X-Message-Number: 11783 Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 16:12:41 -0400 From: Brook Norton <> Subject: consciousness and evolution Daniel Crevier says >If you believe that all of this can happen without consciousness, you are forced to admit that consciousness is what philosophers call an 'epiphenomenon'. It is something that is generated by the physical world, but has no effect whatsoever on it. If you believe that, you must also believe that to generate true consciousness you need, above and beyond the machinery that generates the mere appearances of consciousness, additional mechanisms. Robert Ettinger thinks you need something that 'binds time and space'. Whatever that means, it does no sound like something simple to do. The paradox is this one: we are products of natural evolution, and evo- lution is parsimonious. It does not do anything without a reason. If those complex mechanisms required to bind space and time do not provide any evolutionary advantage, why do we have them? Daniel Crevier< Biological brains require consciousness as part of the data processing engine. An emulation of a brain uses various circuitry to achieve the same data processing without the need for consciousness. They are two different ways to skin a cat. Neither way carries any extra baggage beyond that necessary to do the data processing. Brook Norton Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11783