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[GAMETA]

Well, consciousness VERY special. Incredibly rare beyond comprehension. Animals may possess it but in the grand scheme of how many living things have existed, animals or not, it is incredibly rare. And as humans, we are the only ones capable of studying what consciousness is and what other creatures may possess it and so on and so on.

Is it, though? We know of at least 5-6 mammals that can recognize themselves in a mirror. The notion of self existence is consciousnesses.

 

[Tesseract]

the hancock appraoch is nice but doesn't account for the billion year forces that arose autonomously from relatively uniform states, doesn't solve the comp and decomp approaches to mind and matter with high electrical resistivity, doesn't lockstep the failings of entropy in closed systems such that input is irrevocably impaired (repaired) if and when a sequence of presentation is altered

i'm still torn what's right here, but to me the secret sauce is tied to electrical impedance of the brain of bistable perceptions

if the neuralink team aren't already aware of this, they soon will be when higher-order bandwidth gets a moonshot

 

[GobbledeeGoo]

Is it, though? We know of at least 5-6 mammals that can recognize themselves in a mirror. The notion of self existence is consciousnesses.

5-6 mammals out of how many mammals? And then we developed physically to allow for intricate things like weaving to planting to building and languages that allowed for us the opportunity for people to spend time studying and contemplating and so on. Sort of a ripple effect; a sum of all its parts.

 

[GAMETA]

I didn't say I agreed with it, but so far I've given more detail and argument as to why consciousness came naturally from apes than anyone else in the thread. I'd ilke to see similar attempts to at least explain how our concsiousness came to exist. Please base the explanation on actual knowledge of pre-human development (I made an attempt lol).

So far all I hear are plausible explanations. Evolutionary science in particular really really loves its plausible explanations, but this has led to assumptions that later turned out to be completely incorrect.

I think consciousnesses is simply a product of intelligence. You can think of consciousness as the capacity to understand you exist, and I think many many animals possess that, including dogs.

We often use the image in the mirror as a basic test, but we're limiting the test only to sight when other animals actually use other senses as their main. A dog is capable of ignoring it's own scent, doesn't that mean it knows it has it's own smell? Isn't that too a trait of consciousness?

So you see, I think the idea of consciousness is simply a product of higher intelligence and higher perception of the surroundings, including the self.

 

[GAMETA]

5-6 mammals out of how many mammals? And then we developed physically to allow for intricate things like weaving to planting to building and languages that allowed for us the opportunity for people to spend time studying and contemplating and so on. Our fingers have nothing to do with consciousness but they had an indirect impact on our consciousness. Like I said, a sum of all our parts.

5-6 that we know of based on our limited testing that basically only tests sight when know other animals are guided by other senses.

Then the sum of all parts, yes, of course, it's accumulated knowledge and capacity, which goes back to this post I did earlier:

I think you overestimate the human capacity, man.

Animals are very capable of understanding basic logic such as "push this button to get food" and even more complex instructions. We have animals escaping mazes, dolphins helping fishermen to "hunt" fish, mamals raising other species cubs, etc. Other primates have shown capacity to utilize tools and ponder on its usage, and elephants have shown capacity to feel, to communicate, to mourn loved ones, as well as recognize and amuse themselves and basic tool and logic usage.

Are we superior? Sure, but the human capacity today lies solely on the accumulation of information and technology. You look at our tech today and imagine we're far superior, but reality is, all this tech is based on very basic principles we discovered in nature throughout the ages and accumulated, and, had the information been completely lost, we'd lose the capacity to do create such tech...

From a technical point of view, you can think of CPU processors as an example: Without the previous versions of CPUs we wouldn't be able to create new ones. The complexity is far beyond what humans can do naturally, but it's possible with the accumulation of technology.

There's also the fact that not every human is capable of such feats. Very few exceptional humans created and figured out things that helped evolve human tech and behavior as a whole, and from there, the technology was adapted to be understood by other humans.

How many humans can create a light bulb? How many can learn how to flip a switch? A dog can flip a switch too. You can notice that in kids and how easily they learn how to use technology that's been made for human usage and consumption, but when it comes to creating it, things change completely. The basic functions of our intelligence are the same as those found in animals, so are our capabilities of feeling, and I'd say even our notion of consciousness can be found in other mammals like elephants and dolphins.

