Evolution: Is there any survival value for human consciousness?

[MRC_Hans]

From your wiki link:
"It can be implicit (as with practical skill or expertise) or explicit (as with the theoretical understanding of a subject); and it can be more or less formal or systematic."

Don't you think the extremely rapid way that small kids pick up language and vocabulary could be seen as a skill.

It is a trait, no doubt pre-programmed. Once they have picked it up, it's a skill.

Or the almost 'supernatural' way in which people read each other, for example to see if they are being deceived, often without even knowing how, or even, that they are doing it.

That's instinct, although you can improve it deliberately, in which case it becomes a skill.

How about recognizing faces and facial expressions, we are so good at it we even see faces where there aren't any, where does that knowledge of faces come from?

That is an interesting question. Would we be able to do this if we had never seen a face? Since facial expressions are not an entirely universal language, I would think it is partly a learned skill.


.... What are we discussing, now?

Hans

 

[Cheetah]

That is an interesting question. Would we be able to do this if we had never seen a face? Since facial expressions are not an entirely universal language, I would think it is partly a learned skill.


.... What are we discussing, now?

Hans

Wheeew, we drifted a bit there didn't we?

I think facial expression and body language is largely universal and thus genetic in origin and I'm sure facial recognition is hard-wired. The problem is that all of these have a in-born as well as a learned component.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature#Arguments_for_invariance

But we need to get back on topic.

What is 'human consciousness' again?

 

[citizenzen]

One effect of consciousness is the ability to identify - and target - others who may be competition or dangerous, even when they are not at that moment.

I'm sorry, but I need a little more information here.

Other animals display wariness towards predators, even when those predators are not at that moment attacking them.

 

[Cheetah]

Other animals display wariness towards predators, even when those predators are not at that moment attacking them.

A prey animal will always be weary of a predator, but sometimes they just keep their distance and at other times they immediately bolt for cover.

This happens often with lions and antelope. If the lions are on the hunt the antelope bolt as soon as a lion is spotted, but sometimes the lions are sated and just on their way to the watering hole for a drink. The herd of antelope move away, keeping a weary eye on the lions and often they get pretty close to each other. Sometimes the lions stroll straight through the middle of a big herd and the herd opens in front of them and then close up again after they have passed. I have seen this and thought that if the lions just suddenly make a leap at the buck they would make an easy kill, but it doesn't happen (that I know off).

Hope this helps.

 

[citizenzen]

Hope this helps.

Mmmaybe.

Could you explain how self-consciousness makes humans different?

 

[Minoosh]

Mmmaybe.

Could you explain how self-consciousness makes humans different?

Imagination?

We really don't know if dogs have internal narratives, although I suspect they do. Do they wish they could open the refrigerator? (Some of them probably can!) I believe my dog dreams. She's a dachshund and it frustrates her that she can't reach the kitchen counter, but she'd never think of using a stick from outside to snag a treat that's just out of reach. Instead she'll get as high as she can, even if that makes her farther away from the cheeseburger.

This may be evolutionarily incorrect but humans seem to be many orders of magnitude more effective than any other animal. I'm not even sure if "effective" is the word I'm looking for. Maybe "agency." But, we have the ability to imagine a different environment, plus the intelligence and fabrication skills to alter the environment on a large scale. That strikes me as qualitatively different than beavers building a dam or other examples of animal agency. I certainly don't doubt evolution, but I do kind of wonder about this seeming qualitative difference.

 

[SezMe]

Wheeew, we drifted a bit there didn't we?

I think facial expression and body language is largely universal and thus genetic in origin and I'm sure facial recognition is hard-wired. The problem is that all of these have a in-born as well as a learned component.

I just finished a book about the brain, Incognito, that asserted that a child 10 minutes old can recognize a human face. Not who but the fact that it is a face.

 

[Lowpro]

I just finished a book about the brain, Incognito, that asserted that a child 10 minutes old can recognize a human face. Not who but the fact that it is a face.

I'd be curious to hear how they quantitatively approached that. It sounds fishy...what about a 9 minute old child? A premie? A blind child?

