How Does Evolution Produce Consciousness/Reason?

[Fist and Faith]

But gravity isn't coded in matter like DNA is; its "code" exists on a purely mathematical level, the inverse square law, for instance. Or Einstein's equations. While DNA assembles organisms based on a physically instantiated code, gravity assembles planets etc. without any such physical carrier of its code. The mathematical structure "sits below" matter, so to speak, without a literal manifestation.

I wouldn't think mathematics had anything to do with gravity's attractive quality. Why don't masses repel each other in an inverse square relationship? I would think there must be a second code, which says "Warp spacetime toward, not away." Perhaps that's a ground-level code. And mathematics is an umbrella code that covers that, and all other codes. Including DNA.

[Zarathustra]

I've been thinking about this lately, because I heard of semiotics and biosemiotics. What is information?, by Marcello Barbieri, is excellent. I think DNA is about something it is not. DNA is two complimentary strands of nucleotides running along sugar phosphate backbones, and joined by hydrogen bonds. DNA means chains of amino acids and proteins, which, once constructed, build living organisms. But DNA doesn't mean chains of amino acids and proteins to us. Well, it does. But if we never existed, if no intelligence or consciousness existed, it would still mean what it means. And the molecular machines would still be using the information in DNA to manufacture amino acids. Still putting things together, building then from scratch, as the information in DNA requires. Which was happening before there was any intelligence or consciousness interpreting or observing.

I'd like to get back to this. You were saying that this is a molecule that is about something else. I missed that point. I'm not sure it's accurate to say that genotype is about phenotype. The former assembles the latter, but it's only metaphorically like a blueprint, not literally. There is no intention involved, no goal, and certainly not any noetic directedness (i.e. consciousness). Being causally dependent isn't the same as being intentionally related. In addition, the causality goes both way--a feedback loop. If the genes produce an organism which isn't suited to the environment, then the genes do not get passed on. So if both affect each other, is the organism about the genes or are the genes about the organism? I don't think either applies.

Now, the picture gets complicated when we consider that part of what the genes are producing is not just an organism, but consciousness. So there is a consciousness interpreting, even if it's not interpreting the DNA. It's interpreting the existential conditions under which the DNA has either its survival or destruction. So that interpretation is causal in the DNA's evolution. And then a feedback loop develops between consciousness and DNA! But we're still not at the point of intentionally shaping it or consciousness being about DNA, not until the literal discovery of DNA. And then consciousness *can* be about DNA, a point at which it can intentionally manipulate it. At this point, we can absolutely say which one is about the other, and the DNA molecule would cease to be the causal originator and become nothing more than a language processed by the entity which it enables through the construction of our bodies. Whoa.

[Fist and Faith]

I don't mean DNA means a human, or whatever species. I mean DNA means chains of amino acids and proteins. Molecular machines literally use it as a blueprint to construct those things. DNA is in every living thing, in every cell of almost every living thing. But it doesn't produce energy; transport anything, such as waste; provide structural support; heal injuries; fight off invaders... The only thing it does, which nothing else does, is provide the information for building the things that do everything else.

I don't know how to view that in a way other than DNA means chains of amino acids and proteins.

So it seems meaning can exist independent of a consciousness interpreting it.

[Zarathustra]

So it seems meaning can exist independent of a consciousness interpreting it.

I definitely agree with that. I'm tempted to argue that "meaning" and "aboutness" are two different things, but that contradicts the argument I was making earlier that consciousness is a loop of meaning. Meaning certainly relates things. And, as I've been stressing, that is true even in passive examples like gravity relating two bodies together. So the active/passive distinction isn't where the divide lies between "aboutness" and whatever the opposite of that is. (Indifference? Unrelatedness?)

Following this line of thinking, I'm wondering if this could be the basis of panpsychism. If aboutness suffuses the universe in terms of meaning, then perhaps this is exactly what proto-consciousness is: universal aboutness carried on "waves of meaning."

And to me it all sounds like quantum entanglement. Particles are entangled when they are part of the same information system. And being part of the same info system means that all the states of matter in that system are being caused by the info in it. And consciousness takes control of that information flow by processing it (understanding it) and producing output in the form of actions in the world that are intelligently related to that info.

This information flow is the mind/body union, the ontological common ground they share because meaning is conserved--not destroyed--as it moves from one medium to the next, from physical to phenomenal. It is at once immaterial, and yet manifests in matter. The relation between meaning in the mind and meaning in the world is not merely figurative, but causal. It literally touches the physical world, and through it, so does our consciousness.