I don't think there's anything unusual or special about human intelligence. It's not different than animal intelligence in essence, just more developed.

 

[Tesseract]

there's increasing evidence that even ants pass the mirror test, such as it is

 

[GobbledeeGoo]

I think consciousnesses is simply a product of intelligence. You can think of consciousness as the capacity to understand you exist, and I think many many animals possess that, including dogs.

We often use the image in the mirror as a basic test, but we're limiting the test only to sight when other animals actually use other senses as their main. A dog is capable of ignoring it's own scent, doesn't that mean it knows it has it's own smell? Isn't that too a trait of consciousness?

So you see, I think the idea of consciousness is simply a product of higher intelligence and higher perception of the surroundings, including the self.

Yes but thei

5-6 that we know of based on our limited testing that basically only tests sight when know other animals are guided by other senses.

Then the sum of all parts, yes, of course, it's accumulated knowledge and capacity, which goes back to this post I did earlier:

The dog knows it exists, but is it capable of asking why? Does their language allow them to discuss these things?

 

[LordKasual]

1) The inability to reason doesn't lead to extinction. Alligators are dumb as fuck and are doing just fine.

2) Any higher-dimensional intelligence would be as unrecognizable to us as we are to an ant, or an ant is to an amoeba.

A creature residing in just one extra spacial dimension alone would perceive 4D "objects" as a collection of 3D areas, the same we define 3D objects as a collection of 2D planes. That alone is pretty much impossible for us to wrap our minds around, and an intelligence that can operate in this space is completely beyond the limits of human perception.

3) as for the discussion on self-awareness, intelligence, and consciousness:

 

[GobbledeeGoo]

I'd like a plausible explanation of consciousness that explains how it came to exist instead of just saying how it's nothing special because animals have some facets of it, too.

Here's a plausible explanation I've heard, for example of what I have in mind:

At some time in the past and over the course of many years, our monkey ancestors ate psychotropic and neutropic mushrooms (which still exist today have effects today on biologically-modern humans). These mushrooms killed some monkeys, and others experienced strange hallucinations with symbolic imagery of past events in the monkey's memory. The monkey race slowly gained symbolic representation as they ate shrooms and tripped out to jumbled symbolic images as their brains attempted to return to chemical equilibrium. Over time, the brain-damaging use of drugs caused the monkey's brains to grow bigger in certain ways until they one day became self-aware by stumbling upon the metaphysical, a priori concept of the 'self'. With a 'self' follows the expansion of the brain to communicate ideas linguistically and artistically. Over time the success of this tool called 'language' encouraged the monkey-brains to keep growing in certain ways until we reach the biologically-modern human with a fully-formed consciousness and 'self'.

See, that wasn't so hard. I farted out a pop-science explanation for human consciousness without breaking a sweat. How much of it is rooted in science, though?

I mean, consciousness coming into existence indirectly seems on the level as specks of dust accumulating to form larger pieces and larger pieces until you have a planet. The amount of times things didn't come to existence is damn near infinitely higher than them coming to fruition.

 

[Airola]

there's increasing evidence that even ants pass the mirror test, such as it is

And even more!

 

[GobbledeeGoo]

And even more!

I started watching that and turned it off after like 20 minutes because I wasn't in a mood. Should I go back to it?

 

[haxan7]

That’s some David Icke level crazy.

 

[Airola]

I started watching that and turned it off after like 20 minutes because I wasn't in a mood. Should I go back to it?

It's great! Give it another chance.

 

[LordKasual]

The dog knows it exists, but is it capable of asking why? Does their language allow them to discuss these things?

in what context does this ability become important or substantial to life?

 

[GobbledeeGoo]

in what context does this ability become important or substantial to life?

It doesn't? What does music or painting or movies have to do with existing?

 

[GAMETA]

Yes but thei


The dog knows it exists, but is it capable of asking why? Does their language allow them to discuss these things?

Maybe they "simply" don't have the tools to do so. What you said about the fingers is an interesting thought.

