Lecture 13 Flashcards
primer on evolutionary theory
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
directed design
someone has orchestrated the good fit
mindless design
the good fit is not an accident, however, there are other paths to functionality
evolution
how things change over time. not a directed process which means that not every trait of an organism is adaptive or beneficial
diversity
how it results and contributes to evolution
adaptation
how evolution results in well-adapted beings
principle of natural selection
the mechanism that explains how living things evolve. this principle could be seen as an algorithm
algorithm
a recipe or set of instructions that when followed guarantees a certain result
evolutionary algorithm
when the three conditions are met:
- selection
- variation
- heredity
evolutions necessarily leads to a better population
panadaptationism
sees every trait as necessarily adaptive
different worlds
each organism inhabits a different world because every specie has evolved sensory systems to suit its way of life
the problem of other minds
- 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)
learning about animal consciousness
there are several ways which allow us to learn about animal conscious minds:
- self-recognition
- physical indicators
- mind-reading
- imitation
physical indicators
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
pain behavior
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
flexible and complex behavior
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
self-recognition
the ability to recognize yourself and distinguish yourself from others.
mind-reading
or mentalizing is the social ability to recognize others as having a mind.
imitation
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
epiphenomenalism
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.
inessentialism
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
consciousness has NO adaptive function
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.
consciousness has an adaptive function
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
consciousness as an illusion
consciousness could be an illusion and still be adaptive. it could be the illusion itself that is beneficial
