Attributing Human Consciousness to the Theory of Evolution is false and invalid

Thanks Con, I need to make another apology for this short reply, as I need to leave for Mother’s Day lunch soon! Bestowment: While it would be foolish of me to dismiss this notion out of hand, as it is impossible to rule out intelligent design even if evolution was true on essentially every level, I do argue that such ideas are extraneous and unnecessary. What is Conciousness?: Pro makes a very simple statement on where/when consciousness arose: “When said consciousness asks its first question!” I must admit, in a black and white world, this would be a perfectly logical and rather elegant answer. Of course reality is not as clear cut. Let’s take a pair of animal behaviours we are quite familiar with: A mother mammal calling it’s young Mating rituals of various mammals Neither of these behaviours is linguistically of course, but they all covey a scenario. One mammal needs information from the other mammal. A mother needs to locate her children, and male needs to find out of a female will be receptive or not. In both cases probing, or an ‘inquisition’ is made. I submit that this is but a reduction of the same mechanisms that could have led to the intelligence that asks abstract linguistic questions today. These can be seen as non-linguistic ‘questions’ one would make to the other. Of course it’s debatable, and I will readily admit that instincts play a substantially larger role than complex thought in these cases. But that’s exactly the point, the ability to inquire is reducible to processes largely governed by non-thought processes. If one looks at the instinctual behaviours of humans, sexuality, crying, blushing and most strikingly, facial expressions. These processes all utilize means of conveying information non-linguistically to our fellow species. Furthermore, none of these are linguistical means of communication either, but they carry substantial weight Evolutionary Demand: I had already discussed the effect of trade-offs in evolution, in particular with the brain. The brain an energy-expensive organ itself needs to convey significant benefit to offset the large energy cost of sustaining it. And this energy cost was only possible to fulfil in abundance upon the advent of fire & cooking >200,000 years ago [1], which dramatically increased the ability to absorb nutrients from the same foods. This may well have been the ‘quantum jump’ which provides the very sharp increase in brain size and intelligence of our ancestors. When one looks at the history of Earth around 100,000 years ago, we were in our most recent period of glaciation, or the ‘Ice Age’ which stretched from 110,000-10,000 years ago. During this period there were abrupt changes within the ecosystem, with prey scarce and requirement for continual relocation. During this time period widespread use of fire was already prevailing however our own species was still under substantial stress. 70,000 years ago, a rapid freezing of Africa almost wiped out our ancestors according to the Toba catastrophe theory, which resulted in a population reduction to just 10,000. The ones who survived were likely the ones with the intelligence, communication and social structures required for this rapid relocation to southern Europe to occur [2][3]. While it is true that our fellow primates, including the chimpanzees and bonobos were in the same situation, our ecological niche had drifted. Our ancestors derived much more of their energy from hunting as opposed to vegetation; therefore the evolutionary adaptions necessary to sustain our ancestors would have been quite different. Conclusions: I hope that I have shown so far that many of the things we attribute to consciousness are reducible and observable in our fellow species, and that intelligence is but a complex manifestation of such, brought on by a remarkably short period of evolution. Therefore I hold the resolution to be false. And of course, Happy Mother’s Day!! References: [1] http://www.jstor.org... [2] http://www.bradshawfoundation.com... [3] http://www.sciencemag.org...