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Evolution: Is there any survival value for human consciousness?

Perpetual Student

Illuminator
Perpetual Student
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Jul 8, 2008
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Is self awareness accidental or selected through evolution?
Consciousness has proven to be a difficult concept for scientific analysis because it's purely subjective and not subject to objective experimentation or observation, yet most of us accept that it exists. A number of books have been written about consciousness, attempting to explain it as an emergent brain function. My own experience with these books has not been very satisfactory in that I have not found myself gaining any better understanding of consciousness. Perhaps others have had better success.

In any case, I was wondering if anyone has come up with a theory about the evolutionary basis for consciousness (self awareness). Note that I am not talking about intelligence; clearly intelligence has survival value. I believe a sophisticated computer that does its job very well may be thought of as intelligent but not conscious (self aware). So, my first question is, is there any objection to the concept of separating the concepts of intelligence and consciousness?

Then, in what way may consciousness (as distinct from intelligence) be involved in survival? One might even make an argument that it may be detrimental for reproduction. Self awareness is not necessarily helpful to one's survival. I may be wrong about this so I would be interested to hear from anyone who might have some thoughts about this question.
Is self awareness an accidental by product of our intelligence, which has enhanced our probability of survival or has consciousness been in and of itself an aid to survival?
 
We can make tools. Doing so has allowed us to spread across the globe and increase our species number from a few thousand (seriously, at one point we'd have fit in the home side of OSU's stadium with PLENTY of room to spare) to 7 billion. From an evolutionary perspective (remember, it's only as long as a generation cycle), that's pretty good.
 
Self-awareness seems to have a lot of utility in evaluating the consequences of an action in regards to the the agent. That directly affects things like the ability to plan.

Perhaps consciousness is just a computational model of the self used to make such predictions, so that any computer with a sufficiently advanced model of itself can be meaningfully said to be 'conscious'. But whether that's true isn't really the question~having consciousness allows this, and hence it has evolutionary value.
 
The other issue is that, by and large, intelligent beings are NOT dominant--bacteria are. So it may also be that it's completely random, with the caveat that you can only be so stupid (that value varying between species) before you off yourself. You can be really, really stupid and be a sponge just fine. Canids, on the other hand, need to be a tad smarter. In such a situation, random chance can explain increasing intelligence, no selection pressure required.
 
Both of the above posters seem to equate intelligence with self awareness. I have tried to make a distinction between these two concepts -- am I wrong in doing so?
 
You're mistaken. That my argument says the value of consciousness is that it enhances a particular intelligent ability relevant to survival and reproduction is hardly the same as claiming that consciousness and intelligence are equivalent.
 
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First off Perpetual, get Cristoph Koch's "The Quest for Consciousness" it may help you understand a bit more about how consciousness is understood to help eliminate some silly problems with consciousness and its subjectivity.

I highly doubt consciousness has any harm on reproduction. As far as self awareness goes it seems highly likely that any creature that evolves social interaction and intelligence will be self aware though I think it's difficult to determine self awareness, after all how is such a feeling communicated? Even between us? How the hell is it measured (Is there a creature that can be self aware and could care less about it?)

Consciousness isn't really something that pops out so much as honed by things already existing (emergent) though a cerebral cortex does WONDERS.
 
Vorpal said:
You're mistaken. That my argument says the value of consciousness is that it enhances a particular intelligent ability relevant to survival and reproduction is hardly the same as claiming that consciousness and intelligence are equivalent.
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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 suspect that's what happened to the other humanoid species evolving parallel to us.
 
I'm not clear on what self awareness/consciousness is. I suspect it is much like strength ranging from very weak to very strong and everything in-between. I think there are plenty of animals that are self aware and it is not the exclusive domain of Homo or wherever you want to draw the line, iow there is no line.
So 'human consciousness' does not mean much to me, what exactly do you mean?

Even pretty 'simple' animals know exactly where they themselves stop and the rest of the world begins (this is part of me and that is not), they are also aware of danger and take action to get out of the way when threatened.

If you mean the ability to second-guess the intentions of another to determine whether they mean you harm or not, by just observing them, plenty of mammals and birds can do that (and I suspect other groups as well), so there is obviously an enormous survival value in having 'it'.
 
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I'd imagine that self awareness (in the form of being aware of the environment, yourself within the environment, and how others might view you in the environment) would aid survival greatly.
 
Lamuella said:
I'd imagine that self awareness (in the form of being aware of the environment, yourself within the environment, and how others might view you in the environment) would aid survival greatly.
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Something along these lines. What brains do, and probably simple cell systems as well, is model the external world so they may find food, avoid danger and find mates. More complex minds are able to model the external world internally so as to make useful predictions. Being able to see yourself as an agent in that model and explore possible actions would seem to have advantages. As you point out, being able to model not only your own possible actions as an agent in the world, but the minds of others would have various advantages for social animals when it comes to survival and reproductive success.
 
Sideroxylon said:
As you point out, being able to model not only your own possible actions as an agent in the world, but the minds of others would have various advantages for social animals when it comes to survival and reproductive success.
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Not only social animals but also prey as well as predators, practically all of them.
 
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I think you also need to factor in that, due to our evolving a large brain with limited pre-programming, we need to use an unprecedented length of time to bring up our offspring. Obviously, this gives the need for long-time planning, which in turn needs you to be self-aware, because only then can you be aware of how your surroundings and your actions can influence you.

If we are to reduce this to evolutionary steps, both logic and observation of other, less intelligent animals indicates that increased intelligence evolved first, giving the obvious survival advantages of such a trait. Next, reduction of pre programmed (instinctive) traits enabled hominids to circumvent the slow evolutionary process by learning abilities, but at the cost of longer upbringing of young who had to be taught the learnings of the parents. This was still an advantageous constellation and evolved to a point where we are highly self-aware, highly intelligent (as compared to other animals), but need over a decade to properly bring our young to adulthood.

Hans
 
I wonder how self-aware someone is who completely lacks language.

So far as I'm aware, I do all my thinking in words.
Before I learned language , I have no idea how I thought, if I did at all.
I'm sitting here trying to think without using words and failing totally.


To what extent is self awareness just a result of using language?
 
Soapy Sam said:
I wonder how self-aware someone is who completely lacks language.

So far as I'm aware, I do all my thinking in words.
Before I learned language , I have no idea how I thought, if I did at all.
I'm sitting here trying to think without using words and failing totally.


To what extent is self awareness just a result of using language?
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Yes, it has been theorized that language must proceed consciousness -- i.e., there can be no consciousness without language. Some of the arguments supporting this approach can be somewhat compelling.

Concerning some of the above comments, I'm not persuaded that tool making, distinguishing between self and the environment, planning, identifying food and foes, etc. are necessarily indications of consciousness.
Is a honey bee conscious?
 
Lamuella said:
I'd imagine that self awareness (in the form of being aware of the environment, yourself within the environment, and how others might view you in the environment) would aid survival greatly.
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I'm sure you can imagine many things, but can you provide any scientific evidence that consciousness enhances the chances of survival?
 
Perpetual Student said:
Yes, it has been theorized that language must proceed consciousness -- i.e., there can be no consciousness without language. Some of the arguments supporting this approach can be somewhat compelling.

Concerning some of the above comments, I'm not persuaded that tool making, distinguishing between self and the environment, planning, identifying food and foes, etc. are necessarily indications of consciousness.
Is a honey bee conscious?
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How isn't it conscious? The question becomes what differentiates consciousness from just "awareness". Do you need to be self aware to be conscious? I don't know, but I don't think it's a requirement. Could something be conscious if it has no memory? If a human loses all ability to retain memory, but still takes in stimuli is he/she still conscious?

Should read Christof Kock's book =)

And language is just communicating something, whether it be awareness or whathaveyou.
 
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Perpetual Student said:
I'm sure you can imagine many things, but can you provide any scientific evidence that consciousness enhances the chances of survival?
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Given the fact that minds are the product of evolution, it's a pretty fair hypothesis. I wonder what research has been done on this question. The only other option that I can come up with is that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, but of what? What would be the explanation there?
 
Oh, and Perpetual. Consciousness probably does enhance the passing of genes; survival only matters if you pass on genes, not so much how long you keep breathing on this Earth.

But yea it probably does enhance the passing of genes but the problem is "how so" and first you have to identify what consciousness is. If you take consciousness as a complex form of association and awareness then that probably if not most definitely could enhance the passing of genes.
 
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