I want to hear thoughts on consciousness. I have my own theories (on the matter of what it is and how it came about) and am quite resolute in that I think they are correct. But I’ve engaged enough with my own opinions for a lifetime, I want to hear others. Everyone seems to have a unique and interesting take on the matter. Is it’s existence purely conceptual, or does it have some physical manifestation? Did it come about via evolution? How? If not, then how so? Is it something that exists only in humans, or do other animals have different levels of consciousness? Biological byproduct or an inherent force of the universe? If so, how did we harness it? Give me your thoughts. I may respond in kind if I feel so inclined.
Why do we behave as if we’re conscious, talk about our conscious experience, and consider it to be an important concept?
Our minds are to a large extent predictive machines, they try to form a model of what we will experience next, which means forming a model of the world, which means forming a model of ourselves. Not just our minds though, the smaller components of our minds tend to do the same thing, they form a model of the landscape in which they operate, trying to predict what other parts they connect to will do next and how they themselves will respond, and components of those components, all the way down to individual neural circuits. At each level we have a degree of self-referentiality built in, as well as references to both lower and higher level systems.
Why should such a system be built like that at smaller levels of description? One reason is that it’s useful, related modules may benefit from having the capabilities of their counterparts. If you’re a doctor it might make sense to know a thing or two about physics, to absorb some of the intuition of a physicist at least, or in other words to have a shitty but cheap model of how a full time physicist might approach a problem. It might also make sense to have models of the institution employing you, and certainly it makes sense to understand yourself and the parts of your body so you can better understand your patients.
The other is that it aids in learning by way of providing constant feedback. A cortical column is rather alienated from the life experience of its doctor host, it will be very difficult for a brain to route feedback for how its behavior affected long term patient care back to such a tiny part so that part can learn to be a better aide, easier but still difficult to route feedback for predicted patient outcome, as it’s closer in time, but if part of its job is to predict itself, its direct neighbors, and the larger circuit it belongs to, getting feedback is going to be a lot easier, it comes immediately and in high fidelity. This all pervading self referentiality and self contextualization is a basic fact of our architecture, since we require to model ourselves at a high level it is not surprising that it forms an important concept for us, which we have given the name consciousness.
Yeah but why does it actually feel like something to be alive, like from the inside, like I actually have qualia I swear. Also, why should my experience be broken into discreet moments, why do they flow from one to the next in order, why does this moment I’m experiencing now specifically seem to be privileged above the future and past ones?
No idea.