Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 02, 2019, 10:34 (1667 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Firstly, you repeat as if it were fact your fixed belief that organisms without a brain are not conscious, although you know perfectly well that many reputable scientists argue the opposite.

David: Your few scientists are three or four in number.

dhw: Why don’t you just google “cellular intelligence” if you want to find more names? Wikipedia will help, and the article doesn’t even mention McClintock, Margulis, Buehler or Shapiro.
Microbial intelligence - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_intelligence

DAVID: The Wikipedia article has a reference in Quanta to one author, nothing more in regard to single cells. He has simply presented his viewpoint. Remember Wikipedia is not authoritative since anyone can contribute, as the editors (with their biases) allow. Research articles are peer reviewed which also has had its problems, but are much more trustworthy.

I referred you to the article because you claimed there were only three or four scientists who advocated cellular intelligence. Just google the subject, and you will find many more names. The Wikipedia article offers several under references and further reading.

dhw: NDEs are part of the evidence for dualism against materialism (I remain neutral on the subject), but they are irrelevant to the subject of consciousness and evolution.

DAVID: How can NDE's be irrelevant if they are evidence for dualism? You are ignoring (purposely?) the NDE receiver argument.

dhw: You have missed the point. Egnor asks how consciousness could evolve. I can only repeat that evolve is not the same as originate. Consciousness has evolved, just like physical organisms, from the comparatively simple to the extremely complex, and that applies whether you are a dualist or a materialist.

DAVID: How do you know evolution produced consciousness by a material mechanism? Consciousness is present only in humans, which make he problem of origin the 'hard' problem per Chalmers.

I keep telling you that evolution did NOT produce consciousness! The production or origin of consciousness is Chapter 1 of life, and we don’t know how it happened. Evolution is chapter 2, and we know that consciousness now is vastly more complex than it was in the first cells of 3.8 billion years ago. Consciousness is not present only in humans. You wrote: “Consciousness has appeared only when a brain evolved that was complex enough to accept it. I still view that animals with a brain are conscious; nothing is conscious at lower levels of development.” I’m sure most people would agree with you that consciousness is present in animals with a brain. Many would disagree with your second statement.

dhw: I would add, in response to Egnor, that natural selection (which of course creates nothing) has determined that the organism which has evolved/developed the highest level of consciousness has so far survived and also threatens to survive many other species, though these may be/may have been superior in other departments. […]

DAVID: No, I agree we are best at survival, but natural selection did not create consciousness. Nor did environmental stresses do it.

Why no? I have just said (now bolded) that natural selection creates nothing: it only decides what will survive! Nor have I said that environmental stresses created consciousness. You are putting up straw men in order to knock them down! Nobody knows how consciousness first came into being – that is Chapter 1. Evolution is Chapter 2. And it is perfectly reasonable to argue that environmental stresses would have caused new developments in already existing consciousness, as organisms learned to cope with those stresses or to exploit new conditions. Hence the process whereby consciousness evolved from the comparatively simple (I would give bacteria as an example) to the extremely complex (ours).