kick in - if we think the consciousness is mediated by some particle/wave/field or what have you, then somewhere along the line, that particle/wave must have an interaction with "classical" nature.
The alternative is that the interaction is only
one way (that biology can produce events in the conscious realm, but not vice versa), and so the alternative even implies that there is
some interaction (although not one that can explain why subjective feelings would provide an evolutionary advantage).