Anyone overlooking the ancient Indian philosophical (or spiritual depending on the way you look at it) literature, a.k.a The Upanishads, is being ignorant about consciousness studies.<p>The term "Chit" (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cit_(consciousness)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cit_(consciousness)</a>) was introduced by The Upanishads for referring to consciousness/awareness long before any of the modern philosophers did so.<p>For more info: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfUXXKB_G_Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfUXXKB_G_Q</a>
I’m personally fascinated by Julian Jaynes’ <i>The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind</i> that posits that humans had an innate ability to reason linguistically but that it was disjointed from their everyday living experience until some point in the historical record. Richard Dawkins famously commented “It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius; Nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets.’.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)</a>
While the argument that our self-models and social models evolved from our early "covert attention" mechanisms may in fact be valid, it still doesn't explain what consciousness is. Without introducing panpsychism [1], these explanations of consciousness fall prey to the Chinese Room argument [2].<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room</a>
> What is the adaptive value of consciousness? When did it evolve and what animals have it?<p>That's a very good question, what is the first thing our evolutionary ancestors ever did, the first thought they ever had that made them different from all other species on the planet and deemed us sentient?<p>Or is the question of consciousness purely a philosophical one? since we can't really define the difference between humans and other species? Or can we?
I didn’t read the entire thread of previous discussion. The referenced article is consistent with the work of Thomas Metzinger who wrote a very accessible book called “The Ego Tunnel” as a follow on to his more detailed and scholarly treatise “Being No One”<p>He introduced me to the ideas in this paper that he induced from his own observations of his “mystical” experiences.<p>It is fascinating to realize these self models exist in a wide variety of animals and the modeling of others is what makes some animals different.<p>In “Sapiens” <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Sapiens.html" rel="nofollow">https://books.google.com/books/about/Sapiens.html</a><p>Yuval Harari argues that Homo sapiens took over all other Homo species because of the development of “myth” which may be related to the Hyperactive attribution of consciousness referenced in the article. Humans cooperate at scale much better than any other species (but also fight at scale more aggressively) because we can communicate about abstractions.<p>Very interesting inter-related ideas.
> The tectum is a beautiful piece of engineering. To control the head and the eyes efficiently, it constructs something called an internal model, a feature well known to engineers. An internal model is a simulation that keeps track of whatever is being controlled and allows for predictions and planning. The tectum’s internal model is a set of information encoded in the complex pattern of activity of the neurons. That information simulates the current state of the eyes, head, and other major body parts, making predictions about how these body parts will move next and about the consequences of their movement. For example, if you move your eyes to the right, the visual world should shift across your retinas to the left in a predictable way. The tectum compares the predicted visual signals to the actual visual input, to make sure that your movements are going as planned. These computations are extraordinarily complex and yet well worth the extra energy for the benefit to movement control. In fish and amphibians, the tectum is the pinnacle of sophistication and the largest part of the brain. A frog has a pretty good simulation of itself.<p>There is actually an immense amount of meditation on this very notion of an internal model, antecedent to the modern concept of consciousness we've been discussing since Kant, which guides a life form, from Aristotle down to St. Thomas Aquinas. See Daniel Heller-Roazen's "The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation"
Define "consciousness".<p>Edit: The article makes an attempt, and posits that it is this <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory</a>
> "Data from my own lab suggests that the cortical networks in the human brain that allow us to attribute consciousness to others overlap extensively with the networks that construct our own sense of consciousness."<p>That agrees with my guess that attribution to others came first, and our own is an accidental byproduct: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23475069" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23475069</a>
Discussed at the time: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11849621" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11849621</a>
From The Atlantic article:<p>"In the AST [...] was further adapted to model the attentional states of others, to allow for social prediction. Not only could the brain attribute consciousness to itself, it began to attribute consciousness to others."<p>On the face of it this AST theory would nicely support Susan Blackmore's work on the `meme`.<p>Recall Dawkins first proposed the meme, because he thought the gene was such a powerful mechanism there must be other similarly algorithmic mechanisms in nature.<p>In her 1999 book on the subject Blackmore proposed the theory `imitation` is at the heart of the evolution of human theory of mind<p>"...if you want to know whether that huge male gorilla is likely to attack you if you try to mate with this attractive female, you should try to imagine what you would do in the same situation." (Blackmore, 73.3)<p>"'Arms races' are common in biology, as when predators evolve to run ever faster to catch their faster prey, or parasites evolve to outwit the immune systems of their hosts." (Blackmore, 74.2)<p>"The turning point was when early hominids began to imitate each other. The origins of imitation itself are lost in our far past, but the selective (genetic) advantage of imitation is no mystery. [...] If your neighbor has learned something really useful - like which foods to eat and which to avoid [...] it may pay (in biological terms) to copy him. You can then avoid all the slow and potentially dangerous process of trying out new foods for yourself." (Blackmore, 75.3)<p>"I suggested imitation requires three skills: making decisions about what to imitate, complex transformations from one point of view to another, and the production of matching bodily actions. These basic skills, or at least the beginnings of them, are available in many primates and were probably available to our ancestors of 5 million years ago. Primates have good motor control and hand coordination, and good general intelligence which would enable them to classify actions and decide what to imitate. Some of them can imagine events and manipulate them mentally [...] and, most notably, they have [social intelligence] and the beginnings of a theory of mind." (Blackmore, 75.5)<p>Seems this AST theory would offer Darwinian continuity and fill gaps in the qualitative theories of mind between other organisms and the exceptional human condition.<p>Blackmore, Susan. The Meme Machine. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. (1999)<p>Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. (1976)
Regarding the self-model, when we "identify" with a person, a fictional character, a group, an idea or an ideal, how literally true can it be?
I like the Gom Jabbar theory: "You are never more alive, more awake, more conscious, than when in excruciating conflict with yourself" <a href="https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=791" rel="nofollow">https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=791</a>
As a proposal, would consciousness not come about once a species starts becoming _maladapted_ to its environment?<p>As the population dies out only those with consciousness and... I hesitate to say... smarts survive.<p>This would have to happen an untold number of times for us to get where we are today.
As far as I can tell, consciousness is just empathy for the self. I am conscious of myself in the same way I'm conscious of others (he's happy, he's angry, he's reliable etc). Of course being conscious of (and empathetic towards) others is a vital part of being a complex social animal like humans. So consciousness as we experience it is just a side effect of empathy which is selected for by evolution because it allows the sort of complex and limited cooperation humans use to survive.<p>I have never seen anyone else say any of this. So maybe I'm missing some deeper revelation...
Too many people philosophize over how "consciousness" evolved. Too few work on how "common sense" evolved.<p>Common sense can be usefully defined as the ability to predict the consequences of one's actions before doing them. That has clear survival value. AI systems are currently terrible at it. This is a reasonably well defined hard problem.