[Fist and Faith]

Following this line of thinking, I'm wondering if this could be the basis of panpsychism. If aboutness suffuses the universe in terms of meaning, then perhaps this is exactly what proto-consciousness is: universal aboutness carried on "waves of meaning."

The idea I've been trying to develop here is that proto-consciousness is the property of particles that experiences. An experiential property to go with the various physical properties we are familiar with, like mass and charge. The key is what is being experienced. The proto-consciousness in the particles of a rock experience simple existence. No particle's proto-consciousness experiences anything any other particle's proto-consciousness experiences.

The proto-consciousness in the particles of a DNA molecule and the various attending molecules that turn the information in DNA into proteins experience information being processed. That is a big deal! The first step towards consciousness! But, extraordinary as protein synthesis is, it's only one information processing system. A lot more than that is needed to have actual consciousness. Photons hitting a single-celled organism's eyespot, causing a signal to be sent to the flagella, is another.

I can't imagine how many information processing systems humans have. Everything about us is information being processed. DNA in every cell is always at work; homeostasis is accomplished thanks to many systems sending information around; our immune systems send information around to fight of invaders; our senses; our joined senses working together for a common goal; on and on. The proto-consciousness in each particle that makes us up experiences its particle's role. And it experiences at least a degree of the whole, because they experience each other. Groups experience as a group.

The brain, being where so much of the information gathers for processing, and where the information processing known as thinking happens, becomes conscious.

[Zarathustra]

I have a hard time believing that particles have any kind of experience, even though I'm very open to panpsychism. I don't think it's something discrete, but rather distributed. Consciousness is a subject-object relation, something about something else. That's its most basic structure. Thus, this structure has to apply at the most fundamental level of reality, if we're going to suggest any sort of proto-consciousness. Without subject/object aboutness, there is not any kind of consciousness, proto- or otherwise. Therefore, individual particles need not have any sort of consciousness themselves for consciousness to be fundamental to the universe. In relating to other particles, the immaterial, meaningful relationship between them could form a proto-consciousness. The meaning/info contained in the their relationship makes one particle "about" the other.

And yet, this doesn't solve the problem of dualism. Consciousness would still be irreducible to matter even at its most fundamental level, because it would be something immaterial (i.e. meaning, information) interacting with the material. In fact, panpsychism expands the dualism quandary universally. So what do we gain by it? This description above does provide a model for how consciousness can be built up from matter, despite not being reduced to it. Dualism no longer is a barrier to scientific explanation of the evolution of consciousness [reminds me very much of Thomas Nagel!]. Matter being related in more and more complex ways allows information processing, magnifying the inherent aboutness than any physical relation has in virtue of the information that comprises its physical relations.

[Fist and Faith]

Consciousness is a subject-object relation, something about something else. That's its most basic structure.

What is the subject-object relationship when considering what it's like to be a bat?

[Zarathustra]

Consciousness is a subject-object relation, something about something else. That's its most basic structure.

What is the subject-object relationship when considering what it's like to be a bat?

[Edit: in the course of answering this question, I've realized some pretty big conclusions I've never considered. It exposed a vagueness in my own thought. I really appreciate the discussion!]

The subject is the bat, and the object is whatever it's conscious of. "What it's like to be" has been used to argue against reductionism--because it can't be described in physical terms--but I don't think it identifies the most basic structure of consciousness. "What it's like to be" is merely a way to describe the subjective half of consciousness. You can't have subjectivity without an object of subjectivity. The noesis-noema duality is the most fundamental structure of consciousness as a whole. It includes "what it's like to be X" and "being about Y," i.e. both subjectivity and its aboutness of objects. And this dual structure forms the basis of the mind-body problem as well as the transcendental problem, because world and body are objects of consciousness. So all the "Big Problems" share in this basic structure, too, which is another clue that it's fundamental. This is the source of these paradoxes. And yet it's also the way out, because we already transcend subjectivity in the very structure of consciousness; it's metaphysically linked to an object simply in virtue of existing. It can't exist any other way.

However, as you have pointed out, aboutness can exist without a subject, even if there is no subject without an object. In its simplest form, aboutness starts out as two objects related through meaning, rather than a subject-object so related. And as more objects are related, their complexity can grow to the point that they begin to process the information which relates them, and this is where the subjective half arises. That information must be self-referential if it is to replicate. So perhaps it's no coincidence that replicating information strings--DNA--start producing living things that lead to consciousness in the universe. DNA has the whole package: subject-object. It "perceives" itself (RNA, replication), and "fights" for its own survival, i.e. causes objective events to happen in its environment which favor is replication. So this is a kind of proto-subjectivity, to match the proto-aboutness already there. And then the necessity of survival reinforces the subject-object relation, imbuing the organism with a sense of "what it's like to be it." And because objects which relate to themselves as self-protective subjects have a better chance at surviving, natural selection amplified this over time.

