I recently watched a video arguing that consciousness is an evolutionary trait developed by humans and that it may now be more of a burden than a benefit. What once gave us an advantage – awareness of dangers in our environment, such as lurking tigers – is no longer necessary. The tiger is gone, yet we are left with a restless mind that contemplates mortality and the dread of existence.
This YouTuber is a classical materialist who believes that:
- Consciousness arose through evolution and therefore serves only the purpose of survival.
- It is produced by neural activity in the brain.
- Humans and other animals are essentially machines
- Free will is an illusion.
Furthermore, he delivers this as if it’s an established fact of science, and any alternative view is delusional wishful thinking far removed from scientific realism.
I find this belief – because that’s what it is: a belief – utterly strange and alien to the experience of being conscious.
Why Is It Wrong?
The argument is not necessarily wrong, but it is philosophical rather than scientific. It reflects materialism, a metaphysical stance, not an empirically proven fact.
Why I find it so strange is that the only thing that we are absolutely 100% sure of is that we are conscious. We can’t confirm the existence of anything outside of our conscious awareness of it.
What this YouTuber is ignoring is also that materialism through neuroscience has not been able to show how the brain could create consciousness despite decades of trying.
Even mainstream media are starting to notice this fact. A recent Financial Times article about Michael Pollan’s latest book said it bluntly: The ‘hard question’ remained, remains, and most likely will remain unanswered, despite what the AI billionaires in Silicon Valley may tell you. Artificial intelligence is what it says it is — artificial. There is no ghost in the machine; there is only a machine in the machine. And Koch (German neuroscientist, Christof Koch, ed.) himself is one of those who have come to accept this inconvenient fact. “We can agree that there are physical mechanisms in the brain that correlate with consciousness”, he told Pollan when the two men met at Seattle’s Allen Institute for Brain Science, where Koch works. “But finding those mechanisms is never going to explain how consciousness arises.”
Wow, that’s a huge blow to materialism and its ability to coherently and parsimoniously weave the fact of consciousness into their theory.
Consciousness Is Everything, Everywhere, All At Once
Another reason I find the evolutionary account so strange, is that if consciousness has arrived in humans during evolution, that means that before this happened the Earth must have been populated by zombies.
And if consciousness is no longer necessary, as the YouTuber suggests, evolution might eventually eliminate it again, returning the world to that zombie-like state.
To view consciousness as an evolutionary trait – and putting it in the same league as -say- a giraffe’s long neck – is utterly weird to me. Like I wrote before: consciousness is EVERYTHING. It’s the only thing that’s sure to exist.
In the article, Michael Pollan explains that while he was under the influence of mushrooms he could experience how vibrant and full of life the world felt. And I would argue that you can easily have that sense without the psychedelics. Go to the forest and experience how the whole thing is bursting with life. Animals and plants may not possess human minds, but is it really so far-fetched to imagine that they have some form of experience? Emerging research into animal – and even plant – responsiveness and consciousness suggests strongly that they do.
The YouTuber describes humans as a collection of billions of atoms, but that is not what our true identity is. When a loved one has passed, do you look at his/her body and still have the feeling that it is them? Of course not, with the mind gone – everything that made that person him or her is gone, only an empty shell remains.
Like the FT article and a recent fictional book prove, thoughts and ideas about consciousness are shifting, but we are far yet from the realization that consciousness is all there is and all we need.
Free-Consciousness 
Leave a comment