What the human brain added was a way to simulate other brains, because of growing communication ability for coordination's sake. It's basically a way to recognise smart freeloaders. E.g. men trying to sweet talk a woman for sex (and impregnation). He will make a lot of promises but how surely can you depend on him? It's of vital importance you know so you don't get duped.
So the human brain is an advanced bullshitmeter and bullshitter in an arms race, and this brain simulation machine has all kinds of unexpected side effects. At least, based upon some clues I read from some biologists, I came out on that understanding. If this has some truth, based on the world today, we still can get a lot better at it.
The ability to predict is surely what drove development of the cortex, since the benefits are massive - allows you to know what comes next when you hear the roar of a tiger, or see a poisonous snake, or make a plan, rather than waiting until something bad is actually happening to you.
Parts of our cortex specialized to social behavior would have come later. I doubt bullshit generation/detection would have been a specific driver though! As girls attracted to "bad boys" attest, the urge to merge is far more basic than that.
If we define the perception of time passing through novelty, then there's less novelty the more experiences you have. I think that's an interesting model (if not perfectly accurate).
Likewise, the accumulation of relevant experiences might make time seem to actually pass slower, because you're making more connections at each moment and (arguably, might be false) have a more coherent and active brain -- but if there's less novelty worth remembering, it may appear in retrospect (when you examine your memory) that less (perceptual) time has elapsed for the same wallclock time.
So I think this suggests two kinds of time: instantaneous perceptive time (how much your cognition is active -- for example, it may be near zero during anesthesia) and comparative memory time (how much you judge time intervals from your memory of events).
One interesting example is perhaps when we've had an exciting week and it both seems that a month has elapsed in that week (since so much has happened), and that "time passed so quickly!". The former is explained by comparative memory time; maybe the latter is explained by us simply not thinking about the passage of time at all, and "skipping our clocks" (like forgetting to increment a clock or calendar). This is of course mostly speculation.
Waiting a day doesn't feel nearly as long when you've already waited 18,000.
The experiences of even a novel day have less weight if you have hundreds of similarly novel days to compare against.
Edit: In saying that, if I was looking up at a stack of 80 boxes and someone added another on top it might feel subjectively like the tower was extended by less of an amount than if it was the 3rd box being added.
My personal theory is consciousness is a coalescence of weighted distributions that learn via a closed loop feedback and an injection of true randomness via quantum tunneling. That is, the brain is a mechanism by which true randomness gets turned into a weighted distributions that equate to decisions and actions with a feedback loop. As experiences get encoded as complex neuron paths or "memories" (this includes things like muscle memory, not just what we normally think of as memories), they build stronger paths and more connections, effectively increasing their "weight". This holds true down to how neurons function on an individual level.
Edit: To further explain, I apply the basic principles that govern life to all facets of life, all the way up to the complexities of human society, language, etc.. That is, DNA is a self-replicating system that through randomness was able to build more and more complex organisms over time. It generically represents a way to encode behaviors through time, a necessary subset of which include behaviors for self-replication and resource acquisition (mostly to satisfy the self-replication requirement). On a more complex level, human society is the organism, human language (including speech, writing, visual arts) is the DNA (a means to pass knowledge, behaviors, etc. through time), and humans are the "cells".
I'm not saying these cases are pseudorandom (the logistics of having a prng with state apply to biology looks hard), but that it doesn't seem to require true random
Edit: I guess I was wrong.
Edit: to your point about needing validation: the desire for acceptance is simply put, the desire for a positive feedback response on a personal or societal level. Remember, our brains are big reinforced learning machines and crave feedback as quickly and unambiguously as possible. The desire for acceptance is both a thing that keeps behaviors "in-line" with societal expectations while allowing for changes in those behaviors to shape societal behaviors (and expectations) over generations (time), and therefor make progress, or at least change.
Even assuming quantum phenomena are central to the brain's workings, the arguments still fail: you have no control over the quantum phenomena in your brain, so you still don't have free will in the naïve intuitive sense.
I see even less connection between quantum phenomena and consciousness. Consciousness need not depend on free will.
I'm just thinking that perhaps there is a possibility that the brain evolved to take advantage of quantum phenomena to increase capability.
Almost. Consciousness is when the mechanism in your brain models (and thus anticipates the future) other brains, is used to model itself.
Perhaps your bar for "meaningful" is calibrated too high. Perhaps a dog-level of self-reflection is still quite a big deal, when compared to say a fish or whatnot.
Anyway, can you elaborate on why you think dogs ar "clearly" conscious?
Fish are probably conscious.
> Anyway, can you elaborate on why you think dogs ar "clearly" conscious?
Unless you think it's ok to torture dogs, you already agree with me that dogs are conscious.
Or, a more philosophical response:
1. I am conscious
2. My consciousness is, broadly speaking, seated in my brain
3. A dogs has a brain broadly similar to my own
4. Dogs respond to stimuli in a way similar to the way I do. Both of us appear to be able to respond to painful stimuli, for instance.
5. It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that the dog is capable of subjective experience such as suffering, i.e. dogs are conscious.
Of course, dogs appear to be much less intelligent, and it doesn't seem justified to assume that dog consciousness is on the same 'level' as human consciousness, whatever that might mean.
This is broadly similar to an argument like anyone who wishes to argue for solipsism needs to explain why they, one human being among billions, are the only one with consciousness.
edit: tweaks and additions
Most of the prediction that's going on in the brain seems to be at an unconscious level, and our conscious mind only seems to be alerted when something unexpected happens, like when you're walking along and suddenly step into a shallow hole you didn't notice: your brain was unconsciously predicting when your foot would hit the ground and something else happened.
Meanwhile, the very-novel first few years with kids seemed to go by in a flash. A month feels about a week long to me, now, and has for years.
For me the effect seems disconnected from circumstances, but connected to age—years had been feeling subjectively shorter for quite a while before I had kids, even, and they seemed to just be "getting shorter" as I got older, period, no relation to what's going on.
When watching baby playing with toys in living room, an hour flies by (thankfully because usually very sleep deprived).
a) Consciousness is. Period.
> b) [...] maybe you need more novelty.
I have a few heuristics. One is that man is egocentric (I too use indefinite "you" when I do not want to sound egoistic).
a) Consciousness is just your brain trying to anticipate the future.
b) Your brain compresses (normalises?) repetition in memories. So even if day to day events happen at normal speed, the years seem to fly by when you reflect on them. If your life seems to be flying-by then maybe you need more novelty.