What do you mean by mind? You appear to agree with Poor Bill's implicit assumption that the 'mind' is something that can, or even does, exist independently of the brain.d63 wrote:We have to look at the way that evolution started with simple nervous systems, evolved into brains, then into the mind.
Well, Poor Bill has occasionally tried to persuade us that 'organized labor' is potentially some sort of new religion, but it depends what you mean by 'conservative'. A lot of what you say about people with political views that are labelled Conservative is well observed, but while it is true that political Conservatives at their worst are pretty much as you describe, there is also temperamental and intellectual conservatism, which is the reluctance or inability to entertain ideas other than your own. In that regard, Poor Bill has shown little or no capacity to learn and responds with derision and contempt to any challenge to his facile proclamations.d63 wrote:(and I know Bill to be a staunch anti-conservative because I actually wrote one of my more finished pieces in response to points made by him on another board.
I think the survival instinct is common to most creatures and if anything, consciousness is counterproductive. Poor Bill has posted several threads about the futility of existence, the misery of life and the pointlessness of having children. By his own admission he intoxicates his brain just to make life bearable, a practise that is also likely to make it shorter. It is his consciousness that drives him to do so, contrary to your claim.d63 wrote:We should think of it in terms of that evolutionary process in which our higher cognitive functions have worked in the service of our baser impulses (the competitive model (and what has gotten us to this point thus far. And consciousness would be an evolutionary by-product of that in that it would make sense to create a consciousness in order to give the body all that more reason to protect itself.