Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Even atheists doubt the evolutionary origin of consciousness

Here. 

28 comments:

Bilbo said...

I would think the major difficulty to providing an evolutionary explanation for the existence of consciousness results from a denial that consciousness has any causal efficacy on physical behavior. Assuming that premise to be true, there would be no selective advantage to evolving consciousness. If there is no selective advantage to evolving consciousness, its presence is merely by chance. While that is a logical possibility, it is scientifically unsatisfying.

Before a scientifically satisfying evolutionary explanation of consciousness is put forward, it seems that consciousness needs to have some sort of causal efficacy on physical behavior. So far, that is something the physical sciences have resisted admitting can be the case.

Bilbo said...


Hal:
Consciousness is not an agent. It is an attribute of most living things. The behavior of those living things is partly constitutive of what it means to be conscious.

Same goes for the mind: it is not an agent that interacts with the human body. The agent for intelligent behavior is the human being.


Yes, this would be one way of trying to attribute causal physical efficacy to consciousness - somehow incorporate consciousness into what it means to be a physical human being. It's not clear to me that it can be done.

Bilbo said...

Hal: I don’t think it makes sense to attribute causal physical efficacy to consciousness."

It's not clear to me how you avoid the problem.

"John didn't go to work today because he was feeling depressed."

Did feeling depressed cause John not to go to work? If so, then consciousness, or a mental state, had causal physical efficacy.

Jim S. said...

A God that had to continually tinker with those natural processes to bring this about strikes me as inferior.

That's the deist's objection. The theist's response is that it's not a matter of whether God had to, it's a matter of whether God wants to. A God who wants to interact with his creation would set it up in such a way that he would do so. A God who did not want to interact with his creation strikes me as inferior.

World of Facts said...

"somehow incorporate consciousness into what it means to be a physical human being. It's not clear to me that it can be done."

It's not clear to me how the oppisite can be done. What's non-physical about consciousness?

Bilbo said...

Hugo: What's non-physical about consciousness?

It's description.

World of Facts said...

So you just describe it as non-physical and conclude that it cannot be physical...?

Bilbo said...

Hugo: So you just describe it as non-physical and conclude that it cannot be physical...??

Nope. I pointed out that the physical sciences rely upon physical explanations. The physical explanation for why John stayed home from work would require some sort of physical description of brain processes and the like. But this is irrelevant to whether or not those brain processes were identical to John's being depressed. It is logically possible that those brain processes were identical to John's being happy.
But that would be irrelevant to the reason why John stayed home. The only relevant explanation to the physical sciences is the one described in terms of brain processes, etc.

Thus, the physical sciences currently can't offer an evolutionary explanation of consciousness. It is irrelevant to them.

World of Facts said...

"It is logically possible that those brain processes were identical to John's being happy."

No... you cannot justify that. You're just stating again that consciousness is not physical, by definiton, and thus independent of the physical brain.

Bilbo said...

Hugo: "No... you cannot justify that. You're just stating again that consciousness is not physical, by definiton, and thus independent of the physical brain."

No, actually someone who denied that it is logically possible would need to show what the logical contradiction is between the brain process and felling happy...or feeling anything at all. What do feelings have to do with a physical brain process? Why need they exist?

Victor Reppert said...

It goes the other way. If you want a conception of the physical that avoids stuff like panpsychism, then you need to build the exclusion of the mental into your definition of the physical. In the literature this is called the via negativa. But, once you do that, you can't explain the mental in terms of something that, by definition, leaves the mental out.

If I can introduce mental entities and call them physical, then I can do that for God, or the soul. I can say I am a physicalism, and God is just a physical entity with some, well, unusual properties. (But physical nonetheless.)

Victor Reppert said...

Yes, properties that add up. The physical underdetermines the mental.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/oerter-and-indeterminacy-of-physical.html

David Brightly said...

Bilbo says at 5:42 PM,
But this is irrelevant to whether or not those brain processes were identical to John's being depressed. It is logically possible that those brain processes were identical to John's being happy.
This seems to countenance a radical disconnect between John's brain processes and how they appear to him. I suggest that there seems to be such a logical possibility because we have little understanding of the nomological relations between brain processes and their appearances. But we aren't completely in the dark. We know, for example, that a drug that alters the balance of neurotransmitters and thus changes the patterns of neural activity can make the difference between depression and happiness for many people. So it looks as if there are at least some nomological connections between the physical and the mental.

If consciousness is an appearance then asking how it evolved is the wrong question. What we can ask is how the underlying reality of which it is an appearance came about by evolutionary and other processes. The question of the appearance we call 'consciousness' is part of the more general question of how any kind of appearance is possible.

David Brightly said...

Victor says,
But, once you do that, you can't explain the mental in terms of something that, by definition, leaves the mental out.
Is this result specific to the mental/physical distinction or does it fall out of the meaning of definition and explanation? I doubt it can be the latter. After all, our basic physical understanding is atomistic and we don't see atoms as living things. So life is not built in to our physical conceptions. Yet life seems understandable, at least constitutionally if not historically, in physical terms.

