Wouldnt withdrawal of drugs with disphoric effects be pleasant?

[serotonin2A]

I don't think its by accident that when you hurt yourself (not conducive to survival) it feels subjectively bad, and when you do something that is good for survival (food/sex) it feels good - I think there has been some selection pressure exerted here, and that may have required a certain strength of interaction between consciousness and "Newtonian biology", in order for there to be enough coherence between "bad" things happening to biology and the resulting bad feelings in consciousness and vice versa. In other words, I think its a two way street.

I honestly can't think of another way to rationalize the correlation between things that are bad for survival and bad feelings etc without resorting to some intelligent design or simulation theory argument.

I'm not sure why there would need to be some type of interaction with consciousness or intelligent design. The fact that it hurts when you injure yourself offers a huge survival benefit, both in terms of avoiding injury, but also allowing injured body parts time to heal. There would be a huge selection pressure to perceive pain as a motivating mechanism, and over the years the perception would be fine tuned by additional selection pressure.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

I'm not sure why there would need to be some type of interaction with consciousness

I'm a bit confused as to whether or not we're on the same page - what I'm attempting to say is that the coherence between biological phenomena and subjective feelings must be due to selection pressure exerted by consciousness (a pan-psychism view of consciousness may be helpful here) and thus there must be an interaction.

Imagine we had a universe where consciousness did not exist - the life there could still evolve damage avoidance systems, but in humans there is a correlation between damage and an unpleasant feeling (subconscious reflexes aside) that I doubt would exist in the aforementioned life if it's CNS was mirrored into our universe. For all we know, that lifeform could have subjectively pleasant feelings when damaged.

I have a hard time believing that the pattern (or what have you) of integrated network activity that occurs when being damaged also just happens to produce a subjectively unpleasant feeling in humans - thus my theory for there being an interaction between consciousness and "Newtonian biology" that allowed the selection pressure to take place.

However, I don't have the first clue as to how this selection pressure/interaction would manifest on the (for lack of a better word) "quantum" level.

I suppose it could be wherever consciousness is collapsing the wave form, depending on how much you read into the double slit experiments.

 

[serotonin2A]

I guess I'm not following some of the language in your post. I'm not sure whether you are actually linking consciousness to quantum mechanics, or are only thinking in terms of an analogy -- you put quotes around quantum, but then you also mentioned wave-particle duality.

and that may have required a certain strength of interaction between consciousness and "Newtonian biology", in order for there to be enough coherence between "bad" things happening to biology and the resulting bad feelings in consciousness and vice versa. In other words, I think its a two way street

^ I found this passage confusing. To me, use of the word interaction implies that natural selection was not involved. I think it is reasonable to suspect that selection pressure favored animals that experienced an affective/emotional response to injury, but 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.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

Sorry that I'm struggling with the language here. A lot of this is with reference to the "consciousness is like exhaust coming out of a train's smokestack" notion, and my central theory is that conscious perception (based in the quantum realm or not) must affect the classical realm because of this coherence between i.e damage and unpleasant feelings.

I don't think the coherence can be explained without consciousness itself exerting selection pressure by affecting the "classical realm", but where consciousness meets with the classical realm is what I'm confused about.

Essentially there must be a bridge between those two worlds, to speak in duality terms (and consciousness collapsing the wave form must seem like an attractive spooky metaphysical answer to some of us). With the proposal that consciousness is a fundamental property of our universe, I have sort of been using "quantum" as a poor choice of word for "non-classical".

 

[Solipsis]

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. What is necessary for that is a sort of learning process which can be quite unconscious to be successful. Effective learning having a survival advantage alone is enough and it wouldn't matter whether the injury and response is reflex or not. The will to do something serving well-being and protection etc can just as well be considered a delayed form of the same response. Getting consciousness involved seems like an unnecessary complication.
Maybe there is some relationship regarding continuity of a stream of consciousness and how memory and actual awareness can get synthesized effectively that way, I guess that is where it is harder to get around to the actual advantage to consciousness awareness though still care should be taken about not confusing consciousness with other things. Maybe it's not a long way from your point though?

 

[serotonin2A]

^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 don't think the coherence can be explained without consciousness itself exerting selection pressure

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?

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

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).

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).

 

[serotonin2A]

It isn't by chance that animals evolved negative affect responses to noxious injury. This isn't any different from how any other survival advantage favors selection. You only have to look at people suffering from a congenital insensitivity to pain to understand the survival advantage associated with pain.

Let me give an example. But first, I want to note that the affective response to pain evolved millions of years ago. There is evidence that fish exhibit an emotional response to pain. So there were millions of years for evolution to fin-tune the affective response to injury.

