There is a wrong-note in the reasoning of this post that immediately started niggling at me, but it’s subtle and I’m having trouble teasing out the underlying assumption. I want to say that you’re taking “The purpose of consciousness is consciousness” as a given, when that is arguably false. Likewise, I want to accuse you of drawing causal arrows from consciousness to other modules of human mind design, which as far as I know is ruled out, evolutionarily speaking.
I offer this:
The “executive process” as you call it is part of the world-modeler. It is the world-modeling module that evolved in response to a very unique world-modeling challenge. There is a critical difference between sky-color and insult-vs-complement that you seem to be glossing over. A given wavelength of light always has the same properties. A given array of posture, facial expression, tone, etc. does not always map directly to the same social reality.
We can’t chose to see a smile on a scowling face any more than we can chose to see a green sky, but unlike the sky, the same facial expression can mean vastly different things depending on context, because the causes underlying any given expression depends on a thing that is just as complicated as you are.
The “executive process” is how evolution solved the entirely new problem of adding other world-modelers to the world-model and that’s what it does. If it is glitchy and unreliable, well, it is still very new. The very first functional wing to evolve probably wasn’t all that good at producing lift, either.
I want to accuse you of drawing causal arrows from consciousness to other modules of human mind design, which as far as I know is ruled out, evolutionarily speaking.
Why would that be? Did evolution stop once man became conscious? Even if all the modules were there before consciousness arose that does not mean that evolution could not have given consciousness some sort of causal effects on some mind modules.
In fact, if consciousness did not have effects on our mind modules, what would it have an effect on?
Consciousness is the most recent module, and that does mean that. I’m sorry, I thought this was one point that wasn’t even in dispute. It was laid out pretty clearly in the Evolution Sequence:
Complex adaptations take a very long time to evolve. First comes allele A, which is advantageous of itself, and requires a thousand generations to fixate in the gene pool. Only then can another allele B, which depends on A, begin rising to fixation. A fur coat is not a strong advantage unless the environment has a statistically reliable tendency to throw cold weather at you. Well, genes form part of the environment of other genes, and if B depends on A, B will not have a strong advantage unless A is reliably present in the genetic environment
Yes, maybe some very similar forms of all the other modules which can still be found in our human mind design today were necessary for consciousness to arise. But this does not mean that the modules which are actually there now could not have evolved out of these modules because they work better for a conscious agent.
Consciousness is the most recent module, and that does mean [that drawing causal arrows from consciousness to other modules of human mind design is ruled out, evolutionarily speaking.]
The causes of the fixation of a genotype in a population are distinct from the causal structures of the resulting phenotype instantiated in actual organisms.
First comes allele A, which is advantageous of itself, and requires a thousand generations to fixate in the gene pool. Only then can another allele B, which depends on A, begin rising to fixation.
That doesn’t sound right to me.
First, fixation is much faster. The earliest known DNA sequence with the lactase tolerance gene is 4300 years old. That’s less than 200 generations ago and the gene looks to me to be quite fixed in the Northern European populations.
Second, allele B can piggyback. Allele A spreads through children of allele A carriers. If some subpopulation of A carriers also has allele B, their children will also have both A and B and these children have even more of an evolutionary advantage than children of just A (but not B) carriers.
There is a wrong-note in the reasoning of this post that immediately started niggling at me, but it’s subtle and I’m having trouble teasing out the underlying assumption. I want to say that you’re taking “The purpose of consciousness is consciousness” as a given, when that is arguably false. Likewise, I want to accuse you of drawing causal arrows from consciousness to other modules of human mind design, which as far as I know is ruled out, evolutionarily speaking.
I offer this:
The “executive process” as you call it is part of the world-modeler. It is the world-modeling module that evolved in response to a very unique world-modeling challenge. There is a critical difference between sky-color and insult-vs-complement that you seem to be glossing over. A given wavelength of light always has the same properties. A given array of posture, facial expression, tone, etc. does not always map directly to the same social reality.
We can’t chose to see a smile on a scowling face any more than we can chose to see a green sky, but unlike the sky, the same facial expression can mean vastly different things depending on context, because the causes underlying any given expression depends on a thing that is just as complicated as you are.
The “executive process” is how evolution solved the entirely new problem of adding other world-modelers to the world-model and that’s what it does. If it is glitchy and unreliable, well, it is still very new. The very first functional wing to evolve probably wasn’t all that good at producing lift, either.
Why would that be? Did evolution stop once man became conscious? Even if all the modules were there before consciousness arose that does not mean that evolution could not have given consciousness some sort of causal effects on some mind modules.
In fact, if consciousness did not have effects on our mind modules, what would it have an effect on?
Consciousness is the most recent module, and that does mean that. I’m sorry, I thought this was one point that wasn’t even in dispute. It was laid out pretty clearly in the Evolution Sequence:
Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway)
Sorry, but no.
Yes, maybe some very similar forms of all the other modules which can still be found in our human mind design today were necessary for consciousness to arise. But this does not mean that the modules which are actually there now could not have evolved out of these modules because they work better for a conscious agent.
The causes of the fixation of a genotype in a population are distinct from the causal structures of the resulting phenotype instantiated in actual organisms.
That doesn’t sound right to me.
First, fixation is much faster. The earliest known DNA sequence with the lactase tolerance gene is 4300 years old. That’s less than 200 generations ago and the gene looks to me to be quite fixed in the Northern European populations.
Second, allele B can piggyback. Allele A spreads through children of allele A carriers. If some subpopulation of A carriers also has allele B, their children will also have both A and B and these children have even more of an evolutionary advantage than children of just A (but not B) carriers.