Re: What is the evolutionary explanation of consciousness?

j.wilkins1@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote in
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William Morse <wdmorse@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

j.wilkins1@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote in
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William Morse <wdmorse@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Anon." <bob.ohara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
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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.

I don't know the correct name for it, but objecting to the existence
of an observed behavior on philosophical grounds does not make a
particularly effective argument ;-)

Philosophy isn't supposed to get at the truth, but to make it obvious
there are other ways of thinking. WhatI'm trying to do here is make
people *define* what they mean, and consider if the folk definitions
are in fact referential. If the "faculty of conscience" does not lie
in the brain, but in the relations of brains to each other (i.e., in
social contexts and interactions), any attempt to "find the
conscience" or the "moral gene" will fail.

I don't think you can conflate the conscience with a "moral gene" - and I
don't think there is a "moral gene", since I don't think the conscience
is a moral compass fixed at birth. As I note later, I do think the
faculty of conscience does lie in the brain.


In fact we do have a conscience: we have a word for it that is
heavily used and clearly describes a mental faculty shared by almost
everyone. We have a word - psychopath - for people who don't have
that mental faculty.

I would rather say that psychopaths lack empathy than that they lack a
moral faculty. They know well enough what the norms are - they simply
don't *care*.

I.e. they don't have a conscience? The hallmark of the conscience is
guilt. And it may be useful in this regard to compare psycopaths with
sufferers of autism. The latter lack empathy and have difficulty in
understanding social norms, but *do* care - they do feel guilt.


We know that the faculty is associated with the prefrontal cortex, as
damage to that part of the brain destroys the faculty. Conscience is
clearly a pointer to moral correctness - keeping in mind that
morality is largely a social construct. We have it because social
norms do exist and _have been_ enforced, and it keeps us out of the
kinds of trouble that a social animal which disobeys social norms
gets into. As I noted previously, it is a self-regulatory mechanism.

I think there are several mechanisms in play in this case (not that I
go for massive modularity)

Take the time to read "Mapping the Mind", and you might have to change
your mind on this point. (Oops, I forgot, you can't change it because we
have no free will :-) It appears that in fact brain functions are quite
compartmentalized, albeit with much communication between modules.



- one is self-interest regulation. Some
people have a very strong sense of self-interest, others less so. My
Asperger's son will stick with a position he *knows* is right come
hell or high water - how it affects his life and relations doesn't
matter to him. Does he have a stronger moral sense than others? Not
really - he's not following the societal norms, but his own.
Psychopaths put their own self-interests so perceived above anyone
else's; they are moral solipsists. But this is not because of the lack
of a conscience as such. It is about emphases and strengths or the
absence of them, of some set of mechanisms.

I disagree. I think your son's behavior is attributable to conscience -
but then of course I don't think conscience is exactly a moral sense. My
understanding of conscience is that it operates to enforce behavior
beneficial to the group in the face of either individual self interest
(the wallet lying on the ground) or temporary peer group pressure (the
friends who want to beat up the bum). As I said, the usual function is to
keep us out of trouble. Unfortunately, like any other regulatory
mechanism,it can go astray.


Now I agree that a conscience is not a social reciprocation
calculator - because in highly social animals there isn't time to
make the required calculations before taking an action. In
semi-social animals a conscience isn't needed because the
calculations are easier: cats don't have consciences, dogs do.

I think that social animals do have social reciprocation calculators,
but the "calculation" they do is an honorary kind of calculation -
just as we don't calculate the ballistic trajectory of a ball when we
catch it - we are *trained* into that, and trained into social
conformity. But I'll keep the term "social reciprocation calculator"
anyway.


Well first of all, we "do" calculate the ballistic trajectory of a ball.
We have had this discussion before, and it is simply impossible to
remember all the possible trajectories by training - the only way to do
it is to have a ballistic calculator. I also think that social animals do
have social reciprocation calculators, but these work on one-to-one
relationships within the society. The purpose of a conscience is to work
on one-to-many and many-to-one relationships.

--
Yours,

Bill Morse

It was once projected that a million monkeys with a million typewriters
could, by random typing, eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare.
Now, thanks to the internet, we know that this is not true

.

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