Evolution of Consciousness- a Long Journey

A functionalist like Koch should eagerly embrace the idea that large, complex human societies could become conscious, indeed are likely to be in the process of becoming so right now. Not only do they fulfill the basic properties demanded by IIT even more clearly and fully than do individual brains, but we know that the most important features of consciousness are social properties, which can't be understood at an individual level. At the very least, Koch should realize that the kinds of organization of information that are associated with human consciousness are not at all limited to the human brain. They must include social interactions. Why do Koch and so many other scientists and philosophers resist this conclusion? I said earlier I felt it was an expression of a deep prejudice. What exactly is the basis of this prejudice? I think it's an unwillingness to accept that there may be multiple levels of consciousness all existing within a single system: conscious cells, conscious organisms, and conscious societies. The notion that we could have consciousness’s or voices inside of us that we are completely unaware of is repugnant to most thinkers. It suggests a chaotic situation that would make it impossible for us to function with a more or less stable identity. And how could society be conscious without our being aware of this? Yet we know that multiple forms of consciousness do exist within a single individual. Studies of split brain patients

It was not so long ago that many people, including some very eminent scientists (such as Henri Bergson), believed that the secrets of genetics would never be revealed by biochemistry because there was something inherently non-reducible in life's coding system, something akin to supernatural vitalism. But this turned out to be spectacularly wrong when Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the double helix structure to DNA and how four basic building blocks, adenine, cytosine, thymine and guanine comprise the fundamental language in life's evolution… Is it conceivable that the mystery of consciousness may also have an informational solution similar to the genomic revolution? I’ll pass over the description of Bergson as an “eminent ultimately be explainable in terms of material processes, just as other phenomena have been. But all these other phenomena have been found to exist in multiple levels within a single system. Thus while humans beings grow, reproduce, and adapt, so do single cells within their bodies. Individual cells don't have language in our sense, but they do communicate. They don't have immune systems, but they defend themselves. There is no conflict whatsoever in the existence of these processes at multiple levels. On the contrary, the ability of individual cells to grow and reproduce not only does not interfere with the ability of whole organisms to do the same, it's an essential feature of the latter.

Postmodernists like Derrida present a major challenge to spiritual transcendence by arguing against traditional features of God or higher consciousness like immortality and timelessness. Fundamentally, the postmodern argument is directed against the notion of an absolute. The best documented examples that we have of transcendence, however, as it occurs throughout nature, do not involve, indeed cannot involve, an absolute. Understanding spiritual transcendence in the same way as these natural examples suggests that it involves identification with a higher form of life that while existing on a physical and temporal scale far exceeding of individual humans, nevertheless avoids the problem of an absolute. While it may be difficult coming to terms with the possibility that a human being could transform into identifying with a much more complex form of existence such as the entire planet, understanding spirituality in this way does enable us to escape the postmodern arguments, and begin to conceive of the process in a way that is consistent with our understanding of the natural world. Crossroads of Metahyscs, www.integralworld.net Edwards, M. (2000) The integral cycle of knowledge, www.integralworld.net Goddard, G. (2001) Quadrants reinstated: a reply to Andrew Smith, www.integralworld.net Katz S.T. (1978) Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism. In Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, S. T. Katz, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 21-74 Meillassoux, Q. (2008) After Finitude. An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. New York: Continuum Smith, A.P. (2002) God is not in the quad: a summary of my criticism of Wilber, www.integralworld.net