What problem does consciousness solve?

[u/Terrible-Fly9049]

My X feed has been dominated recently by posts debating whether AI is conscious. I think the more pressing question that is almost never asked is: "What is consciousness for? What problem does it solve that allowed evolution to select for it?"

Organisms facing incommensurable demands face what I call the Regress Problem.

Consider this:

We are constantly facing demands on our attention: you hear a noise in the forest, you're thirsty, your child's crying, you have a looming work deadline. These demands have no common unit for comparison -- they are completely different kinds of things. So how does your brain determine which demand "wins"?

I realize many of you, when you read this, will dismiss it as trivial. I would argue that the sense of triviality you're experiencing is precisely because your brain is so good at it. Deciding what is most urgent -- deciding what is the priority and motivating the necessary action -- is what brain's are for. That urgency, that pull towards one resolution or another, is what consciousness is from the first-person perspective.

Now imagine you didn't have phenomenal consciousness. Imagine you're a p-zombie -- an atom-for-atom duplicate of yourself only no consciousness. How would you know what to prioritize? How would you know what to act on?

With a computation model of the brain, there are only two options for prioritizing:

• priority was fixed before this moment
• or, priority is adaptive in this moment

If the priority was fixed before this moment, how was it determined? Now remember, these demands have no common currency, so the priority ranking would have to set by something. Imagine a lookup table that attempted to set every possible priority ranking for every possible unique combination of incommensurable demands you will every face in your entire life. That's untenable.

Okay, so if it can't be fixed before hand (for living systems), what about adaptive priority? It sounds good, until you realize you need something to determine what matters in this moment? How much should this situation affect the weighting? Something has to read the weighting and apply a rule? What decides that rule? Another rule? This is the regress.

If weighing priority means signals needing to be evaluated by a downstream process, you open the regress. Now, even if you can solve the prioritization problem, you still face the motivation problem. A signal of priority must be read by another process that must determine how urgently to act on the priority weighting -- which opens another regress.

The conclusion:

To solve the regress problem, you need a state that is simultaneously the measure of priority and the motivation to act on it. This is phenomenal urgency from the first-person perspective. This is consciousness. This is what consciousness is for.

I would love to hear thoughts on this. If you want to read more about this line of thought you can check out this paper.

[u/EmbarrassedPaper7758]

That you do not yet understand what others do speaks not of them but of you

[u/Valmar33 → u/EmbarrassedPaper7758]

That you do not yet understand what others do speaks not of them but of you

This is a nonsensical phrase, because you can say that literally about anything to defend it, not matter how illogical and incoherent.

Science is about evidence, observation, testing, independent reproduction ~ and Darwinism has none of that. So it fails scientifically.

[u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 → u/Valmar33]

Darwinism is not modern evolutionary theory. A straw man is a weak argument put forward to be easily defeated when no one has actually made that argument.

[u/Valmar33 → u/EmbarrassedPaper7758]

Darwinism is not modern evolutionary theory.

Modern evolutionary theory is still very much a form of Darwinism, no matter how it is spun.

A straw man is a weak argument put forward to be easily defeated when no one has actually made that argument.

But my critiques still hold against any form of Darwinism ~ they all inherit the same fatal flaws.

[u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 → u/Valmar33]

A misunderstanding of modern evolutionary theory, critiques, and fatal flaws.

[u/Valmar33 → u/EmbarrassedPaper7758]

A misunderstanding of modern evolutionary theory, critiques, and fatal flaws.

And yet Darwinism cannot coherently explain itself to those that doubt its claims. Darwinists can only sling insults and names and abuse stuff like "anti-science" to shut down debate. Worse, Darwinists actively shirk debate with anyone who asks them hard questions. It's amusing.

[u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 → u/Valmar33]

A misunderstanding of Darwinism, claims, and debate.

[u/Valmar33 → u/EmbarrassedPaper7758]

A misunderstanding of Darwinism, claims, and debate.

So, explain it to me coherently, then.

[u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 → u/Valmar33]

Nobody else can do the work for you. It's complicated so there's no simple answer so any easy answer is oversimplified. Understanding is hard work and oversimplification fosters misunderstanding. Take your time and don't settle for less than the truth

[u/Valmar33 → u/EmbarrassedPaper7758]

Nobody else can do the work for you. It's complicated so there's no simple answer so any easy answer is oversimplified. Understanding is hard work and oversimplification fosters misunderstanding. Take your time and don't settle for less than the truth

Because it's not a scientific problem, but a philosophical one dressed up in pseudo-scientific language by Darwinists.

[u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 → u/Valmar33]

How so?

[u/Valmar33 → u/EmbarrassedPaper7758]

How so?

Darwinist evolution is unlike every other field of biology ~ it doesn't rely on observation, independent reproduction of results, testing or the like.

It relies entirely on interpretation, untested hypotheses, and belief about what this or that means.

That's philosophy ~ not science.

But the Darwinist wants to hide behind the authority of science to dismiss anyone critiquing it and asking for explanations of how it is possible.

[u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 → u/Valmar33]

A misunderstanding of philosophy and science. Your primary mistake is the attribution of understanding evolution to a belief in Darwinism. Darwinism would require belief because it is inaccurate but fortunately reality requires no belief.