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From: rbg@cbosgd.UUCP (Richard Goldschmidt)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Consciousness
Message-ID: <127@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 15-Jul-84 16:31:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.127
Posted: Sun Jul 15 16:31:15 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Jul-84 01:26:19 EDT
References: <1196@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
Lines: 36

>	Alan Algustyniak   (sdccsu3!sdcrdcf!alan)
>	I believe that if i was more aware of what i was deciding to do,
>and why, i would be more productive and successful, probably maximizing
>my long-term happiness far better than i do.

Perhaps you would just spend more time thinking about totally trivial events,
and never getting to higher levels of abstraction.

>And i suspect that Nature selects for those who
>are more aware of their existence than others.

I don't think it is awareness per se which is selected for.  Your 
consciousness acts as a filter, to detect novelty, or stimuli relevant to
a problem, thought or memory.  It is very valuable to ignore unimportant
things (if they really are unimportant!).  Tuning in to a single conversation
at a loud cocktail party is one example of the filter at work (you can pick
which conversation to hear).  You might ignore the pain of running barefoot
over rough ground (not to mention all the details of how you do it - which
muscles to move and when...) if you knew that getting to a tree and up it
fast might save your life.  

The interesting question is how do you detect novelty or relevancy?  It is
something that happens very fast.  Analysis of eye movements in primates
shows that they detect novel stimuli and track them differently in a matter
of roughly 100 milliseconds.  

I think it is the quality of this filter which is one of the features being 
selected, just as better sensory and motor systems are selected in some 
environments (look out for the offspring of the flies that get away...).
But is important to remember that nature doesn't select for single features,
but for the combinations of features that genetic recombination deals out.
If I had to choose one which I thought was the most important to the success
of homo sapiens I would choose the adaptations related to language including
changes in larynx, brain and social structure.

Rich Goldschmidt    cbosgd!rbg