11.10.09
The unnatural selection of consciousness
The unnatural selection of consciousness
Ray Tallis argues that there is no evolutionary explanation of consciousness
We have grown accustomed – perhaps too accustomed – to the idea that every characteristic of living creatures has been generated by the operation of natural selection on spontaneous variation; that it is there because it has, or at the very least once had, survival value or was a consequence of other things that had a survival value. Consciousness, even human consciousness, we are told, is no exception to this rule. Biology does not tolerate anything biologically useless and, given that my brain consumes 20% of my energy supply, and quite a lot of this seems to be used by neurones that are supposed to be responsible for keeping me conscious, consciousness must have a use. And it follow from this that all the things that consciousness enables us to get up to – not only fleeing predators whom we are aware of but also creating art or writing books like The Origin of Species – must also be directly or indirectly related to survival – now, or at some time in the past. Whether or not this is true, the ubiquity of “neuro-evolutionary” accounts of everyday human life is a testimony to belief in the power of evolution to explain consciousness.
Stephen P. Smith said,
November 10, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Natural selection is only a one-dimensional view. And if that view was complete, then evolution could have stopped with the most simple one-dimensional creations: the bacteria would be fittest. If natural selection was complete there would be little evolution in direction of complexity and consciousness. The grand complexity tends to an infinite-dimensional directive, however, and it is consciousness that becomes aware of this richness. Woe is he who tries to collapse the grand richness into a one-dimensional world, which is worse than the flat-land offered by two dimensions. Nevertheless, advocates of natural selection encourage the one-dimensional affection while stupefying its believers making them less intellectually fit compared to those that have a wider outlook. Therefore, it is consciousness that can override natural selection, and it is something that underwrites consciousness that does the selection thereby turning Darwin`s blind watchmaker into an oxymoron. Consciousness could not become aware of the infinitude if it were not a fact that consciousness is also found related to the fundamental. What consciousness discovers is self-evident. It becomes necessary to tame emotionality to find a more comprehensive view, lest we fall into flat-land and below.
nemo said,
November 10, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Good post. We can shift it to a post tommorrow.
I have referred to J. G. Bennett a number of times here. While I am reluctant to expound on his flawed views, he nonetheless gave a clear rationale for the change in direction in human evolution: the realm of human consciousness is the interaction with a different order of cosmos, and doesn’t exist in the sequences of the origins of life and its law of evolution. The realm of mind and consciousness is the impingement on a new dimension beyond the life realm.
If so, it would be obvious that consciousness doesn’t evolve at all in the normal meaning of the word.