Barking up the Evolutionary Tree
Throughout nature almost every part of each living being has probably served, in a slightly modified condition, for diverse purposes, and has acted in the living machinery of many ancient and distinct specific forms.
Darwin 1862, 348
Julia and John are talking about the following article:
A New Theory Explains How Consciousness Evolved
- Misha Voguel from Pexels
- Chris Helgren / Reuters
- liggraphy from Pixabay
In this post the dialogue is realised by an interaction of virtual characters, for more information please check the page “Virtual characters“
John
OK, I got your draft, read it through, and I have some suggestions
John
First of all: it is too long and too detailed, I suggest we split it up 😉
Julia
So I can elaborate and explain?
John
Indeed. But I did like the setup of the argument a lot! 😊
Julia
Nice! I noticed there were so many early breakthroughs thanks to experiments on the brain 🧠
John
that this became the dominant paradigm and we kinda forgot about consciousness
Julia
Exactly! And then there is the bit at the end about the alternatives
John
OK, you should work those out in a separate article, and you have to explain about Darwin first
Julia
“The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind” (Darwin 1871, 106)
Julia
This basically allowed us to translate what happens in animal brains to human brains
Julia
and since for the longest time animals were seen as barely more than machines …
John
… basically we’re back to Descartes, who thought our bodies were biological robots. 🤖
Julia
It basically enabled the whole paradigm: to understand the mind, we investigate the brain, humans are sufficiently like animals, so …
John
we can learn about humans by studying animals, and reduce the whole shebang to biological mechanisms. Clever.
Julia
And then I introduce some alternative approaches and critiques
Julia
William James said that despite all the biological explanations it is still a complete mystery “how a motion became a feeling”.
John
You do need to explain that a bit more though …
Julia
Basically by reducing the mind to the brain we try to explain consciousness by matter in motion …
John
… basically we’re back to Descartes. Sorry, I’m repeating myself 😄
Julia
Well, Descartes thought that this couldn’t be done at all, that we needed something other than matter to explain the mind
… Continue to read the conversation between John and Julia
on Saturday 17th July…
(4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)
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