How is Natural selection a mechanism?

AndrewPD writes:If I create 5 different models of cars and only one of them works then in that way the environment has selected the successful car but it didn't create the cars.
In what sense is evolution creating new species.

Essentially the organism is a series of biochemical events and structures that are described by biochemical events. In what way are these biochemical events evolutionary?

AndrewPD writes:If you think consciousness is an emergent property of the brain then that would suggest consciousness is a disposition available at some level of reality. It's not clear how evolution can explain consciousness and similar goes for any emergent property.

AndrewPD writes:Digestion and circulation are visible phenomena that we can obejectively study and that we see emerging from their components we don't see any thing like consciousness and sensation and cognition emerging from neurons these are private subjective phenomena only accessible to one person directly.

The point is emergent properties in themselves aren't explained by evolution.

So even if consciousness is "selected" or thrives because it is survival aiding that doesn't explain or origin and it seems a rather trivial point to just list potential survival benefits of consciousness.

Why do these dispositions exist especially the ability for a hypothetical "physical reality" to allow self reflection and the observation of reality.?

AndrewPD writes:Emergent properties are properties created by atomic interactions they rely on prexistent dispositions or "availabilities" as explained or described through atomic and chemical theories (Physics/chemistry). None of these theories relies on Darwinian evolution.There is limit as to what could happen on a planet with only one or two elements or just water.I thought evolution was supposed to occur after a primeval soup had formed and this soup therefore has to have available dispositions that things can emerge from.So in what way does evolution explain these available dispositions (ie dispostions that natural "laws" allow or control or do not prohibit")So for instance if you diamond very little will happen to it over long periods of time. It doesn't have the suitable dispositions. In this way "Hair" could not evolve if chemistry did not allow it.

AndrewPD writes:It is not clear however what this brain activity is doing, so claims of finding brain regions resonsible for X have to taken with a pinch of salt.

Brain lesions have showed that lots of "thoughts" or perceptions and cognitions break down in weird ways. So for example people can lose the ability to name living things but not inanimate objects. United perceptions that we take for granted break down so there is no simple single perception to be mapped on the brain.

AndrewPD writes:The idea that the brain "Prodcuces" consciousness is problematic. Consciousness is not like food being turned into waste product and emerging as faeces. What emerges is entirely private. Only I experience my headache.

In what way can neuronal activty represent or capture experience and who does it represent to? (homunculi). I have vivid memories and these are not memories of neurons firing or neurotransmitter activity. So the brain looks like it contains neurons, support cells, blood and so on but not images that we experince or semantics. Where is the experincer (the undeniable subject of experice)

AndrewPD writes:There have been several disturbing cases where anesthesia failed, people were paralysed by medication and operated on whilst consciousness.

AndrewPD writes:No it only proves consciousness can interact with the brain.

Now if consciousness is some kind of emergent property leaking out of neuronal synapses that is still a mystery and I don't see what role evolution has in explaining that, or natural selection.

Anyhow as I posted earlier there are cases like the man with 90% of his brain missing which make large areas of the brain redundant for consciousness or neural correlates.

AndrewPD writes:I cited that case (and there are various others) because it undermines neural correlations. The brain is different than the digestive system when you are claiming that specific brain regions are correlated with specific conscious states or cognitive abilities.

AndrewPD writes:For a start digestion is not private and subjective like conscious states only directly accessible to the subjects.

There is an explanatory gap between brain states and conscious states. I don't see how natural selection sheds any light on this.

AndrewPD writes:This is naive. I mentioned earlier vegetative states and other states where the presence of consciousness is unknown. You seem to be trying to describe consciousness as it appears to an observer observing someone else's behaviour but as I have said it is private and subjectivity.

AndrewPD writes:I can give two examples here of the fundamental privacy of consciousness here. Apologies if this becomes a long post.

AndrewPD writes:I don't agree that science has access to other people's consciousness to examine it objectively like cell mechanisms. Here I am highlighting the problem of accessing consciousness in order to study it and reduce it to a mechanistic by product and the weakness of neural correlations as access to mental content.

AndrewPD writes:You never have access to anyone's consciousness other than your own.

You are assuming consciousness can only arise in brains and in certain types of brains. What properties of the brain make it the only type of thing that could be associated with or cause consciousness.

In consciousness studies there has been a lot argument about not restricting consciousness to brains and proposing artificial consciousness and consciousness in animals with different nervous systems.

Nevertheless I don't see how evolution explains this property or predicts or ensures it.

JonF writes: But any "evolutionist" could sign that with a clear conscience.