Consciousness: a survival tool with implications for free will
In the previous post of this series on consciousness, I gave my reasoning for consciousness being a trait of behaviour that is an emergent property of nature’s evolution. It gives us a sense of purpose in what can be reduced to a very mechanistic world and thus a reason to live, to reproduce and thus maintain the survival of our species! Consciousness has a large role to play for humans, being very complex beings. We have a greater sense of self than many other species, for which consciousness plays a less important role. This seems very apparent in the complexity of behaviours we observe in other species, i.e. they are not as complex as human behaviours, which matches their seemingly having a lower degree of consciousness.
This being said, it seem that consciousness, a tool which helps remove us from the mechanistic determinism of the world, arises mechanistically itself as this emergent property of evolution! Knowing this, what help is there for us?!
Adding to our sense of consciousness
In the previous post, I claimed that, consciousness being a natural and vital component of our behaviour, we should seek out experiences to enhance our perception of being conscious. Now, this is where I realised that these ideas don’t quite add up. In fact, their not adding up led me to an even more fundamental understanding, as I will describe.
It is natural, as a consequence of this emergent meme, consciousness, for us to seek new experiences. However, for us to follow the natural laws of nature - to form a society, create hierarchies, find a partner with whom we may procreate, teach those with fewer experiences than our own, form religions, search for food, earn a living etc. - is to be mechanistic in our behaviour. These are things we expect ourselves to do.
This can’t add much to our experience of being conscious, these behaviours being evolutionary advantageous for us to survive as a species. It seems that evolution has come up with a solution to this as well: our conscious behaviour has evolved such that we seek unnatural behaviours, by which I mean indulging in the arts, playing sport etc. which have no direct influence on survival and seem to be there just for the sake of it. Sure, these behaviours may have arose from refining societal interactions or training competitively for physical endeavours that would increase chances for survival (e.g. it is thought that javelin arose from hunting with spears to catch food/ward of predators) but that isn’t the case nowadays. These activities are simply for our pleasure.
Examples of unnaturally natural behaviour
For example, the creation of national parks and organisations concerned with conservation seems unnatural in a way. One might think that it is natural for a species to proliferate, feeding off the land until resources become so exhausted that the species begins to die off until there is plenty of resources for the reduced population again, which then proliferates and so the cycle continues. However, we have sanctioned large areas of land to stop this from happening. Well, I suppose that stabilising one’s environment, thus increasing the predictability of its behaviour over time, just seems like an intelligent thing to do.
I quite like this next example though: I once saw a news report about the action conservationists were taking to bring a turtle that had strayed far from its natural habitat back to its home. Is this really what nature had intended? Hasn’t evolution hinged on the migration of animals to new parts of the globe where the environmental pressures have given rise to changes in that animal’s anatomy and behaviour over many generations? Yet here were these conservationists, supposedly fighting for nature, yet going against it! I admit that that turtle may not have survived the passing tankers and boats, predation from new species or simply the changes in temperature. But it may have. Another example is of the lioness who adopted a gazelle fawn, an animal that is usually its dinner, on two occasions (the second as a result of the first being eaten by the alpha male!). This was shown on an episode of Big Cat Diary on the BBC.
There seems to be a natural tendency for animal behaviours to go against the grain of nature. Now this certainly would add to the sense of consciousness. It gives a sense of making up your own rules. Yet, as I have said, this is still a naturally occurring, emergent property of nature.
The self destructive nature of nature
So, we have a naturally occurring behaviour which is designed to go against nature! All in aid of increasing this sense of consciousness.
It is natural to go against nature. This recursively destructive statement holds within it a simple truth. Can one say that it is a natural law to have no natural laws? If there are no natural laws then how can there be a law stating it so? This strikes accord with Godel’s incompleteness theorem. In fact, the most simple, fundamental of truths that I have come across are all self destructive. In their absoluteness, there is nothing. In the case of natural laws, “it is a natural law to have no natural laws” leaves no room for any sense of the term “natural law”. What, then, is left? A world without law. Free will. From where this free will arises, I cannot say. Suffice it to say that it must exist.
The nature of truths
It is quite a bold thing to claim a common denominator to truth. I am a philospher in the sense that I love the search for wisdom but admit that I have no formal training in philosophy, other than through my education in science. All I can say is that there are things that cannot be refuted by any argument simply because the argument refutes itself. Yet the argument holds a necessary clause from which necessity is banished. To me, these statements hold the purest truths I have come across. They are different ways of expressing a more fundamental truth. Yet I think the holding of this truth in one’s mind is dependent on one’s perception of its meaning. And this meaning will have varying importance to those who understand it.
Let me give a few examples of what these truths I talk of:
- There is only one thing that we can know and that is that we cannot know anything - does that mean that we cannot know that we can’t know anything? If so then we can indeed know it! And so the cycle continues. What does this mean? Well, to me, it means that knowledge is something that exists - it is the truth. Afterall, one cannot know something that is not the truth. It is held within existence, there to be accessed briefly, in some reduced form, by a portion of that existence which may be our brain. And the workings of our brain are a part of that truth. One thing cannot know another in the sense that that knowledge holds within it the knowing thing.
- The one natural law is that there are no natural laws - I have already spoken about this. The same commentary as that for knowledge applies. It gives rise to the absence of restraints on nature as a necessity. Ironic, as necessity is a form of restraint. I think one of the problems here is the restraining use of language. This is why I tend to refer to existence. As Descartes pointed out, the one thing we can be aware of is existence.
- Existence is everything and, in its encompassing all things, it is as much as nothing - this is my own take on the most fundamental truth. It is a reflection of the Tao (a way) or, as I call it, ism: the being of everything. As there is nothing outside of the ism, its being everything, there is nothing to which it can be compared and, as such, using the definitions of our language, is no one thing - it is nothing as there is nothing from which it can be distinguished.
- Good things are only put into proportion with respect to bad things - for me, this truth has helped me through hard times. The nature of comparison of things manifest within ism is the only way one can describe nature. It is the only way one can come to know truths. One cannot state the fundamental truth simply because the truth encompasses everything, including that statement! I have tried to come as close as possible to describing it above but that statement doesn’t even come close to my understanding of it and my part as a manifestation within the truth of ism. This comparison, or balance between opposites, is one of the keys to Taoism. They describe it as the Yin and Yang, the soft and hard, the cold and hot, the good and bad, the rough and smooth, the joy and misery etc. of life/reality/truth/tao.