We’re not very good at defining what “consciousness” is, although we think we know it when we see it. One promising avenue of attack on the problem is to consider how consciousness may have developed over the course of the evolution of life. There’s a great blog post about this by Malcolm MacIver over on our sibling blog Science Not Fiction. He is thinking about an obviously-important event in the history of life — the moment when aquatic organisms first flapped up onto land and starting breathing air, if we may greatly simplify a complicated process — and asking about its consequences for consciousness.
The idea is one of those deceptively simple ones that makes you wonder why you didn’t think of it all along. The point is: attenuation lengths. In water, you just can’t see very far; your vision becomes blurry after a matter of meters. Consequently, you don’t have much time — maybe seconds — to react to the world around you, whether what you see is prey, a danger, or a potential love interest. So the evolutionary pressure is to “make up your mind” extremely quickly, essentially right away.
Now imagine you crawl up into the air. Suddenly, you can see for kilometers! Now a different mode of action becomes useful: thinking about hypothetical alternatives. Under water, too much Hamlet-like equivocation would have made you someone’s dinner before long; now, you can ask yourself whether it would be better to duck under a rock, scurry up a tree, or finally take a stand against that big bully.
The ability to contemplate competing alternatives before making a decision is a crucial part of what we call consciousness. It’s related to another idea I believe I first got from Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct, although I don’t remember the precise passage: the claim that what really separates the conscious from the non-conscious is the ability to use grammar. In particular, the subjunctive mood, in which we talk about hypothetical futures. (“If I were to go and bring you back some tasty fish, would you let me live?”) Lots of animals can communicate using something like “language,” but the ability to make agreements based on contrary-to-fact scenarios is what separates the shouters from the negotiators. And of course, the ability to contemplate hypothetical scenarios is an important prior step to being able to communicate about them.
Be sure to read the comments, where man good questions are asked (“What about octopuses?” “Aren’t there senses other than vision?”) and also answered. Malcolm also provocatively tries to imagine what it would mean if we vastly improved our sensory capabilities, which of course technology is doing for us all the time. What’s next after consciousness?
Sean, be careful. As I understand it, contrary-to-fact conditionals are omnipresent in the Indo-European languages, but people speaking non-IE have great trouble with them. I’ll be happy to be corrected by a linguist familiar with non-IEs.
On a related note, hopefully not off topic, I’m sure dreams originated in a primitive form of visual memory, or “action replay mechanism”, to remind early land-venturing ampihibians of the route to retrace their steps back to water.
Like many adaptions, doubtless dreams have more uses these days, such as organising and filtering memories. But that’s no contradication with them having some other initial purpose.
If you think about it, when are dreams by far the most prevalent and vivid? Answer – When one has had a skinful, and awakes parched – Ultimately, like hiccups (a reflex originally to draw water across our gills!), it all goes back to water. 😉
What’s next for consciousness?
Nonphysical consciousness/awareness, intelligence without the so-called physical.
There is evidence for it but it is also being seriously investigated as an explanation for near-death experiences using cardiac arrest as a study (physiological, chemical effects can be closely monitored) by an international team of doctors and scientists. Some results of this research may be published either this year or 2012.
Pingback: Busted | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
Dolphins and whales evolved their quite capable long-term consciousnesses in the water. Their nearest land-dwelling relatives and early ancestors lacked this capacity.
@26 J. Lubin: There are a great no. of non-IE languages out there but the one I’m most familiar with is Japanese & I can say w/o equivocation that they CAN express contrary-to-fact conditionals in the language, altho their grammatical form is quite different from IE langs. due to their different origins. Altho I don’t know Korean I know people that do & they tell me that it can be translated word for word into Japanese & vice versa so presumably they have the same kinds of conditionals as well. I’m sure there are many other non-IE langs. that have them, too.
@self-assembled [#30] Oh yes, I’d forgotten about cetacians. As brain scans have revealed, these species don’t dream (so I’ve read).
The conventional reason is that with little constraint on brain size there is no need for dreams to shuffle their memories into more limited space, and doubtless that is true today.
But arguably it is also indirect evidence for my water theory (#27), in that they are never short of water and thus presumably never thirsty. So they never have a need for an ancestral reflex to mentally remind them of the way back to water and then wake them with the vision fresh in their mind.
28 @ Alan,
“What’s next for consciousness? Nonphysical consciousness/awareness, intelligence without the so-called physical. There is evidence for it . . .”
I really doubt this. What exactly is the “evidence” for non-physical consciousness. Sounds impossible.
Mike: I can’t imagine a non-physical manifestation of consciousness, either. But my guess is that to the extent we make progress in understanding it, the particular physical substrate will become less important. If so, we might end up talking about consciousness in terms of organizational structure and information flow. Now all of these things are embodidied in the physcial, but the underlying principles.. its hard to know what to say about those.