So, for the example, imagine three subpopulations of fish (n=100 per group): one group (A) has a weak emotional response to pain, one group (B) is intermediate, and one group (C) has an extremely strong response. We follow these subpopulations of fish through 100 generations where each fish produces 2 offspring, but 50% die before reproductive age due to predation or disease. Additionly, in each generation, 2 extra fish from A die because they fail to learn to avoid painfull jellyfish stings, and 2 extra fish from C die before reproductive age because their bodies are weakened by the presence of a hightened stress response to normally innocuous injuries (or maybe they find the process of mating too painful and are not very effective).

Generation 1: 100 A, 100 B, 100 C
Gen 2: 96 A, 100 B, 96 C
Gen 3: 92 A, 100 B, 92 C
Gen 3: 88 A, 100 B, 88 C...

It doesn't take long until B makes up the entire population.

You can fine tune the intensity of pain perception within subpopulation A by the same process, although it may require 1000s of generations for there to be a phenotypical change in the entire population. But the important thing to note is that this process can occur without an interaction between consciousness and biology.

In terms of mechanisms of consciousness, how could it possibly be mediated by some type of wave field? Alternatively, maybe there is just some type of functional organization that emerges spontaneously across massive numbers of interconnected pyramidal neurons. For example, may there is some type of complex network oscillatory resonance that explains the binding problem. We're not quite at the point where we can study large enough numbers of individual neurons simultaneously, so we may be completely unaware of certain aspects of cortical function.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

Re: the fish evolving affective responses - I think I'm not managing to explain my theory very well.

An approach/avoidance system can still evolve without a subjective/conscious component that maps onto that system with some coherence (coherence meaning that injury feels bad and pro-survival things feel good), so consciousness is not necessary for a CNS to avoid damage efficiently - however, we have a conscious experience that accompanies biological phenomenon with some coherence.

I'm not sure how to explain why activation of a damage avoidance system (for lack of a better term) just happens to correlate with a subjectively unpleasant feeling unless there has been selection pressure coming from the consciousness side of things for that to occur.

The feeling would only matter if it could actually affect behavior - otherwise consciousness is just smoke coming out of the smokestack and can't affect the trains direction.

I'll return to my previous thought "what is the usefulness of subjectively negative feelings if they can't exert an effect on biology that changes behavior?"

So just to reiterate, my thesis is that in order for appropriate/coherent conscious feelings to matter and be advantageous (and therefore be as common as they are in humans), there must be some bridge between consciousness and classical biology. Otherwise, injury and subjective pain have evolved by chance (why would the subjective experience of pain be useful if it couldn't affect biology?)

Or there is something else at work that my brain apparently isn't built to understand regarding consciousness, and there is no issue of duality and therefore no need for a bridge between classical nature and consciousness.

Also concerning "wave field" stuff, I hope you'll excuse me there, my highschool dropout-ness is showing!

 

[serotonin2A]

Re: the fish evolving affective responses - I think I'm not managing to explain my theory very well.

An approach/avoidance system can still evolve without a subjective/conscious component that maps onto that system with some coherence (coherence meaning that injury feels bad and pro-survival things feel good), so consciousness is not necessary for a CNS to avoid damage efficiently - however, we have a conscious experience that accompanies biological phenomenon with some coherence.

I'm not sure how to explain why activation of a damage avoidance system (for lack of a better term) just happens to correlate with a subjectively unpleasant feeling unless there has been selection pressure coming from the consciousness side of things for that to occur.

The feeling would only matter if it could actually affect behavior - otherwise consciousness is just smoke coming out of the smokestack and can't affect the trains direction.

I'll return to my previous thought "what is the usefulness of subjectively negative feelings if they can't exert an effect on biology that changes behavior?"

So just to reiterate, my thesis is that in order for appropriate/coherent conscious feelings to matter and be advantageous (and therefore be as common as they are in humans), there must be some bridge between consciousness and classical biology. Otherwise, injury and subjective pain have evolved by chance (why would the subjective experience of pain be useful if it couldn't affect biology?)

Or there is something else at work that my brain apparently isn't built to understand regarding consciousness, and there is no issue of duality and therefore no need for a bridge between classical nature and consciousness.

Also concerning "wave field" stuff, I hope you'll excuse me there, my highschool dropout-ness is showing!

I understand what you are saying, but the subjective, conscious representation of pain as being noxious would evolve in the same way as the intensity of pain perception (as in my example above).

