There is no good reason to assume that human intelligence evolved from mud to mind via a long slow history
DENYSE O'LEARY OCTOBER 14, 2023 5
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Possibly the most frustrated science discipline ever envisioned is the effort to trace the evolution of human consciousness.
Of course it doesn’t work. Evolution might predict smarter chimpanzees (or dumber ones, depending) but it does not predict a world of ideas, of which any given theory of evolution is itself merely one of the many ideas.
So what do claims like “Theories of consciousness must be firmly rooted in evolutionary biology” even mean? The neuroscience of theories of consciousness is currently degenerating into chaos.
Apparently, we start with the flatworm’s aversion to pain and end up with Chaitin’s unknowable number. That is a large gap.
Of course it doesn’t work. Evolution might predict smarter chimpanzees (or dumber ones, depending) but it does not predict a world of ideas, of which any given theory of evolution is itself merely one of the many ideas.
So what do claims like “Theories of consciousness must be firmly rooted in evolutionary biology” even mean? The neuroscience of theories of consciousness is currently degenerating into chaos.