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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!princeton!mind!harnad
From: harnad@mind.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Evolution of consciousness
Message-ID: <552@mind.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Feb-87 23:14:52 EST
Article-I.D.: mind.552
Posted: Sun Feb 22 23:14:52 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Feb-87 18:37:53 EST
Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University
Lines: 34
Keywords: function, cause, epiphenomenon
Xref: watmath comp.ai:251 comp.cog-eng:68


DAVIS%EMBL.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu wrote on mod.ai:

>	Sure - there is no advantage in a conscious system doing what can
>	be done unconciously. BUT, and its a big but, if the system that
>	gets to do trick X first *just happens* to be conscious, then all
>	future systems evolving from that one will also be conscious.

I couldn't ask for a stronger concession to methodological epiphenomenalism.

>	In fact, it may not even be an accident - when you
>	consider the sort of complexity involved in building a `turing-
>	indistinguishable' automaton, versus the slow, steady progress possible
>	with an evolving, concious system, it may very well be that the ONLY
>	reason for the existence of conscious systems is that they are
>	*easier* to build within an evolutionary, biochemical context.

Now it sounds like you're taking it back. 

>	Hence, we have no real reason to suppose that there is a 'why' to be
>	answered.

You'll have to make up your mind. But as long as anyone proposes a
conscious interpretation of a functional "how" story, I must challenge
the interpretation by asking a functional "why?", and Occam's razor
will be cutting with me, not with my opponent. It is not the existence
of consciousness that's at issue (of course it exists) but its
functional explanation and the criteria for inferring that it is
present in cases other than one's own.
-- 

Stevan Harnad                                  (609) - 921 7771
{allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard}  !princeton!mind!harnad
harnad%mind@princeton.csnet