Take the fish example, but this time group A responds to injury with a pleasurable sensation, group B with dysphoria, and group C experiences an itch-like sensation. Obviously when consciousness first developed, there were many different subjective representations that were possible, but over time there would be selection for the subset of representations that gave a reproductive and survival advantage.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

I'm confused as to whether or not we are in agreement in regards to consciousness participating in the selection in some manner.

I totally get that there is going to be an advantage to having an appropriate biological response to noxious stimuli - but why would there be an advantage to having a conscious feeling associated with a noxious stimuli unless that conscious feeling could alter biology in some manner and participate in selection pressure?


Just to reiterate, this is with reference to the earlier stuff like "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."

 

[serotonin2A]

I'm confused as to whether or not we are in agreement in regards to consciousness participating in the selection in some manner.

I totally get that there is going to be an advantage to having an appropriate biological response to noxious stimuli - but why would there be an advantage to having a conscious feeling associated with a noxious stimuli unless that conscious feeling could alter biology in some manner and participate in selection pressure?


Just to reiterate, this is with reference to the earlier stuff like "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."

If consciousness develops, then all the sensory information that reaches consciousness has to be perceived in some way. Furthermore, each modality that can be perceived has to be perceived differently, otherwise the internal representations would not be easily distinguishable.

"but why would there be an advantage to having a conscious feeling associated with a noxious stimuli unless that conscious feeling could alter biology in some manner and participate in selection pressure?"

One of the reasons why consciousness is useful is that it allows for more complex responses and behavioral patterns, which has a survival advantage. But if sensory information does not generate a conscious perception then there is no way to take advantage of the benefits of being consciousness (ie, it would not be possible to use the information to generate complex behavioral patterns). So there would be survival and reproductive benefits associated with integrating all the sensory systems into a single unified conscious experience.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

if sensory information does not generate a conscious perception then there is no way to take advantage of the benefits of being consciousness (ie, it would not be possible to use the information to generate complex behavioral patterns).

I sense we are in agreement that consciousness is important in behavioral output, but I'm still in the dark as to how you are thinking about consciousness conceptually (the hard problem, if you will), and thus if duality is still in play from your point of view. If duality is still in play then we still have this issue of what bridges the two worlds (and whatever the first thing is on the "classical" side of the bridge is where exactly the selection pressure will be exerted by consciousness)

Alternatively, if consciousness is emerging out of integrated networks (pyramidal neurons/cortical function and so forth) but is not inherently "magical" (and human brains just can't get past that it is not magical and there is no real hard problem), then consciousness can exert selection pressure without needing a special particle or something to act as a bridge between the hypothetical two worlds.

But I can't think of a way the coherence between injury-pain etc could manifest naturally if consciousness is just steam coming out of the smokestack and if consciousness is only awareness of internal states with no mechanism to affect biology and exert selection pressure (which seemed to be Solipsis' view).

I just can't get past the difference between "Okay the brain cells are here, and here is integrated activity in this circuit" physical stuff, and then whatever the heck consciousness is, and how it exerts selection pressure. I hope I'm not being too confusing/frustrating.

As always, thanks for the discussion.

 

[Solipsis]

A big problem is that it is nonsensical to try and hypothesize a world without consciousness but with learning effects and approach/avoid behavior. The experience appears to be an emergent phenomenon resulting from processed sensation. Conscious awareness would amount to a continuous monitoring of all sensations and reacting to ones that give advantages and disadvantages. Emotion appears to be about value labeling, association with memory, and experiencing / reexperiencing these values associated with events.

Perhaps as far as hypotheses go, it can be interesting to imagine a world with purely "rational" calculated reactions, but it may just be more "natural" to evolve an integrated awareness with actual affect rather than theoretical affect. That would be a kind of distantiation that perhaps interferes with accurate and inituitive reaction.
I can say from experience that having limited emotion and empathy (well especially during some periods or due to medications) can really mess with your drives and decision-making. It is really much easier to decide something if your feeling guides you, without it things are more arbitrary.

There are probably other advantages I am not thinking of... Problems you mentioned earlier, like not seeing why certain complex behavior would evolve that is not clearly linked to approach / avoid (or pain & pleasure) modes, that is probably because we are relatively complex beings and it can just be too hard to unravel motivations in those terms. It doesn't mean there is some extra ingredient involved, but IMO that we just can't follow 'accidental' byproducts of evolved traits, that we have a hard time understanding apparently paradoxical things like altruism. I am not saying that I know either of course. There are probably just too many things involved, complex social behavior and rudimentary modes that don't apply anymore to contemporary life but that once served a purpose.