These are the questions...

 

[SezMe]

Yeah, I question it as well. I have the book in dead-tree form so I can't search it electronically but I'll see if I can find it. IIRC, it did have a reference to a medical journal. Stand by ......

 

[Lowpro]

Well I'd be willing to try the experiment with a clown stand-in or the like. A face isn't too much special except for the fact it correlates well with stimuli. The mouth moves when you talk (unless you mumble like I do) so you correlate mouth movement to the noise you hear. If you make a gestalt face to sync up sound you're likely to see a similar correlation to that and what correlates to a face. A face moves, the eyes move. There's so much movement in your face and our eyes are very good at determining movements, even seemingly minor movements still register in our head.

Throw a newborn baby in a room with a dead body (or a mannequin...) and test if they recognize a face then.

Ever heard of Harry Harlow and the Rhesus monkeys with wire mothers? Association of form and even emotion from a completely inanimate object. Association of face is hardly groundbreaking for an infant, particularly hominids.

 

[Perpetual Student]

It appears that many disagree that self awareness and consciousness are synonymous. OK, I'll accept that for the time being, rather than get into a debate that might be more semantic than substantive.
Now, getting back to the OP: Is there any survival value to self awareness or it it just a by-product of intelligence which clearly does have survival value?
I assume that there will be agreement that intelligence can be treated as a distinct concept from self awareness.

 

[Lowpro]

What is self awareness? Can self awareness effect your behavior? If so then yes it probably has a survival value; it's direct nature will probably be up for debate but I think things that change your behavior effects your ability to pass on genes. Maybe self-awareness itself cannot, but self awareness compounded with intelligence or something along those lines such as simpler limbic responses do effect behavior.

Now, that assumes self awareness can effect your behavior, and I don't know that it can. I honestly cannot glean from this post what self-awareness is or why it is important. On its surface, self awareness seems as easily achieved as awareness in anything else; nothing special.

Having communications with yourself likewise is nothing special. What seems extraordinary is that we think about it whereas maybe other organisms do not.

 

[Perpetual Student]

What is self awareness? Can self awareness effect your behavior? If so then yes it probably has a survival value; it's direct nature will probably be up for debate but I think things that change your behavior effects your ability to pass on genes. Maybe self-awareness itself cannot, but self awareness compounded with intelligence or something along those lines such as simpler limbic responses do effect behavior.

Now, that assumes self awareness can effect your behavior, and I don't know that it can. I honestly cannot glean from this post what self-awareness is or why it is important. On its surface, self awareness seems as easily achieved as awareness in anything else; nothing special.

Having communications with yourself likewise is nothing special. What seems extraordinary is that we think about it whereas maybe other organisms do not.

Self awareness is certainly a difficult concept to pin down scientifically, but does anyone reading this thread really not know intuitively what I mean when I say "self awareness"?
Why is it important? Self awareness is perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon in the universe. Is it the emergent product of a collection of matter that enables it to internalize and contemplate both the universe and itself. Questions about self awareness have occupied science, philosophy and religion as far back as we can trace those three categories of human thought.
So, is it a (fortunate) by-product of our neurological systems which did evolve due to survival advantages, or does self awareness also provide survival value?

 

[Lowpro]

Self awareness is certainly a difficult concept to pin down scientifically, but does anyone reading this thread really not know intuitively what I mean when I say "self awareness"?
Why is it important? Self awareness is perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon in the universe. Is it the emergent product of a collection of matter that enables it to internalize and contemplate both the universe and itself. Questions about self awareness have occupied science, philosophy and religion as far back as we can trace those three categories of human thought.
So, is it a (fortunate) by-product of our neurological systems which did evolve due to survival advantages, or does self awareness also provide survival value?

You haven't proven that self awareness is any different from any other awareness...

You think it's cool only because it raises questions, but that doesn't make awareness any more ethereal than awareness at all.

It's as emergent a property as any other neurological function. We are able to communicate it among us through a more complex set of education, so perhaps other creatures are self aware, and do not communicate it towards their own species or any species. Maybe the fact that they are self aware doesn't alter their behavior, and it might not have for us if we didn't decide to start communicating more...

