I have heard another option for the origin of consciousness. True or false, the theory goes that every neuron has a micro-consciousness when it is not busy and the more neurons a thing has that are not busy with things like heartbeat and breathing the more conscious that thing is.
Consciousness is a big tricky problem and questions on the origins only add to that confusion if they don't state which definition of consciousness it uses. There are many different definitions, the most important ones I've seen so far are the subjectiveness (the experiencing of thoughts, which is what Descartes referred to as 'thinking') and the idea of an executive control of thoughts and actions.
I'm not quite sure why you think that neurons could have a micro-consciousness. Do you think that consciousness is an irreducible force in this world like physical energy?
That doesn't sound like much of an explanation. All it has done is kicked the problem downstairs, from explaining how an entire brain can have consciousness to explaining how a single neuron can have a "micro-consciousness", which sounds like an even more difficult thing to explain.
What really concerns me about this theory is what it implies for the 90% of the human race that isn't European. Since various human groups separated about 50,000+ years ago and consciousness is only 3,000 years old, when did they acquire consciousness? Were Native Americans and Australian Aborigines unconscious until taught to read and write? Are they still unconscious?
I suppose this is probably dealt with somewhere in the book.
There's also the problem that split brain patients (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain) exhibit some nonstandard behaviors, but nothing that would indicate lack of conscious thought.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 20.0 ms ] threadI'm not quite sure why you think that neurons could have a micro-consciousness. Do you think that consciousness is an irreducible force in this world like physical energy?
I suppose this is probably dealt with somewhere in the book.
Worth reading for the fun of it though.