Not just this idea, almost every question of consciousness/intelligence/self awareness is approached in some form or another, from different angles.

I could go on about it, but I'll just say it's the best SF I've read in a long while.

I love it too. Conscious self-awareness is arguably not very useful. It pretends to be in control, but mostly it's just observing what the mind has already done, and makes up stuff to rationalize it. At best, that's merely superfluous. But at worst, consciousness gets in the way, and generates counterproductive emotional states. But fortunately, ones mind can trick its consciousness into being useful :)

This is the epiphenomenal position, that consciousness is just along for the ride.

However, it strongly requires that consciousness be not detrimental (at least not overall), because otherwise, evolution probably would have weeded it out.

The novel Blindsight kind of suggests that humans are a local evolutionary maxima, that we achieved mastery of our planet due to our other talents, despite being burdened with consciousness. But again, this runs afoul of evolutionary fitness. Even if animals lacking consciousness couldn't surmount our other abilities, if a mutant human arose without consciousness, presumably it would have an advantage over other humans, and its genes would spread throughout the populace.

The book is really interesting, but having studied this for 7 years of my life, there's no way the author is correct. It's much more likely that other animals experience conscious awareness too. We don't know for sure, and we don't know where to draw the line (fish, insects, aplysia, bacteria?), but it seems reasonable to believe higher mammals have awareness (which is distinct from language, tool use, self-reflection, Theory of Mind, etc).

> if a mutant human arose without consciousness, presumably it would have an advantage over other humans

The book actually does address this. ROT13 to avoid spoilers:

Vg vf fgebatyl fhttrfgrq gung gur inzcverf bs gur abiry ynpx pbafpvbhfarff, juvpu tnir gurz n fvtavsvpnag nqinagntr bire 'onfryvar' uhznaf gung gurl uhagrq.

It's been a few years since I read it, so I didn't recall that. Is it stated or just implied?

Still, I remain unconvinced of the author's depictions of a lack of consciousness. The problem is the "philosophical zombie". It looks and acts, to all accounts, like a normal human, but has no internal experience. Since I can't even prove anybody else has experience (despite acting a lot like me), what's the basis for different behavior just because an organism lacks consciousness?

I found it intriguing but unlikely, based on evolutionary fitness.

Your selection arguments make sense to me. We are conscious, so consciousness must increase fitness. Maybe impulse control is a key aspect of it. And thinking of Hofstadter, maybe it's just the top of the self-referential stack.

Impulse control could be part of it, but it's not clear that that requires consciousness, either :)

We know that perceptual awareness has some connection to biology (sleep, seizures, drugs, etc), so to the extent that consciousness requires energy, it has to justify its caloric expenditure.

Lrf. Ubjrire, ng gur fgneg bs Rpubcenkvn, V trg gung inzcverf fvzhygnarbhfyl eha frireny ernyvgvrf. Ohg vg'f abg lrg pyrne gb zr jurgure gurl'er nygreangr fpranevbf, whfg sbe nzhfrzrag, be jungrire.

Worth trying to differentiate between "consciousness", which I think it's obvious cats and many other animals have, and the human "voice inside your head" / narrative self, which is much more a tower of babel built on symbolic cards, which is a very recent human invention, and arguably that moreso than "consciousness" is what can cause us so much harm.

That's a good point. I was thinking of narrative self. And I am conscious of my narrative self, so they're distinct. So arguably they're all levels in a self-referential stack.

Exactly. Perceptual awareness does not require self-consciousness.

Consciousness is only useless when performing tasks that you have already mastered. Think of your brain as a box containing a programmer (the conscious) and a computer (the subconscious) - the programmer only gets in the way of a program's execution once the program is written, but is indispensable when a new program is required.

Yup, was going to pimp this as well. Absolute banger, and terrifying on a level of the 1978 Alien.

Well then I absolutely must inform you that Peter Watts from a fan fiction version of The Thing from the viewpoint of the alien: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

!! thanks

I just finished reading Blindsight and Echopraxia (as the omnibus release 'Firefall') a couple of days ago, they're both great reads. I don't agree with his conclusions about sentience but I think they're well worth exploring nonetheless.

Edit: Oh wow, not only is Blindsight available online, but all of his short stories are up as well! http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

And it's free!

http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm