Re: What is the evolutionary explanation of consciousness?

William Morse <wdmorse@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Anon." <bob.ohara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:ep85ir
$290g$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

John Wilkins wrote:
Stephen <stephen63@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Why do we have a conscience?

We do? Do you have any clear data on this?

Would he allow himself to lie to us?

Bob


Nicely put. And nice to see you are still lurking out there.
But as I think Dr. John is well aware, there are experiments (I am
thinking for instance of some in which one person gets to determine a
ratio to divide "found money" with a second person, and the second person
gets to choose whether to accept the ratio) which do show that there is a
conscience. So we should return to the orginal question of why we have
one. Which is of course easy

There are social reciprocal calculators in the brain, yes (and they work
more or less well in differing individuals). That is *not* a conscience.
That is a social reciprocation calculator. A conscience is a moral
pointer to moral correctness or truth. I claim that is a fiction. There
is no such faculty or capacity of the brain or any other physical
property or subsystem of the human animal. "Conscience" is the
reification of social norms. That we follow social norms is a fact about
us (with an evolutionary history). That norms of a certain kind or type
*should* be followed is not a fact, it's a moral posit, and to assert
that we have this faculty because moral norms exist and are enforced is
to make both a post hoc claim and commit the naturalistic fallacy in
ethics.

(the rest of this transmission was unexpectedly interrupted by static)


OK, so it isn't easy, but as a first approximation: (note that in the
following I am assuming the question has to do with conscience not
consciousness, and Shakespeare can go consummate himself with a bare
bodkin or whatever.)

One of the hallmarks of stable complex systems is that they have evolved
self-regulatory systems (else they wouldn't be stable). For various
reasons, humans have evolved nominally "altruistic" acts that on further
inspection appear to involve future reciprocity and/or long term kin
selection. Conscience is a self-regulatory mechanism to enforce these
long term contracts.

Psychological altruism is the outcome of genetic selfishness, much as I
dislike that terminology. "Conscience" is the name we give to certain
behaviours in that cognitive mechanism that happen to match the
prevailing social norms of that agent. Those that don't, we don't give
entitivity to, we call it "fault" or "blame" or "evil".

Yours,

Bill Morse


--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

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