David Brightly said...

Hello Hal,
Yes, I accept the categorical distinction. But Bilbo seems to find no contradiction between a low activity neural state due to below normal levels of serotonin and a subjective state of happiness. You are right of course about alcohol. It's just that our ancestors would have thought of drunkenness as our mind overwhelmed by the person of the god Bacchus, or some such, whereas today I assume we have a psycho-pharmacological story about C2H5OH just as we do about SSRIs.

World of Facts said...

Bilbo said:
"...need to show what the logical contradiction is between the brain process and felling happy...or feeling anything at all. What do feelings have to do with a physical brain process? Why need they exist?"

And Victor said:
"...you need to build the exclusion of the mental into your definition of the physical."

We have differences of opinions here. Your statements imply the usual definition of existence that suits your views: primacy of consciousness, mental existence first. Yet, I argue that this is incoherent. Because to talk about the mental, you 2, the humans I am talking to right now, have to exist as physical beings first. It doesn't matter that your self-awarness is what feels more basic. I even agreed before that it's simpler.

But we know so much about the brain now that I think we can make the case for a theory of existence that starts with the physical.

If something we know exists, like happiness, cannot be accounted for, then the theory fails. However, the more I read about this, the more obvious it seems to me that everything we talk about depends on the physical, and makes sense that way. Merely defining the mental into existence first doesn't disprove physicalism.

World of Facts said...

Hal, I mostly agree in the context of this blog. I don't think there are Creationists here, but it does disprove some versions of theism. But anyway, what's your point?

World of Facts said...

Hal,
Yes, I agree with that. What's your point regarding the topic of the tread: can consciousness evolve naturally?
Bilbo and Victor argue that it can't; I think it did. What do you think and why?

World of Facts said...

"Looks like the majority of religious find no real issue between humans having evolved from evolutionary processes and their belief in God. Makes good sense to me.

If I believed in God I would..."

You just wrote about what 'would' be the case if you were to believe a god caused humans to evolve naturally. Says nothing about what you actually believe... but nothing is requiring you to think about it, or share your opinion. I was just curious.

World of Facts said...

"Even atheists doubt the evolutionary origin of consciousness"
Do you agree with that?
It's not clear from 'I believe we evolved naturally.'

World of Facts said...

I don't get why Atheists doubt the evolutionary origin of consciousness while simultaneously accepting evolution more generally. I thought you could explain why given that you seem to agree with that, given your rejection of physicalism.

I.e., I don't get why we get these numbers from the article:
"Of those who identified as atheists (as a sub-set of non-religious people) we found that nearly 1 in 5 UK atheists (19%) and over 1 in 3 of Canadian atheists (38%), somewhat agree, agree or strongly agree with the statement: “Evolutionary processes cannot explain the existence of human consciousness”. (This compares to 34% in the UK and 37% in Canada across the whole non-religious sample and 54% in the UK and 55% in Canada of religious or spiritual people)."

World of Facts said...

Hal,
Do you see a difference between claiming 'only physical things exist' and claiming 'we're only justified in believing physical things exist'?

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...



Tillich and Personal God part 2

World of Facts said...

I see a small difference in that the first is a claim about all existence, and explicitly states that certain things don't exist. The latter is what I believe and why I think Physicalism makes sense when starting with the Physical as base reality. We cannot prove there's nothing else, but I see no reason to believe there's something else.

So what about feeling happy, consciousness, rules of chess, and the number 3? They exist because the physical exist.

What's wrong with that if one doesn't assume the primacy of consciousness?

World of Facts said...

Yes, but why do they exist? And could they exist independently of the physical?
To me, the answer is 'because the physical exists' and 'no'.

That's what I understand Physicalism to be, as it's silly to pretend that literally nothing non-physical exists; we all agree that labels or fictional character exists, in a loose non-physical way.

So the answer to your 'So?' is that I don't get why the label Physicalism is somehow seen as absurd by many non-Theists, and it's interesting to try to understand.

World of Facts said...

Hal,

This is obviously in the narrow context of a philosophical discussion of what it means to exist. That's why I am having this conversation here, with you, no this blog... So of course I would not randomly tell someone that laws exist because the physical exists. I am talking about that because I am trying to understand what it means to you to be an Atheist, or to reject the existence of supernatural, or mental substances, while also claiming that Physicalism is wrong because it states that all that exists is physical.

World of Facts said...

(Or I would also like to understand why many Atheists say that evolution cannot explain consciousness arising, from Victor's post, but you don't agree so you may also not know why they would say that...)

World of Facts said...

Hal said...
"Do you think that simply because one is an atheist that entails everything else they believe is correct?"
You really think I am that stupid huh? Fine, cheers buddy...