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

Thanks Pro for your opening statement: Preamble: Please forgive me, I have left this debate on the back boiler (procrastinated) for much too long and this argument isn’t going to be of the quality I would like it to be. Furthermore, thanks for your answers regarding my presuppositions, it seems we have pretty much the same starting point except on Human consciousness, this much I am happy with. Conciousness: My arguments attempting to show that Human consciousness is an emergent property. One that is a quantitative step along the evolutionary tree. As expected, my side is to argue that consciousness is exclusively determined by the physical brain, and all the processes that lead to its emergence is purely as a result of changes that occur within the brain during the relatively recent Human evolution. Human Conciousness: At what point does one define a consciousness to be Human consciousness? I argue that it is much the same as asking ‘at what point does one define a puddle to be a puddle?’. Does the puddle begin with 1 molecule? 100? A millilitre? A gallon? Within our own species, we have numerous examples and states of consciousness, and that Human consciousness is not a simple has/has not. One only needs look as far as with autistic patients, who clearly have a high level of reasoning, but lack the ability to place themselves in another person’s frame of reference A common test for this is the Sally Anne test [1] Almost any other evolutionary attribute are from similar quantitative differences, such as those that allow whales to endure long term hypoxia, or elephants to hear over distances of kilometres. Human consciousness is represented on several lower levels by other species within the animal kingdom. Self awareness and complex communication are present within dolphins as well as elephants [2] Intelligence & The Brain: Numerous statistical studies performed on Humans showed a positive but weak correlation (0.3-0.6) between IQ/GMA results and Cranial size [3]. While the correllations are weak, the studies remain very consistent with large samples, it is clear that cranial capacity is in some way directly related to intelligence. Much of the noise is of course, explained by environmental factors and other interfering factors, therefore the true relationship may well be stronger than has been found Evolution: From our ancestor Australopithecus afarensis to Homo Sapiens today, the brain size has increased from ~380–430 cm3 to a staggering 1130-1260 cm3 in Homo Sapiens. Our ancestor Australopithecus afarensis has a cranial size comparable to the modern chimpanzee ~393 cm3, and of course the difference in behaviour is astounding. The number of nerve cells is also quite substantial; the human’s having 87 billion neuropnes, more than ten times as many as the common chimpanzee. While a simple nerve count is not going to resolve the dependency of consciousness on the brain, it does yield an important correlation. We have a number of specimens of transitional fossils between Homo Sapiens and Australopithecus afarensis, and we observe a consistent increase in cranial capacity, a tripling to get our current capacity today. Size (cm3) Age (megaannum) Australopithecus afarensis 438 3.6–2.9 Australopithecus africanus 452 3.0–2.4 Paranthropus boisei 521 2.3–1.4 Paranthropus robustus 530 1.9–1.4 Homo habilis 612 1.9–1.6 Homo rudolfensis 700 2.4–1.6 African Homo erectus 700-1100 1.8-1.3 Another important point is the level of intelligence exhibited by our fellow species today is in contention with many of the human behaviors observed: The most dramatic increase in brain size occurred with Homo erectus [4]. Where in a comparatively short period of time (>200,000 years), the cranial size doubled. It is thought that this dramatic jump in brain size was made possible only upon the advent of cooking, where pre-digestion of foods greately increased the quantity of energy we could gain from our foods. The human brain, almost less than 5% of the body mass, uses 25% of the bodies energy supply [5]. Considering the remainder of our bodies use 1500 calories a day just to maintain biostasis, it is clear why larger brains have not evolved anywhere else in the animal kingdom. They could not until they learned to cook, it is impossible to fuel such large brains in any other way. Modern Species’ Intelligence: We accept there are varying levels of consciousness within nature today. We can train chimpanzees to recognise and answer questions in sign language [1],furthermore, there is evidence that dogs are capable of rudimentary mathematics [6]. I will forward the assertion that the jump is not time, but in cranial capacity, that is the only significant thing that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Pro: I hope to expand on these more and deal with my opponent’s arguments in my rebuttal. I am sincirely sorry for the lack of quality in this one, I will try to be more personally organised in future.Please do not pull any of your punches in your rebuttal! References: 1. 2. http://en.wikipedia.org... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org... 4. http://www.nature.com... 5. http://www.ted.com... 6. http://www.sciencedaily.com...