Maybe, just like we do with the accumulated knowledge and technology, the physical traits of a species and its ability to change, explore and interact with its environment result in cumulative knowledge that will dictate it's capacity to abstract.

So maybe intelligence is the product of capability of inspection (exploration/interaction/dexterity) and capability to process information, meaning one's ability to think is also determined by its ability to interact and vice-versa.

The human superiority mystery then would be no mystery at all, we just happen to be a species that has the "native" tools to better interact with the world, resulting in higher abstraction.

 

[GobbledeeGoo]

Maybe they "simply" don't have the tools to do so. What you said about the fingers is an interesting thought.

Maybe, just like we do with the accumulated knowledge and technology, the physical traits of a species and its ability to change, explore and interact with its environment result in cumulative knowledge that will dictate it's capacity to abstract.

So maybe intelligence is the product of capability of inspection (exploration/interaction/dexterity) and capability to process information, meaning one's ability to think is also determined by its ability to interact and vice-versa.

The human superiority mystery then would be no mystery at all, we just happen to be a species that has the "native" tools to better interact with the world, resulting in higher abstraction.

At this moment, we are the superior species but we have so many flaws and limitations that we will be replaced with something superior. Potentially through artificial means but it'll happen.

 

[LordKasual]

It doesn't? What does music or painting or movies have to do with existing?

speaking of context, i think i completely missed the context of that post i quoted lol

I'd like a plausible explanation of consciousness that explains how it came to exist instead of just saying how it's nothing special because animals have some facets of it, too.

Here's a plausible explanation I've heard, for example of what I have in mind:

At some time in the past and over the course of many years, our monkey ancestors ate psychotropic and neutropic mushrooms (which still exist today have effects today on biologically-modern humans). These mushrooms killed some monkeys, and others experienced strange hallucinations with symbolic imagery of past events in the monkey's memory. The monkey race slowly gained symbolic representation as they ate shrooms and tripped out to jumbled symbolic images as their brains attempted to return to chemical equilibrium. Over time, the brain-damaging use of drugs caused the monkey's brains to grow bigger in certain ways until they one day became self-aware by stumbling upon the metaphysical, a priori concept of the 'self'. With a 'self' follows the expansion of the brain to communicate ideas linguistically and artistically. Over time the success of this tool called 'language' encouraged the monkey-brains to keep growing in certain ways until we reach the biologically-modern human with a fully-formed consciousness and 'self'.

See, that wasn't so hard. I farted out a pop-science explanation for human consciousness without breaking a sweat. How much of it is rooted in science, though?

There's no reason why consciousness or even high intelligence would require some kind of special conditions like that to evolve. I'm pretty sure there are no shrooms to trip on under the ocean and dolphins/octopuses gained self-awareness just fine.

The most likely explanation to your question isn't that consciousness isn't special because other animals have it...but it's not special because it's not actually a thing.

consciousness is probably just an emergent effect of sufficient processing power and memory. The only thing we'd really need to evolve is a general problem solving algorithm, which natural selection seems to.....well, naturally lean towards. Creatures do not need very much information processing power in order to eat, hunt, seek shelter, and survive.


The more i look at the results of Machine Learning, the less and less special consciousness appears to be.

Using neural networks, which are modeled after our own brain function, you can simply give machine learning algorithms a basic task/problem/game to solve, and given enough time it will learn how to master it.

Take that same algorithm and install it in a machine that treats REALITY as its learning environment (and not a videogame / set of pictures / sandbox) and i imagine it would eventually learn how to mimic humans to some degree. Not that it would BE human (QUITE the opposite), but i think it would eventually be conscious....or indistinguishable from such.


The thing that makes humans seem "ALIVE" has less to do with our processing power, and more to do with the complexity of how we choose to apply it.

Humans have a very basic utility function (stay alive) but it's the things personal to our lives (that interact with our basic programming) that cause us to look/feel "alive" compared to other creatures.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

So if I am understanding you, we infer that the trait of consciousness must have evolved because humans have it now and humans evolved. The humans that didn't have it must have been 'overloaded' (though we have no physical example or any discrete explanation of how this would take place or why they would die out).

