@Mildly – right, completely speculative. I’ve some ideas for sources for corroboration/disproof, one of which I’m pursuing. Regarding sharks: My claim is that mechanisms for planning would have been under substantially higher selection pressure once we have “room” for such planning to occur. I believe that the transition on to land marks a giant change in how much room we had to plan over. Sharks and other water borne animals are largely trapped in a reactive bubble, for the reasons I’ve put forward already. Tracking is far from planning. A bacteria can track a gradient of chemicals for a large distance. I have not seen compelling evidence of shark strategizing over significant distances.

1. although referencing the scientific/evolutionary background, it is speculative only; where’s the studies that demonstrate your points?
2. the old sticky problem of creating a definition of “consciousness” that the rest of us can’t poke holes in (not that our definitions would be any more resistant to a barrage of critique from our peers, just stating how difficult that really is to do).

Torbjorn in #2 also falls on an old sword: the requirement that “awake” be present to declare consciousness. Of course the obvious counter would be to ask if dreaming is not also a type of consciousness? And there’s the fact that all the animals we agree have consciousness depend on sleep and dreaming to maintain the integrity of their consciousness. That would have to be explained.

So I love the eloquence of the argument, and in particular I loved the last installment where you explained how the ability to see a long distance (which necessarily came after getting out of the water) played such an important role in the development of land animals.

But I think to postulate that long-distance vision was primary to evolving consciousness puts the cart before the horse. Even consciousness-as-planning, the definition you seem to prefer, is not necessarily dependent upon a land-based existence. Sharks, among other predatory fish, seem to be able to track prey over long distances, and create a strategy of attack, and they have never been land-based.

Comment on this:

This is of course partially true. Animals who feed on animals are thought by memory and communication that other animals feed on stationary food sources. Also water holes are concentrated food sources for hunters.

On your three posts in general:

Very interesting view on the topic. However, following your argument it may be more nuanced then stated. Some consciousness must have developed earlier. I agree with the earlier commenters here that ” Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness (yes I looked at wiki)”, but you are here more focusing on actions and planning as an inter communication of the self.

So now if we create a mostly visual, artificial neuron-network twice and let it teach itself how to feed (e.g. find light to load battery), remember its actions (i.e. recording its “thought”), be hunted (and react to that), and put one in water and one on land. In your opinion #2 would become a consciousness being? If so we have a record on what that is. Get funding and send it to science ;o)

Last comment on “hive”, some research indicates that group thinking reduces the ability of the species to be more creative. Sparks of brilliance (which may lead to jumps in evolutions) are repressed since other similar ideas of just less equal brilliance take over (leading to steps in evolution or even halting evolution). What is your take on this?

- Marco Casteleijn -fellow scientist

Also IF conciousness is self awareness, then I am fond of the idea that, in a social animal (that sexually reproduces) it is advantageous to be able to interpret & predict the mind states of potential mates & competitors for potential mates. This sexual selection pressure adds an extra layer above the mere planning of the hunt for food.

First off, there are every reason to think that squids, fishes et cetera have consciousness, however it is defined. They do display all of our behaviors up to and including social behavior, play and tool use. At what trait do we draw a line, and why?

A simple definition of consciousness could be “having a brain and being awake”.*

Second, and here is my real problem with this: simply having a cortex is enough to have generic symbolic thinking emerge spontaneously. A cortex is a structure shared among all vertebrates, and has a homology in the mushroom bodies of invertebrates. So this is a very old trait dating back before the vertebrate/invertebrate split, or at least ~ 520 My says google.

Symbolic thinking means a neural net learns, i.e. remembers. And it neatly solves the overtraining problem of generic neural nets, so having a selective advantage in discrimination which _could_ explain its evolution (or be a just-so story).

A third problem for consciousness-as-planning is that recent experiments on rats IIRC shows that they incessantly models their spatial behavior in both directions. To figure out where they should go, they have to keep figuring out where they came from. So planning (and dreaming) emerges from the need to make better decisions om motor functions. (Well, duh.)

This behavior also predicts the generic mechanism for modeling ‘self’, and post-motor behavior model sufficiently self-consistent [sic!] ‘decisions’, that is used by more complex behaving animals. This is the more common idea of consciousness, I think.

A fourth problem for consciousness-as-planning-from-land-vision would be the necessary convergent evolution in land vertebrates and land invertebrates, assuming planning in bees is accepted.

My guess is that “consciousness” is anthropomorphizing on brain function. It is an implicit version of the old “homunculus” idea. Maybe it _is_ a “homunculus argument“?

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* Interestingly, this could be “sufficiently awake”. AFAIU they can now see how parts of brains microsleeps if we are tired.