Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion (General)

by dhw, Sunday, October 13, 2019, 10:51 (1866 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You continue to argue that although you agree that “yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain”, [other animals] are not conscious, because consciousness means having self-awareness and the ability to conceptualize. No it doesn’t. Self-awareness and conceptualization etc. are attributes of human consciousness, and you are making a mockery of language. […]

DAVID: I made the distinction between being conscious and having consciousness as a separate state from the readings I have done, especially the NDE studies. I will always view it as special and different. To be conscious is simply to be aware of and sense environment and self. We cannot sense consciousness.

NDEs suggest that there is a “soul” which survives the death of the body. The soul is conscious/has consciousness. Now instead of playing with those two words, you’ve found another word to play with: “sense”. Please stop playing language games. Being conscious and having consciousness are the same, and they entail awareness of some kind. Our fellow animals’ awareness is mainly confined to the direct necessities of life in their immediate environment, whereas our own awareness extends to ourselves and to an ability to imagine, conceptualize, philosophize etc. We don’t need your linguistic contortions to obscure what is obvious to all of us.

dhw: […] we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

dhw: Once more, in answer to Egnor, and ignoring this linguistic absurdity: Nobody knows the origin of consciousness and there are disagreements as to its source (materialism = the source is the material brain, which evolved; David’s form of dualism = the source is God, who didn’t evolve). Ants are conscious but do not have all the attributes of consciousness that humans have. This illustrates the evolution of consciousness from comparatively simple levels to extremely complex. However, these different degrees of consciousness have proved to be aids to survival, in keeping with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

DAVID: And I will still disagree. As before, I view the brain as having evolved to receive consciousness as separate from Darwin evolution of conscious to consciousness as you believe ….

What on earth does that mean? Back you go to the absurdity of evolving from the adjective to the noun!

DAVID… but I agree it fits Darwin's idea of natural selection as our consciousness gives us special survival attributes.

Thank you for agreeing with me that Egnor got that wrong. Your belief that the brain receives (rather than produces) consciousness is covered by dualism in the above answer to Egnor, but I am surprised that you think there has been no evolutionary progression from, for example, the consciousness level of ants and worms and butterflies to whales and dogs and apes, and from them to ourselves.