Talking about consciousness itself is a post-hoc statement. Even
formulating the sentence "Consciousness is all there is." is a post-hoc
statement that is created out of words that are highly contingent entities.
So where do you draw the line between what is admitted to be considered
"first principles" and what not ?
I don't consider the evolutionary aspect of consciousness to be post-hoc.
Actually, I consider that even if we didn't have the idea of evolution in
our culture, we would have still arrived at it solely by looking at qualia,
though most likely much slower. I think that even if you are to take some
humans and isolate them in a totally artificial environment, without
plants and animals from which to derive the idea of evolution, they would
ultimately still arrive at the idea of evolution merely by paying careful
attention to their qualia. One way to do this is to notice that
intellectual qualia always have the form of answers to questions. We are
always first in a consciousness state that we can call a question ("What
should I eat today ?"), and then that conscious state leads to another
state called "answer" ("I will eat some fries."). Starting from this aspect
of consciousness, namely that the quale "I will eat some fries." appears as
a consequence of the quale "What should I eat today ?" will make those
isolated people getting to the idea that all qualia should have appeared
this way, and since it wasn't them that asked the question whose answer was
the quale of red, then it must have been someone else that did it. And
therefore, with clearly considerably more difficulties than us, will arrive
at the theory of evolution.
Now, you also mention the fact that evolution requires time. And my
response to this is that indeed this is how it appears. But the fact that
time is just a quale in consciousness, implies that we currently don't
understand evolution properly, not that what I'm saying about consciousness
is wrong. Actually, it might even be the case that those isolated people
from the above example, would arrive at a better understanding of evolution
than us. And then, if they were to be brought to Earth and showed them the
plants and the animals, they will say: "Ah... but of course!... this is
just a special case of evolution.". It is possible that we are being
mislead into believing that evolution is something else than it actually
is, because of the too many details that we have access to. A more purified
view would show us a different view of evolution. And indeed I'm working on
this, on trying to understand what exactly evolution is if you take out the
physical time.
Making a prediction: An animal that only sees shades-of-gray that is about
to die of starvation, will bring into existence the qualia of red and green
in order to see the food.
On Wednesday, 1 May 2019 21:05:30 UTC+3, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
> You have no principled basis on which to make claims about evolutionary
> dynamics of any kind. It's a post-hoc, just-so justification of the kinds
> of qualia that we experience. Evolution doesn't follow in the slightest
> from your first principles, which is merely that consciousness is all that
> exists. Evolution depends on some kind of objective state-of-affairs that
> exists outside of an individual consciousness, because in order for those
> dynamics to work, some consciousnesses must persist and some must perish.
> Also, you keep claiming that time doesn't exist (ok by me) but evolution
> requires time.
>
> Make one prediction about new kinds of qualia that will emerge based on
> your so-called evolutionary dynamics or whatever. Come on Cosmin Camping,
> you can do it!
>
>
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