Evolution Is Just An Emergent Property Of the Action Of Consciousness

Discussion in 'Alternative Theories' started by Steve Klinko, Feb 27, 2021.

  1. river

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    To the OP

    What is the most primitive form of consciousness ? By the living ?
     
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  3. Steve Klinko Registered Senior Member

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    Not Intelligent, but Conscious. There is no master plan that Consciousness is executing. All I'm saying is that Conscious Experiences can motivate Animals to stay away from Painful situations (a predators mouth) which will have the consequence of higher survival rates.
     
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  5. Steve Klinko Registered Senior Member

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    I don't know. But I suspect that Pain may have been the earliest Conscious Experience because it is so important to Survival.
     
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  7. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Are my tomato plants conscious?
     
  8. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Duh! However, evolution had to already be going on to get to the point of mouths and predators.
     
  9. Steve Klinko Registered Senior Member

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    The OP specifically states the scope of the OP in the first sentence: Animal Evolution, not Plant Evolution. I don't know for sure, but I don't think Plants have Pain. Wouldn't it be cruel if they did have Pain. They seem to have no Volitional or Reflex Movement capability to relieve the Pain. Plants probably (my Speculation) have no Conscious Experience. The interesting realization of this is that without Conscious Experience all you can get is Plant Life from Evolution.

    Animal Evolution is not a completely Mindless, Bio Electrical Chemical, DNA Mutating, Environmentally Influenced process. Rather, Animal Evolution is driven by a combination of primitive Conscious Desires (and Experiences), Bio Electrical Chemical processes, Random DNA Mutations, and Environmental Influences.
     
  10. Steve Klinko Registered Senior Member

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    At some point in Evolution, actual Experienced Pain appeared. That is the point of entry into the discussion of the OP. Nobody can say when this Experienced Pain entered Animal Life, but when it did, it must have been a Watershed moment in Evolution. Don't know if mouths were already around when Pain appeared.
     
  11. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    I don't know about your tomato plants, but mine are conscious. Bwahahaha.
     
  12. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    So, unlike Joseph Campbell, you don't think heliotropism is a sign of consciousness.
     
  13. Steve Klinko Registered Senior Member

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    He does? So he thinks a Plant can sense that the Sun has moved and then have a Desire to follow the Sun? I think not.
     
  14. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Why not? Why do you draw the line at plants?
     
  15. Steve Klinko Registered Senior Member

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    I draw the line because of a lifetime of observing Plants. Nobody knows for sure about Plants, but I think it's a pretty good bet that they do not have Conscious Experiences. Of course there is a completely mechanistic cause for the Plant to follow the Sun having to do with faster or slower growth on one side of the plant due to the Sun which causes it to tilt in the direction of the Sun.
     
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  16. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    By that logic it would be apparent that evolution is not an emergent property of consciousness. It could even imply the opposite, consciousness is an emergent property of evolution.
     
  17. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Exactly right. Evolution operates quite effectively on things that don't have a central nervous system (plants, amoebae) and are therefore not conscious.
     
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  18. Dennis Tate Valued Senior Member

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    Actually there is evidence that plants have far more of the aspects that might be defined as "consciousness" than we tend to imagine.

    You could also go to near-death .com and do a search for the word "plants" and some intriguing results would pop up.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants
     
  19. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    From your own link: many of the claims in the book are false or unsupported.
    Why do you persist in posting nonsense?
     
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  20. Dennis Tate Valued Senior Member

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    Because the editors at Wikipedia lie!

    They may have reasons for their biases that to them justify their lie.... but it is obvious that even very smart people wish to keep their world view more simple and small.

    One logical reason for the evidence for the Secret Life of Plants to be suppressed a little bit... is that we may tend to fear some variation of a "Plants Rights Movement" along the line of PETA??? That is a somewhat scary thought isn't it?
     
  21. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    That's based on... what?
    Have you actually read the work referenced?
    Do you contend that Galston and Slayman didn't state that many of the claims are false or unsupported?
    Perhaps I should quote the two authors directly: corpus of fallacious or unprovable claims which comprise The Secret Life of Plants. (From the paper cited in Wiki).
    In other words - regardless of the facts and what science says you're sticking with your beliefs. Okay.
    So you choose to believe a book that relies on "uncontrolled experiments, random observations, and anecdotal reports" [quote from the same paper] rather than controlled studies?
     
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  22. Dennis Tate Valued Senior Member

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    It is obvious that if the claims in this book are not somehow shown to have less value.....
    then the Richard Dawkins Ph. D. world view might be defeated......
    if that happened then the existing ethical foundation of the world economy would begin to crumble......
    because our economy and government do have a basis in the ideas of Robert Thomas Malthus.

    The type of progress that most of us want is supposed to proceed slowly and according to our world view and we are not ready for something like this.......



    https://www.near-death.com/religion/christianity/howard-storm.html#a04

    Personally... I suspect that the future that was shown to former Atheist Howard Storm could well have been full of technology but...... it could be that by the year 2185 we can so miniaturize technology that the tech of that time period will fit into the environment and appear almost invisible to somebody from 1985 who is given a glimpse of it.
     
  23. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Like I noted: regardless of the facts and what science says you're sticking with your beliefs.
    You're not interested in reality or science, you simply cherry-pick what supports your fixed view.

    Oh, and you haven't even bothered to try to support your assertion that "Because the editors at Wikipedia lie!". Is that because you can't, so you'd rather pretend you didn't write it?
     
    Last edited: Mar 18, 2021

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