Similar to the problem with nonsensical hypotheses (and also some questions that seem very difficult but turn out to just be ill-defined, which seems to happen often enough in philosophy), I think it is misleading to try and separate consciousness from what it emerges from 'inappropriately'. It is useful to make clear some distinctions or how it may arise, but it is not actually separate. It can be helpful to talk about body and mind in different terms too and how they may relate, but at the end of the day they are sides of the same coin so considerations that isolate only one of the aspects may get very strange and confusing.

There is no feedback needed in this whole model, the selection pressure comes from the evolutionary advantages processed and conscious awareness reflects the coherence of the mental modes orchestrating together. I don't think it is necessary to consider the conscious awareness as something separate from the system to learn, develop and react. The system can interact with itself (intelligence involves a lot of self-referential algorithms) and this includes consulting the memory or imagining or planning. It's all one thing, a living system, and the conscious awareness is what is synthesized in the process by this interaction. It is intrinsically linked, I believe, so trying to hypothesize without it seems meaningless indeed.

There is some confusion about the definition of consciousness, and it is sometimes thought to be a field of sorts which makes it difficult to talk about 'individual conscious awareness' or distinctions between awareness and consciousness. I'm not really sure, if fundamentally the universe is composed of information like novel theories suggest, then maybe consciousness is like a 'type of pattern' in it, but it seems abstract and potentially vulnerable to new age imagination to say what makes consciousness a field and what fills it besides all our consciousness. If anything, there would be no space between the 'patterns' but just partial overlapping? IDK it seems pointless to try and say a lot about it this way, SO many traps because we try to make comparisons to things that are nothing like it.

Yes thanks for the discussion! I much rather like to see a thread derail towards philosophy of science or something like that, than Godwin's law.

P.S. 'information and the nature of reality' is a recommended book, seems somewhat relevant.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

I disagree solipsis about the statement that its nonsensical to hypothesize about a world devoid of sentient consciousness but retaining seek/avoid behaviour. Slime molds (Myxomycete fungi/protozoa) avoid dry, brightly lit places and head for typical habitats suitable for fungi, (they are capable of motion in one of their two life cycle stages, where they form giant colonies that act as a single being and are capable of motion, in a similar manner to how amoeba move, so they go about their business, feeding until it comes to time to reproduce where they enter an immobile state during which the colony sporulates)

And what about flatworms, and sea-slugs like Aplysia? they have the capacity for LTP, and to learn, and will avoid noxious stimuli, but you probably aren't going to try and tell me that sea slugs, amoeba, slime-molds or flatworms spend the time they don't spend aiming towards environmental conditions and avoiding noxious stimuli philosophizing about how, for example, the slime mold colony is about to sporulate, and having a mid-life crisis, or that sea hares have trouble with existential dread of being poked by scientists?

And the act of moving away from a noxious stimulus, induced by nociception is reflexive rather than conscious. Pain is the consciously felt portion of our avoidance mechanism, but nociception itself is reflexive, is it not? even in us.

 

[Solipsis]

It is always most challenging and abstract to go to the very edge, where conscious awareness becomes ever more simple, some of such life forms may even operate "cybernetically" like a hive mind. Major differences would include that these simpler life forms do not reflect on what they sense and the learning would be more purely a 'reflex' of sorts. Like I said before, I don't think our thinking is necessarily something beyond a very intricately nested extension of that mechanism, one where what is sensed is categorized, matched and analyzed against other things sensed, projected into the future and past (in our minds) and the result of that may all be interactive with what we learn. It's more complex and less 'spontaneous', but whether that necessarily invokes something of an extra magical ingredient (not that it isn't a special thing in many ways of course, just like in other ways that "continental" Armillaria is very special), I doubt .. just like our dreams about free will.

So I don't really see how it changes anything about the argument either way and the reductio ad absurdum also doesn't work. Depending on your definitions of consciousness there may be some breakdown due to the gradient scale of complexity of life.

Do you know Daniel Dennett? He says many interesting things about all of that.

By the way, I also only find mystical experiences / extremely altered states of consciousness meaningful when they are attempted to be put in or next to a frame of reference. Without that it can feel very abstract, like I wouldn't even be surprised if at the most basic level (without the reflection) inanimate objects could have that aspect of just being. I am talking nothing is sensed and put in a place or looked at, I am talking about even a lack of duality yet no unconsciousness.

Humans have always thought that they are very special, and that the world revolves around them but they tend to take that all just a bit too far imo.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

Consciousness is surely an advantage but only if consciousness has a way of interacting with classical biology in a bi-directional manner (otherwise there would be no survival advantage to the appropriate conscious perception of injury, and it's just as likely that the conscious perception of injury would have evolved to be euphoria because there would have been no pressure for it to be otherwise).