This is totally and ridiculously uninformed woo. Visibility underwater in a coral reef is far better than ‘above ground’ in the thick mangrove swamp next to it. And visibility by sound is 100X better underwater. Even that aside, the premise still makes no #$%^ sense. How does ‘being able to see more stuff’ lead inexorably to ‘consciousness’ ? Humans actually have really crappy vision and senses. Our hearing is bad; our sense of smell is non-existent; no sonar; no infrared like snakes; no UV vision like bees; can’t swivel our heads like owls; eyes on the front of our heads; no lateral lines like fish. We’re practically blind, deaf and non-olfactory compared to most other vertebrates. Our nearest ancestors, early primates, lived in thick forest growth, in trees, which are terribly vision limited. All for good reason: concealment from predators, not vision, was our most important ‘earliest’ adaptation as semi-bipeds.
33+34. Mike and AnotherSean
Over 10 years ago I got to know a remarkable group of professional scientists who investigated a group of four people, in whose presence some quite stunning phenomena took place. They were investigated by many scientists at settings in the UK, Europe and the US (by some scientists from NASA). This was the conclusion of three of the (very senior) investigators who studied these phenomena over three years:
“This report is the outcome of a three-year investigation of a Group claiming to receive both messages and materialised or physical objects from a number of collaborative spirit communicators. It has been conducted principally by three senior members of the Society for Psychical Research. In the course of over 20 sittings the investigators were unable to detect any direct indication of fraud or deception, and encountered evidence favouring the hypothesis of intelligent forces, whether originating in the human psyche or from discarnate sources, able to influence material objects and to convey associated meaningful messages, both visual and aural.”
The Scole Report (1999) is 300 pages long and well worth full reading. The above is the abstract. In particular it is worth reading about the quite stunning light phenomena observed by many.
I would advise to concentrate on the extensive phenomena witnessed not the “setting” in which these phenomena were seen, which rather tends to set a default point of view.
This kind of evidence for nonphysical consciousness or awareness I would also say opens up the door for many possibilities, perhaps even considerations to do with religion.
This group, The Human Consciousness Project, are also looking at the possibility of nonphysical consciousness/awareness through near-death experiences. Results not in yet – late 2011 or 2012 I think.
http://www.horizonresearch.org/main_nav_pages.php?cat_id=10
If you click on Collaborators and Advisors you will see that they are quite senior.
AnotherSean
You say “we might end up talking about consciousness in terms of organizational structure and information flow. Now all of these things are embodied in the physical.”
This is the accepted default working position. But with these new phenomena, it seems that “organizational structure and information flow” may be embodied somehow in space itself. And surely this is not surprising considering space is the ground of matter, or the fundamental ground of everything – so perhaps non-physical consciousness/awareness can scope around in this stuff? Seems reasonable.
It says something about the properties of “space” as well.
In relation to Douglas Watts’s theme [#35], my only slight reservation at first was that a lungfish flapping about out of water, with its vision adapted for underwater, would probably have had to contend with even more blurred vision and glare than its normal view, even if somewhat murky, underwater.
And it’s not as if the land environment was benign, with three foot scorpions prowling around, and giant dragonflies darting overhead.
But I guess it wouldn’t have taken long for early amphibians to evolve eyes capable of focussing both in and out of water, after which the supposed consciousness expansion could get underway. So I don’t think this is anything like a fatal flaw in the theory.
John R. Ramsden — “a lungfish flapping about out of water, with its vision adapted for underwater, would probably have had to contend with even more blurred vision and glare than its normal view, even if somewhat murky, underwater.”
Based on today’s lungfish, vision is a decidedly small part of their sensoral repertoire. I’m questioning the entire premise of why a transformation from a wholly aquatic lifestyle to a terrestrial lifestyle changes much of anything, except for breathing air through the atmosphere, obviously, and growing feet from fins. Eels can breathe through their gills and through their skin, which allows them to survive for hours and days out of water as long as they are moist. This is a very very old adaptation (50-100 my). And eels get really big and long-lived (Check James Prosek’s recent book about New Zealand longfin eels that are almost as big as people). So on this basis should we consider eels among the most ‘conscious’ of all vertebrates?
Whales started as fish, evolved with us from the earliest known mammals, lived on land for tens of millions of years, and then decided to go back to a completely aquatic life 30 million years ago. They traded fins for feet and then feet for fins. Humans and primates never did that. Once we came out of the water we stayed out. So shouldn’t whales be more ‘conscious’ than us? They’ve done everything, twice !
I’m just confused about the terms and references used here.
My article 16 at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/03/14/why-did-consciousness-evolve-and-how-can-we-modify-it/comment-page-1/#comment-28771 responds partially to this.
I had no consciousness when I wrote it and i stiil do not consciousness. I am deluding myself that I have a consciousness or am I deluding myself that I do not have one?
I have applied for a grant on “panpsychism” using my background in thermodynamics and swimming. Panpsychism is an ancient philosophy that implies ALL things are aware and exhibit a hierarchy of “consciousness”.
Is a bit murky scientific subject, but I “feel” that light can not be perceived without the surface of mass to reflect from, refract with, or diffract, i.e. “needs” mass. Mass “needs” time and bigger is better, hence growth and evolution…T hey are synergetic.
I have posted the application on a google knol, and also on my website blog. Any input welcomed..
it would seem logical to explore the idea that consciousness is really external and hyper dimensional. it exists prior to being incarnated human or Klingon. your heart has a brain also.