Well. That doesn't explain the origins of consciousness. If you can point to a portion of the human body that encompasses "consciousness" and then show me how our current consciousness differs from that of a pre-man ape 10 million years ago, I will begin to understand your line of thinking. What part of the brain would have been overloaded by the information? It still doesn't explain why the brain invented a 'self' to help contain this chaos.

And I'm not trying to set up an impossible question just to cross my arms and smirk. Let's imagine you have perfect knowledge. What would be the pieces of information you currently have and the blanks that you still need to fill in with facts to come to your conclusion that consciousness evolved as a natural trait?

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, it boils down to one dividing question: is consciousness a distinct phenomenon, unexplainable by the total knowledge of all biological parts used in the process of generating consciousness?

With perfect knowledge of how the human brain operates, would we be able to explain consciousness?

Or to put the same ancient question yet another way: assuming you had perfect working knowledge of the human brain and could explain how all its neurons interacted, could we come to the scientific conclusion that all aspects of consciousness are rooted in physical properties? We would discover that no metaphysical or otherwise external influence or imprinting is necessary for human consicousness, that's the argument of materialism.

The nihilistic and absurd implications of what I describe above are philosophical questions, not rooted in empirical reality, so I want to make sure I understand the position in its own scientific terms.


In a manner of speaking, sure, you could say that all scales of the universe operate along the same patterns and equations, from the largest to the smallest particles, from the weakest to the most destructive releases of energy. This doesn't mean that a dust mote is actually a universe with people inside thinking these thoughts. I don't believe in a multiverse (but I'm happy to be convinced otherwise).


A "goal of existing" implies an arrow of time and entropy. Do either of these exist in the world of physics? We can observe their effects, but can you prove them in the same way that we would prove a higher/lower dimension or a 'consciousness'?


The cell's version of "conceptualizing" would be when it is responding mechanically to stimulus, that's it. The cell doesn't possess the biology to self-reflect on its own behavior, or its own biology, or its existence. The cell is still guided unknowingly by certain a priori instincts like the need to reproduce, the need to seek nutrients, the need to defend, and so forth. Chemicals don't decide whether or not to defend themselves. Minerals don't seek to reproduce. These behaviors cannot be explained simply by the physical structures and the chemical interactions that carry out the behaviors, even on a microscopic, single-celled level.

My answers will be short because I'm on the mobile.

I don't have knowledge of any kind other than my own guesses based on what I understand of evolution and what I read in 'Sapiens' about the origin of consciousness, as we understand it today.

In the book Sapiens, the Author states that the best explanation for hominids without conscious thought (the example he uses is Neanderthal man) is that, while they looked human, they had the same ability as apes, monkeys etc, in that they react to natural stimuli but can't process thoughts, ideas of future problems. For example, could you convince a monkey to give up his only banana on the promise that he would get 100 bananas in monkey heaven?

The evolution part comes from how evolution happens, which we know so I'll skip that part. The missing link between the Monkey-brained neanderthals and the conscious homo-sapiens, must be, in my mind, failed attempts at pure consciousness.

I see at this, imagine if you gave a monkey the power of thought and imagination. If that monkey, by the flick of a switch could think, feel and imagine all of what has happened to him. All of that emotion - which is just chemicals released from different parts of the brain - being released en masse would kill it outright.

Now let's say you're a new born hominid with a half/half consciousness (nature hasn't perfected it yet) you could potentially survive the first few moments of life before the rush of natural stimuli floods your consciousness and again, frying your brain in chemicals.

With us though, all of our natural stimuli reactions are dealt with by the mammalian brain; fight or flight, muscle twitches, movement of the body, or by the reptilian brain; which drives the desire for food, sleep, sex and air. Our consciousness is then responsible for filtering excess natural stimuli or though patterns, which simplifies the 3 million bits of data per second, down to about 120 bits, so that the brain can manage. Without this cognitive brain, we couldn't begin to do half of the complex tasks we do.

Somewhere between monkey-brain and us must have been a half way creature/race that lived pretty short lives or died outright because of the conditions. Unless they managed to retreat to somewhere where natural stimuli is at a minimum; underground.

