Emergence (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 09, 2013, 17:08 (3844 days ago)

DAVID: (Under "Cambrian Explosion"): Consciousness and its intellect are emergent qualities out of the biochemistry. [...] It takes billions of neurons and trillions of connections for consciousness to emerge in the brain.-There are two aspects of this statement that I'd very much like to discuss with you. Firstly, "emergence" is another way of saying that the sum is greater than its parts. The parts in this case are billions of cells interacting, cooperating, passing messages to one another. We still have no idea how this results in consciousness, let alone self-awareness (which must be distinguished from consciousness), but if each part contributes to the whole, what does it contribute? Is it only the whole that is "conscious", while all the parts are automatons? Or is it possible that the parts themselves have a degree of consciousness, and the unification of these billions of "degrees" creates a superconsciousness? My favourite analogy, as you know, is the ant. Individuals may not be Brunels or Le Corbusiers, but when they form a colony they can create stunning works of engineering and architecture. As with the brain, the sum is greater than the parts, and intelligence (I prefer that to consciousness, because you keep equating the latter with human self-awareness) emerges from the cooperating community.-My second point concerns an issue arising out of your post under "pre-planned brains": is it the cells that develop the abilities, or is it the abilities that develop the cells? Is it biochemistry that produces intelligence, or is intelligence a form of energy that drives the biochemistry? When "I" decide to perform an action, is this "I" an identity that emerges from a mass of chemicals, or is it a separate form of energy that interacts with the chemicals (sometimes controlling them, sometimes being controlled by them)?-This is the point where I have difficulty following your thinking. You believe in a form of intelligence that is entirely independent of biochemistry (your God), and you take with the utmost seriousness psychic experiences such as NDEs, which not only suggest a similar independent form of energy, but may even suggest an afterlife in which the entire identity of a person survives independently of his materials. And yet you believe that consciousness, intellect, intelligence emerge from biochemistry. We have discussed this before, but the two concepts of intelligence still seem to me to be contradictory.