I don't know Perpetual. Self awareness doesn't seem any more strange than awareness itself. I I drink a beer, I am aware that I enjoy the beer. I may completely lack all function of memory but limbic systems still give me a sense of taste and pleasure, so I am still enjoying the beer. Self awareness seems more made up of our language than actually existing (assuming this is what we're actually talking about; there is no neuroscientific evidence for self awareness unless we equate self awareness to consciousness, which shouldn't be the case anyways)

 

[Stomatopoda]

I don't think it's logical to view intelligence and consciousness as separate concepts, or to view consciousness is a binary value. It does seem that there is a very large gap between humans and other intelligent animals, but I think that gap could be explained, for example, by comparing the evolution of the brain to the evolution of the eye or the wing.

We see that eyes, in the animal kingdom, evolved at a very fast rate compared to other features, likely because small improvements in vision could confer drastic survival advantages. This results in very complex changes over a relatively short "burst" of time as the animals with better sight drastically out-compete the others. The same could be true for the brain, with a "tipping point" past which increased intelligence provides a more drastic survival advantage and stronger selective pressure for further increases.

This leads to a very large gap in intelligence between humans and other animals, which may lead us to believe that our consciousness is special, and not simply a result of high intelligence. All conjecture, of course.

 

[I Ratant]

Mmmaybe.

Could you explain how self-consciousness makes humans different?

.
We can rise above natural problems and solve them.
We don't have to move away cautiously from predators, we can attack them more effectively than they can attack us.
We can cure diseases.
We can extend life.
All because we're aware we can do these things outside just simply existing and surviving at the predator/prey level.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Obviously, a review of this thread will demonstrate that the terms intelligence, consciousness and self awareness mean different things to different people, with some people regarding then as distinct and others seeing it differently.
I have tried to stay away from these discussions to avoid the inevitable semantic debates, but I guess it's unavoidable.
Stomatopoda says, "I don't think it's logical to view intelligence and consciousness as separate concepts."
Does that mean that any machine that can pass the Turing test is conscious and self aware? Someday, if we build such a machine, does it follow that it is conscious and self aware?

 

[MRC_Hans]

Does that mean that any machine that can pass the Turing test is conscious and self aware? Someday, if we build such a machine, does it follow that it is conscious and self aware?

No, that does not necessarily follow, because the Turing test machine will likely be a simulation of a human. As an analogy, even the best flight simulator will not get you off the ground.

I think that a conscious machine (and I do believe one will eventually be possible) will not be built to simulate a human, but to be ... a conscious machine. Its consciousness will likely be different from that of a human, so it will be quite distinguishable from a human, and thus NOT able to pass a Turing test.

Look at robots: In SciFI, robots are almost invariably depicted as androids, but in real life, our industry is crawling with robots, very few of which are even remotely human in appearance.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

Throw a newborn baby in a room with a dead body (or a mannequin...) and test if they recognize a face then.

Ever heard of Harry Harlow and the Rhesus monkeys with wire mothers? Association of form and even emotion from a completely inanimate object. Association of face is hardly groundbreaking for an infant, particularly hominids.

I think it makes sense to assume that the recognition of a face is instinctive in humans. Just look at these guys:



Really simple patterns, still we all not only recognize them as human faces, although the actual resemblance is extremely limited, but we also recognize the feelings expressed by them.

If other objects were depicted thus simplified, we would not recognize them with this kind of confidence. For instance, what is this: o#õ

Hans

 

[Perpetual Student]

Originally Posted by Perpetual Student
Does that mean that any machine that can pass the Turing test is conscious and self aware? Someday, if we build such a machine, does it follow that it is conscious and self aware?

No, that does not necessarily follow, because the Turing test machine will likely be a simulation of a human. As an analogy, even the best flight simulator will not get you off the ground.

...

Hans

That's an interesting conclusion. Passing the Turing test would not allow for distinguishing machine and human intelligence. So, if that is the case, contrary to some posters here, intelligence is very different from self awareness.
So, if that is the case, is there any survival benefit from self awareness?