I suppose that wasn't so short, or coherent Billymadisonnopoints. Gif

 

[Tesseract]

That’s some David Icke level crazy.

it's really not tho, that's what the elites believe (minus the flights of fancy)

 

[triplestation]

 

[Dontero]

Since you say "according to theory" How about you post that theory ?

 

[SKM1]

speaking of context, i think i completely missed the context of that post i quoted lol



There's no reason why consciousness or even high intelligence would require some kind of special conditions like that to evolve. I'm pretty sure there are no shrooms to trip on under the ocean and dolphins/octopuses gained self-awareness just fine.

The most likely explanation to your question isn't that consciousness isn't special because other animals have it...but it's not special because it's not actually a thing.

consciousness is probably just an emergent effect of sufficient processing power and memory. The only thing we'd really need to evolve is a general problem solving algorithm, which natural selection seems to.....well, naturally lean towards. Creatures do not need very much information processing power in order to eat, hunt, seek shelter, and survive.


The more i look at the results of Machine Learning, the less and less special consciousness appears to be.

Using neural networks, which are modeled after our own brain function, you can simply give machine learning algorithms a basic task/problem/game to solve, and given enough time it will learn how to master it.

Take that same algorithm and install it in a machine that treats REALITY as its learning environment (and not a videogame / set of pictures / sandbox) and i imagine it would eventually learn how to mimic humans to some degree. Not that it would BE human (QUITE the opposite), but i think it would eventually be conscious....or indistinguishable from such.


The thing that makes humans seem "ALIVE" has less to do with our processing power, and more to do with the complexity of how we choose to apply it.

Humans have a very basic utility function (stay alive) but it's the things personal to our lives (that interact with our basic programming) that cause us to look/feel "alive" compared to other creatures.

 

[SKM1]

It's quite a funny thing, trying to explain consciousness using materialism, when consciousness itself is the substance which underlies all existence. Without it, there is no sensible way to talk of there being anything at all.

 

[timeflais]

Good discussion here, even with those I disagree it's always good to see people take time to consider who we are.

I remember in the earlier days of me discovering a new path in life, I was reading about Nikola Tesla and suppressed technologies, and most infamously his ability to create zero-point energy. I Used to have a copy, maybe one of the very few that was ever allowed a public release, of one of Tesla's depositions in which he speaks about how zero-point energy is possible. In very short it required an understanding of natural law to convert energy from the aether. It was also noted that Tesla fell in love with a pigeon.

This aether, everything is connected to it. Everything. At that time, my first thought was bout the Big Bang theory and I remembered being told that everything can be traced back to the beginning, when all known matter originated back to that dense singlularity which exploded into the universe that we know today. Similarly, in ancient alchemy they had this concept the prima materia the "first material".
Alchemy is funny, because Kings thought they could turn lead into gold, which led to what our understanding of Chemistry today. But the greater understanding of Alchemists at the time knew, that the significance of that was the soul of an individual. If you were born with a soul of lead, through your journey you would transmute your soul to Gold. Thought to be the metal of the Gods.

Secret teachings are nothing new though, much knowledge through the generations of our history have been kept from public view for a very long time, allowing society to change ignorant of these truths. Most notably these days are the freemasons, who ironically have been more exposed now than they ever have. You will have seen their square and compass logo with a big G central to it, somewhere in the wild.

That G as multiple, similar meaning. God, Grand architect, Generative principle. That generative principle is important, because it is their belief, that all of reality on earth as we know it, starts within all the minds of humanity collectively. That means the events of the world are generated within our minds, all at once. There are many layers to this, from thought > action. The Jungian concept of the collective unconscious, NASAs experiments into ESP. However, for any of these concepts to hold weight under the generative principle, it must mean we are all connected. And if everything is connected and is generated from our minds (our consciousness) then what connects us is of the same ilk ie consciousness itself.

Abracadabra = "I create what I speak".
In the bible, there is a verse that goes "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. "

To me this passage says that God literally spoke reality into existence. What must we do before we speak? We must think about what we say. If we refer back to the big bang theory and everything being traced back to it, everything being connected by the aether. I like to think that the original dense singularity "was with God" and as God spoke the universe exploded into existence. As such everything is no more than consciousness itself.