[Edit: so "what it's like to be" is a self-referential information loop that forms from the universe's general "aboutness property," i.e. meaning relating matter to matter, object to object. This new loop includes not only other objects but also itself--the information loop--in relation to them. This relation becomes part of the information stream, which can also be so related, etc., leading to an endless regress like a phenomenal black hole. This becomes an emergent entity, a new thing. It creates a new type of information which can be processed in both directions: bottom-up and top-down. A new form of causality emerges.]

[Fist and Faith]

Consciousness is a subject-object relation, something about something else. That's its most basic structure.

What is the subject-object relationship when considering what it's like to be a bat?

The subject is the bat, and the object is whatever it's conscious of.I don't see the problem here.

It seems to me that what it's like to be me isn't about anything other than me. I know there wouldn't be a me if there wasn't a not-me. Yin/Yang kind of thing. And I don't believe consciousness would ever come to be without interaction with others. But still, I'm thinking that, when I sit still and contemplate my own being, what it's like to be me, I'm not doing any comparisons. When I think of my love of the music of various composers, for example, I don't also think about people who don't like those composers, or don't like music at all. I guess I'm talking about noesis and noema. You explained it like this:

So if consciousness is always consciousness of something, then what is the difference between consciousness and content? Good question. Consciousness has a two part structure. There is the intentional part, the "aboutness," and then there is the object, or "that which consciousness is about." Another way to describe this twofold structure is, "looking at" and "appearing to."

So the content of consciousness is the object of consciousness, and the part of this process which is directed toward an object is what you can think of as consciousness. Husserl called it noesis and noema. So while these two are inseparable in principle (and in fact), they can be analyzed separate as two sides of the same phenomenon.

What it's like to be me isn't about anything other than me. Even though I couldn't have come about without things other than me. I guess I would want to call it pure consciousness, although that might normally come with more religious baggage than I have in mind. I just googled and found this;
https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossar ... sciousness
It starts well. I'll have to read more and see what I think.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is, maybe consciousness isn't about something else. Maybe it's just what it's like to be itself. The feeling of itself.

[Zarathustra]

It seems to me that what it's like to be me isn't about anything other than me.

I don't think it's about even that much, not until you turn your regard back on your own subjectivity to ask yourself this question. At that point, "what it's like to be you" is no longer you, but instead an object of your consciousness which you are considering.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is, maybe consciousness isn't about something else. Maybe it's just what it's like to be itself. The feeling of itself.

If by consciousness you mean ONLY subjectivity (I think Husserl calls it "pure consciousness," too), then I'd agree, it's not about something else, or even itself, but that's only because we're isolating it in our analysis. I don't think it's possible in practice to have "pure consciousness" without an object. Have you ever done any meditation? Have you ever really tried to clear your mind of all thought? There is still always something there that we're directed to, even if it's nebulous, vague, ineffable. And this thing can't be ourselves, at least not the part of ourself that is currently being directed-to something. Even now, when I'm considering my own directedness, I'm directed towards a concept that stands in for the experience of this directedness. So I'm considering what my directedness felt like a second ago, identifying it with a concept, and turning my current directedness towards that. And when I try to consider my current directedness I had when I wrote that sentence, I'm now experiencing a new directedness. It's like a dog chasing its own tail and never getting to it; it's constantly moving just out of reach by the very act of moving towards it.

A bat certainly has a sense of what it's like to be itself, but it probably doesn't consider that as a philosophical idea. It's probably just considering mosquitoes and such. So what it's like to be a bat isn't about bats. It's about whatever it's conscious of in its particularly batty way.

[Fist and Faith]

Modern biology does not try to define life by some characteristic physical attribute or substance — some living ‘essence’ — with which only animate matter is endowed. We no longer expect there to be any such essence, because we now know that ‘animate matter’, matter in the form of living organisms, is not the basis of life. It is merely one of the effects of life, and the basis of life is molecular. It is the fact that there exist molecules which cause certain environments to make copies of those molecules.

That last sentence is why I can DNA active information. Of course, that's not all of it. DNA doesn't only cause it's own replication. It causes the construction of the physical body of everything that houses it, the certain environments that make copies of it, via protein synthesis. It's doubly active - causing it's environment to be built, then causing that environment to replicate it.