Re: What is the evolutionary explanation of consciousness?


"William Morse" <wdmorse@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:epdhm1$16as$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"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. ...

If you are thinking of the same experiments I am thinking of, you should
have mentioned the catch - if second-person doesn't accept first-person's
chosen ratio, then neither person gets to keep any money.

The researchers consistently find that large numbers of people in the
second-person role refuse to accept any ratio worse than about 60:40.
And large numbers of people in the first-person role do offer a 40%
share or better to the second-person. This happens even though the
interaction is anonymous and researchers are careful to explain to the
subjects that there will not be repeated interactions with the same
person.

One interpretation of this result is that people are irrational.
Another is that people have a conscience (which may be another name
for the same interpretation). A third explanation may be that the
subjects (consciously or sub-consciously) just don't believe the
researcher's assurance that there will not be repeated interactions.
In fact, it could well be that what we call conscience is just a
deep-seated conviction that there ain't no such thing as a non-repeated
interaction.

But there is a fourth interpretation in which the result arises from
natural selection - not selection in a population of instinct-driven
humans, but selection in a population of 'fairness memes'. These
memes exist in a variety of different alleles - there is a 50:50
allele, a 60:40 allele, an 80:20 allele, and so on. Such alleles
maximize their own success by practicing a kind of green-beard
altruism. When an allele is in the second-person, it punishes any
more stingy allele encountered in a first-person. And by doing so,
it helps its clone-mates, who probably *will* have repeated interactions
with that stingy first-person. (No need to punish alleles even fairer
than yourself - those guys you exploit!)

Depending upon assumptions made as to whether fairness behaviors are
inherent instincts or learned judgements, and whether those nasty
80:20 folks need to be starved into submission or can learn fairness
from their mistakes, an evolutionary simulation experiment like the
famous tit-for-tat experiments might well find that something like 60:40
is an ESS.


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