Unfortunately I have to leave for the time being, so will leave it there.

 

[SurprisedPikachu]

Good discussion here, even with those I disagree it's always good to see people take time to consider who we are.

I remember in the earlier days of me discovering a new path in life, I was reading about Nikola Tesla and suppressed technologies, and most infamously his ability to create zero-point energy. I Used to have a copy, maybe one of the very few that was ever allowed a public release, of one of Tesla's depositions in which he speaks about how zero-point energy is possible. In very short it required an understanding of natural law to convert energy from the aether. It was also noted that Tesla fell in love with a pigeon.

This aether, everything is connected to it. Everything. At that time, my first thought was bout the Big Bang theory and I remembered being told that everything can be traced back to the beginning, when all known matter originated back to that dense singlularity which exploded into the universe that we know today. Similarly, in ancient alchemy they had this concept the prima materia the "first material".
Alchemy is funny, because Kings thought they could turn lead into gold, which led to what our understanding of Chemistry today. But the greater understanding of Alchemists at the time knew, that the significance of that was the soul of an individual. If you were born with a soul of lead, through your journey you would transmute your soul to Gold. Thought to be the metal of the Gods.

Secret teachings are nothing new though, much knowledge through the generations of our history have been kept from public view for a very long time, allowing society to change ignorant of these truths. Most notably these days are the freemasons, who ironically have been more exposed now than they ever have. You will have seen their square and compass logo with a big G central to it, somewhere in the wild.

That G as multiple, similar meaning. God, Grand architect, Generative principle. That generative principle is important, because it is their belief, that all of reality on earth as we know it, starts within all the minds of humanity collectively. That means the events of the world are generated within our minds, all at once. There are many layers to this, from thought > action. The Jungian concept of the collective unconscious, NASAs experiments into ESP. However, for any of these concepts to hold weight under the generative principle, it must mean we are all connected. And if everything is connected and is generated from our minds (our consciousness) then what connects us is of the same ilk ie consciousness itself.

Abracadabra = "I create what I speak".
In the bible, there is a verse that goes "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. "

To me this passage says that God literally spoke reality into existence. What must we do before we speak? We must think about what we say. If we refer back to the big bang theory and everything being traced back to it, everything being connected by the aether. I like to think that the original dense singularity "was with God" and as God spoke the universe exploded into existence. As such everything is no more than consciousness itself.

Unfortunately I have to leave for the time being, so will leave it there.

My god whatever you're smoking must be good.

 

[lukilladog]

The fact that we are far more intelligent by a hundredfold, far more advanced and far more evolved than any creature on Earth just doesn't make sense.

If Neanderthals and Denisovans were still around we wouldn´t feel so exceptional, you may say they went extinct because they were stupid, but we humans were on the edge of extinction a couple of times in the past. Besides, I don´t think there is much mystery to it, a slight genetic alteration or mutation would give chimpances the three extra cycles of brain cell division they are missing during fetal development to match the size of the human brain.

 

[DESTROYA]

I'd like a plausible explanation of consciousness that explains how it came to exist instead of just saying how it's nothing special because animals have some facets of it, too.

Here's a plausible explanation I've heard, for example of what I have in mind:

At some time in the past and over the course of many years, our monkey ancestors ate psychotropic and neutropic mushrooms (which still exist today have effects today on biologically-modern humans). These mushrooms killed some monkeys, and others experienced strange hallucinations with symbolic imagery of past events in the monkey's memory. The monkey race slowly gained symbolic representation as they ate shrooms and tripped out to jumbled symbolic images as their brains attempted to return to chemical equilibrium. Over time, the brain-damaging use of drugs caused the monkey's brains to grow bigger in certain ways until they one day became self-aware by stumbling upon the metaphysical, a priori concept of the 'self'. With a 'self' follows the expansion of the brain to communicate ideas linguistically and artistically. Over time the success of this tool called 'language' encouraged the monkey-brains to keep growing in certain ways until we reach the biologically-modern human with a fully-formed consciousness and 'self'.

