From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!scorn!scolex!charless Wed Sep 16 21:22:40 EDT 1992
Article 6855 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!scorn!scolex!charless
>From: charless@sco.COM (charles stross)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Consciousness
Keywords: cognition free-will
Message-ID: <1992Sep04.093530.16078@sco.COM>
Date: 4 Sep 92 09:35:30 GMT
References: <705@trwacs.fp.trw.com>
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In article <705@trwacs.fp.trw.com> erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) writes:
>This is a summary of recent comments on consciousness.
>	:
>Neil Rickert: "Actually, it is my suspicion that consciousness is there to
>increase the speed of learning."
>
>I have a comment on this: The dynamics of cultural and genetic
>transmission differ. In particular, genetic transmission can't track the
>evolution of a chaotic strategy, while cultural transmission can. (This is
>based on some simulation work and an analysis of why a difference was
>apparent in that work.) This is the reason that I believe social group
>behavior and consciousness are connected.

Apropos the dynamics of transmission; having thought for a while about
Richard Dawkins' meme theory [ref: The Selfish Gene], it occurred to me
that memes -- self-replicating informational constructs transmitted 
between the minds of conscious, communicating organisms -- evolve 
by Lamarckian evolution. That is, at the memetic level the inheritance 
of acquired characteristics is active, and evolution can therefore 
short-circuit the process of random generation of mutations and 
selection of the fittest that characterises the Darwinian paradigm. 

By opening up the range of adaptations that are transmissable to
include teleologically self-selected ones as opposed to randomly
generated throws of the DNA dice, consciousness and speech together
permit massively faster evolution directed towards actively selected
goals. (This would explain why it took three billion years of Darwinian
evolution to come up with genus homo ... and fifty thousand years to go
from there to AI (assuming that last step is imminent)).

Question: assuming that you don't shoot holes in the foregoing argument,
is there any reason to suppose that there is not a _higher_ level 
evolution-mediating process which we have not yet discovered? If there
is, what would its characteristics be, how would it relate to 
consciousness, and how could we analyse or use it?



[[ just trying to stir things up a bit ... ]]
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