the evolution of consciousness

[Advocate]

Developing sensitivity to external phenomenon beyond the immediate sense of touch, such as by hairs in water, leads to an idea of prediction - what is going to happen rather than what is happening right now. With sight, we can predict well beyond our natural faculties to anticipate many things which will not directly effect us. It is only natural then, to develop theories about causality and begin to extrapolate them beyond our immediate surroundings. This is one of many metaphors for co-evolving biological/cognitive ratchets.

[bahman]

Developing sensitivity to external phenomenon beyond the immediate sense of touch, such as by hairs in water, leads to an idea of prediction - what is going to happen rather than what is happening right now. With sight, we can predict well beyond our natural faculties to anticipate many things which will not directly effect us. It is only natural then, to develop theories about causality and begin to extrapolate them beyond our immediate surroundings. This is one of many metaphors for co-evolving biological/cognitive ratchets.

Consciousness does not evolve since it is an ability of the mind. What evolves is the sensory system.

[popeye1945]

The mind is a secondary organ that serves the body; put another way, the body is the mind's first idea as an interface to the physical world. The body created the mind; the mind did not create the body. Consciousness is the enterplay of body and mind, but this process does not mean that the individual experiences reality. Reality/the energies that surround us alter the sensing body and the mind draws meanings from these alterations, so instead of experiencing reality, one experiences the alterations/changes in the body providing perception as experience, the mind provides the meaning. All of this process is reaction, the organisms/individuals reactions become for the physcial world causes affecting the physical world as a condition. and in reciprocation the changed conditions of the physcial world again and forever alter the state of the organism/individual. This is call reciprocal causation, and it is an endless cycle. Life, biology, is an island upon itself for life is the measure and the meaning of all things. in the absence of biological consciounss,the world is utterly meaningless. All organisms are reactive organisms inculding humanity. It this were not so, adaptation through evolutionary processes would not be possiable, and there is one thing an organism/human cannot do, and that is, to NOT react to its environment, for it is its environment by means of this reciprocal causation.

[Lacewing]

...

That makes sense. It's all interwoven. One movement or change brings about another. Like wind or ocean currents.

Some thoughts that arise for me...

1) Our ability to choose/affect our 'reactions': We are not actually blown about helplessly -- we can choose among different reactions which can affect/alter our environment significantly. We are therefore co-creators of our 'reality' (at least to some degree) -- like actors arriving upon a stage, helping to write the story and script, and acting it all out.

2) Our ability to manifest aspects of our reality/environment: Even if we are seemingly just biological blobs in an evolutionary process, there is clearly more at work than 'cause and effect'. Some blobs inexplicably see and create the unfathomable -- as if there is some other accessible non-physical network of capability that some have more ready access to.

3) Is there a 'collective body/organism/consciousness' that is evolving? Everything in biology is made up of many parts. Why would we think that many humans, themselves, are the finished product? What do our combined parts represent? Are we the element of cosmic consciousness that's a confused, drunken actor seeking its stage?

[Dubious]

The mind is a secondary organ that serves the body; put another way, the body is the mind's first idea as an interface to the physical world. The body created the mind; the mind did not create the body. Consciousness is the enterplay of body and mind, but this process does not mean that the individual experiences reality. Reality/the energies that surround us alter the sensing body and the mind draws meanings from these alterations, so instead of experiencing reality, one experiences the alterations/changes in the body providing perception as experience, the mind provides the meaning. All of this process is reaction, the organisms/individuals reactions become for the physcial world causes affecting the physical world as a condition. and in reciprocation the changed conditions of the physcial world again and forever alter the state of the organism/individual. This is call reciprocal causation, and it is an endless cycle. Life, biology, is an island upon itself for life is the measure and the meaning of all things. in the absence of biological consciounss,the world is utterly meaningless. All organisms are reactive organisms inculding humanity. It this were not so, adaptation through evolutionary processes would not be possiable, and there is one thing an organism/human cannot do, and that is, to NOT react to its environment, for it is its environment by means of this reciprocal causation.

Excellent synopsis and well expressed. It is the earth itself which has both caused and maintained us. The god of creation (our creation and all that ever lived on earth) are those processes the planet itself was made capable of providing, solely by coincidence, and not by any grossly simplistic, idiotically religious Let There Be command.

All of this progression - if we may call it that - results in an insurmountable equivalence. What we do to IT concludes in a fate for everything living on it. That old adage, what goes around, comes around is the kind of global guarantee, forced into certainty by its own utterly impersonal logic, what the reaction of the planet will be on the proceedings of its most intelligent life form.

The mind itself consists only as a virtual reality, a type of fugue organism of how the separate strands of reality superimpose themselves as a conceptual edition of time, place and circumstance. As the brain's summarization instrument, the mind becomes inherently responsible for all the distortions due to the necessity of having to service the moment. That's when the long time intervals between cause and effect force our actions to become incongruent, no-longer in sync with the regular operations of nature.

No point in debating who loses.