See, that wasn't so hard. I farted out a pop-science explanation for human consciousness without breaking a sweat. How much of it is rooted in science, though?

It‘s funny you mentioned primates doing drugs I watched this a little while ago.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

As most things it's not a binary answer e.g. 3 dimensions is only positional data, time adds a 4th dimension already. They're just our definitions of things so we can attempt to understand or manipulate. Consciousness for example is not binary by order of only a yes or no answer being you are conscious or not e.g. a dog's level of consciousness is vastly different to that of a human where an elephant or octopus is far closer to our levels of comprehension. Fuck some humans would probably fail the mirror test or similar but are certainly conscious still e.g. brain damage, born with syndromes/handicap/mentally ill etc.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

I'd like a plausible explanation of consciousness that explains how it came to exist instead of just saying how it's nothing special because animals have some facets of it, too.

Here's a plausible explanation I've heard, for example of what I have in mind:

At some time in the past and over the course of many years, our monkey ancestors ate psychotropic and neutropic mushrooms (which still exist today have effects today on biologically-modern humans). These mushrooms killed some monkeys, and others experienced strange hallucinations with symbolic imagery of past events in the monkey's memory. The monkey race slowly gained symbolic representation as they ate shrooms and tripped out to jumbled symbolic images as their brains attempted to return to chemical equilibrium. Over time, the brain-damaging use of drugs caused the monkey's brains to grow bigger in certain ways until they one day became self-aware by stumbling upon the metaphysical, a priori concept of the 'self'. With a 'self' follows the expansion of the brain to communicate ideas linguistically and artistically. Over time the success of this tool called 'language' encouraged the monkey-brains to keep growing in certain ways until we reach the biologically-modern human with a fully-formed consciousness and 'self'.

See, that wasn't so hard. I farted out a pop-science explanation for human consciousness without breaking a sweat. How much of it is rooted in science, though?

Arm chair laymen guessing stab in the dark here we go -

Chance, necessity and survival of the fittest drove consciousness.

Evolutionary mutations and interactions over time gave rise to an explosion of successes and failures of adaptations due to resources, environments and the sandboxes of life to survive and perpetuate itself. Some of the fittest-for-purpose found success in non-conscious ways e.g. algae or viruses or plants and other living forms that do not require consciousness to be successful in their specific sandbox/environment/time. Now what we're focusing on are the other branches of success that do require or more likely found the most success from the benefits of consciousness e.g. intelligent animals and humans more specifically. The ability to move, efficiency and necessity found success far more often across a wider range of circumstances with intelligence over purpose fit adaptions. Each small increment of changes over generations and time increased the levels of intelligence and problem solving as well as social interactions and outcomes giving rise to various levels of consciousness and species.

When you think about being locked into specific ways of non-conscious evolution there is less diverse paths of success. We don't know about the failures as much as the successes, we have some evidence of those "dead end" evolutionary branches but will likely never understand the real volume and effects of those. However we do have a solid track record across environments, locations, adaptations, species and various levels of social and intellectual capabilities that we can also derive basic consciousness measurements and observations from. Our level of consciousness is quite different to our historic family tree ancestors.

Basics of life such as resource gathering (motion, food, water), strategy (hide food, share shelter, safety in numbers, work together, communicate), offspring rearing (parental, communal, protection, shared knowledge, morals, conscience) and others (creativity) continually develop bigger and more sophisticated brains thus levels of intelligence and consciousness too.

TL;DR - In essence the evolution of the brain and social interaction in various species led to consciousness.

 

[timeflais]

My god whatever you're smoking must be good.

Have you ever looked up to stare directly at someone who was already staring at you, instinctively?

 

[Rentahamster]

Have you ever looked up to stare directly at someone who was already staring at you, instinctively?

Do you hate it when u sleep and she/he keep staring at you?

This is a light topic If you have someone with you either wife/husband/lover Do you hate it if she spent most of her time starring at you at the bedroom? When youre reading /listening to music/sleeping/ wake up and she constantly stares at you Every time you wake up you always see her eyes...

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