The only other option (to explain coherence if consciousness is just steam coming out of the smokestack) is that the optimal neural configuration for approach/avoidance etc also happens to give rise to coherent conscious phenomenon (coherent in the "injury = unpleasant sensation, rather than injury = pleasant sensation" sense), but that would be quite a coincidence.

A better explanation seems to be that consciousness participates in natural selection by having some effect on biology.

I don't think that gives us actual free will though.

I like Dan Dennet for his secularism and all, but I don't really get how he skips right over the hard problem, saying stuff like consciousness is just an illusion.

But since we're talking about consciousness right now, that in and of itself seems to be a pretty damning evidence that consciousness has a real effect on biology though... Assuming none of us are philosophical zombies

 

[serotonin2A]

Consciousness is surely an advantage but only if consciousness has a way of interacting with classical biology in a bi-directional manner (otherwise there would be no survival advantage to the appropriate conscious perception of injury, and it's just as likely that the conscious perception of injury would have evolved to be euphoria because there would have been no pressure for it to be otherwise).

That isn't true. The other option besides consciousness is to execute biological programming like insects. There is certainly an advantage to not being tied to programmed behavioral routines and that advantage does not require the type of feedback you are describing. So even in the absence of the coherence you are describing, the development of consciousness represents a survival advantage.

There may have been animals that were born who experienced euphoria in response to injury, but they probably would not have survived long enough to reproduce. There is a huge pressure against that type of response.

To give a better example, there is a human illness where the amygdala is miswired, and patients do not suffer from fear. Those patients are at a huge disadvantage for survival. There doesn't have to be some feedback from consciousness to biology that weeds out people who have unusual wiring like that -- all that has to happen is that they are less apt to reproduce compared to other members of the species.

The only other option (to explain coherence if consciousness is just steam coming out of the smokestack) is that the optimal neural configuration for approach/avoidance etc also happens to give rise to coherent conscious phenomenon (coherent in the "injury = unpleasant sensation, rather than injury = pleasant sensation" sense), but that would be quite a coincidence.

Why would it have to be a coincidence? Genetic recombination allows biology to try out new things, and if "coherence" developed spontaneously then that would stick around due to natural selection. You could apply your argument just as easily to the structure of the eye -- it is quite a coincidence that the eye developed as it did -- so there must be some feedback between visual perception and biology.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

That isn't true. The other option besides consciousness is to execute biological programming like insects. There is certainly an advantage to not being tied to programmed behavioral routines and that advantage does not require the type of feedback you are describing.

I'm confused - are you saying that consciousness offers survival advantages (in particular environments) without consciousness needing to be able to affect biology?

There are surely some advantages to a hive mind that operates in a non-conscious manner, but:

Why would there be significant numbers of (evolved) humans with a complex "coherent" consciousness unless that coherent consciousness offered survival advantages?

Why would it have to be a coincidence? Genetic recombination allows biology to try out new things, and if "coherence" developed spontaneously then that would stick around due to natural selection. You could apply your argument just as easily to the structure of the eye -- it is quite a coincidence that the eye developed as it did -- so there must be some feedback between visual perception and biology.

The alternate "coincidence" theory I proposed is essentially that the optimal approach/avoidance circuitry also just happens to give rise to some level of coherence (and I don't like that theory at all).

It certainly wouldn't have to be a coincidence as long as consciousness was able to affect biology, but a coherent consciousness wouldn't be any more advantageous than a non-coherent consciousness if the outward behavior of the two was equal. So for example, if consciousness doesn't affect biology, then would it matter if we never felt perceivable hunger?

I hope I'm making some sense.

I believe the original eyes may have evolved from microorganisms that were able to just sense a sort of binary dark-light, thus they could sink farther into the ocean when harmful UV came through the surface. I understand something like this probably doesn't require consciousness and is essentially hardwired (like our autonomic reflexes), but I must ask the question; why isn't everything hardwired if consciousness doesn't affect biology?


Consciousness would either have to be able to affect biology to offer an advantage, or the patterns of neural activity that gives rise to coherent consciousness and optimal behavior would have to be somewhat parallel to each other.

 

[serotonin2A]

I think the issue here is semantic. When you talk about feedback from consciousness affecting biology, the terminology you are using implies that there is a rearrangement of biochemical pathways or genetic makeup, which is impossible. I think what you actually mean is that there is feedback whereby consciousness affects neural activity and/or behavior.

There is, of course, some difference in neural activity or connectivity that is responsible for different thoughts and different memories. But I don't think most people would think of those differences as representing a change of biology, which seems like a more fundamental alteration.