© Natural Cycles
I've been thinking about various issues relating to postmortem survival and the evolution of consciousness. Well, I guess I'm always sort of thinking about that. But lately I've been thinking that
I've probably gotten off on the wrong track with my focus on information processing and my attempted analogies to computer systems and virtual reality.
All analogies will break down at some point (this is inevitable when comparing
qualitatively different things), but in this case the analogies seem to fail pretty quickly. Trying to compare consciousness to a laser beam reading a disk just doesn't seem to work, because a laser beam is not aware, let alone self-aware. And then what is the render engine (the thing that converts bits of data into a graphical environment)? Is that also consciousness, or is it something else?
If we say that consciousness can choose which data path to follow, then it's not really like a laser beam (which can't choose anything);
it's more like the person using the computer, whose choices control the direction of the game. But then the analogy fails in a different way, because we are attempting to explain consciousness by comparing it to the (conscious) computer user - which explains nothing. It's like explaining an orange by comparing it to another orange.
Or if we say there are no free-will choices and the program just plays out inexorably, then what is the role of consciousness? At best it is a merely passive observer.
Comment: Do we pass on trauma through our DNA?