Lecture 13

Question 1

primer on evolutionary theory

Answer 1

organism are designed in a way that helps with their survival and ability to deal in certain environments. 3 ways to describe this good fit:
- accident
- directed design
- mindless design

Question 2

directed design

Answer 2

someone has orchestrated the good fit

Question 3

mindless design

Answer 3

the good fit is not an accident, however, there are other paths to functionality

Question 4

evolution

Answer 4

how things change over time. not a directed process which means that not every trait of an organism is adaptive or beneficial

Question 5

diversity

Answer 5

how it results and contributes to evolution

Question 6

adaptation

Answer 6

how evolution results in well-adapted beings

Question 7

principle of natural selection

Answer 7

the mechanism that explains how living things evolve. this principle could be seen as an algorithm

Question 8

algorithm

Answer 8

a recipe or set of instructions that when followed guarantees a certain result

Question 9

evolutionary algorithm

Answer 9

when the three conditions are met:
- selection
- variation
- heredity
evolutions necessarily leads to a better population

Question 10

panadaptationism

Answer 10

sees every trait as necessarily adaptive

Question 11

different worlds

Answer 11

each organism inhabits a different world because every specie has evolved sensory systems to suit its way of life

Question 12

the problem of other minds

Answer 12

• all species are conscious (panpsychism)
• there could be higher and lower order consciousness
• consciousness is continuous with life
• as Descartes saw it, only humans are conscious, and animals have no souls or consciousness (automata)

Question 13

learning about animal consciousness

Answer 13

there are several ways which allow us to learn about animal conscious minds:
- self-recognition
- physical indicators
- mind-reading
- imitation

Question 14

physical indicators

Answer 14

such as structure and organization of the brain could give us some indication of consciousness. any creature that has a thalamocortical or upper brainstem is considered to be conscious

Question 15

pain behavior

Answer 15

could be an indicator of consciousness. by the behavior of some animals we could say that they are capable of suffering. the problem here is that we could argue that suffering is possible without phenomenal consciousness and we can also say that pain/suffering is not the same as consciousness

Question 16

flexible and complex behavior

Answer 16

required planning, controlled action and general-purpose perception. the problem with this is that intelligence and consciousness are not correlated. this also required us to classify animals based on their intelligence which might be biased

Question 17

self-recognition

Answer 17

the ability to recognize yourself and distinguish yourself from others.

Question 18

mind-reading

Answer 18

or mentalizing is the social ability to recognize others as having a mind.

Question 19

imitation

Answer 19

is the ability to learn to do something from seeing others do it. the phenomenon known as over-imitation is the willingness to imitate behavior, even if they do not have an obvious function

Question 20

epiphenomenalism

Answer 20

something that arises from physical events but that has no causal effect and natural selection does not act on it

a view in which zombies are possible. this conceivability of zombies would indicate that consciousness plays no role in the causal chain of physical events.

Question 21

inessentialism

Answer 21

states that consciousness did not have to evolve. we also do not have to accept that consciousness is inessential just because it doesn’t play a causal role

Question 22

consciousness has NO adaptive function

Answer 22

consciosuenss is not separable from evolved adaptive traits such as language, memory and problem solving. The mental states and abilities that consciousness accompanies have a function, which means that consciousness has no function in its own right.

Question 23

consciousness has an adaptive function

Answer 23

consciousness is an emergent property because it depends on and arises from the whole organism, but it cannot be attributed to parts of it. its also a property on which natural selection can act upon (surface property).

consciousness has a social function - we are natural psychologists, and because we live in complex social worlds, we need the ability to understand each other. consciousness can only provide this function if it gives us a first-person perspective

Question 24

consciousness as an illusion

Answer 24

consciousness could be an illusion and still be adaptive. it could be the illusion itself that is beneficial