I can't think of any reason why we need to be having experiences. Can you? — Unseen

Let me ask you something, do we need anything? Do we even need to live?

Do we need to live? Apart from suicide, we have no choice in the matter.

Anyway, explain how your question relates to answering mine. I'm drawing a blank.

Apart from suicide, we have no choice in the matter. — Unseen

But that choice isn't active until you're alive.
Why are you alive to begin with?

Anyway, explain how your question relates to answering mine. I'm drawing a blank. — Unseen

It's simple.
The existence of a thing necessitates its existence. Every other reason, is a confabulated relation to another thing.

Why is there anything? The best we can say is that we’re existing. Other than that we’re limited to a certain kind of questioning and that future lines of questioning may, or my not, lead to a better way of dealing with your question.

In evolutionary terms we can see the benefits for reproduction, future planning and environmental adaption - all these things require an “appreciation” of environment. The more refined this “appreciation” the better it appears creatures can sustain and reproduce.

The kind of question you are asking is something liking why do rivers emerge. We can answer this question in a variety of ways, but underneath it appears to be an infinite reduction - that says to me that we lack a certain conceptual frame to deal with such questions (or rather to reiterate them in a meaningful manner).

I think Evolution could be heavily guided by Conscious Mind (CM) sensations. Pain will make an Organism or Animal do almost anything to get rid of it. Animal Evolution might not even work without Pain. Pain is central to our existence today. Pain is perfectly bad. We (every organism on the planet) hate Pain. The misconception that people have is that the firing of Neurons is the Pain. But this is only Neural Pain and is not Conscious Pain. A Neuron is an electro chemical thing. Let’s hook a battery through a switch to a light bulb. You could instruct that whenever the switch is closed and the light is on that this represents Pain. It is analogous to a Neuron firing. You see the light come on and react because you know that's what you are supposed to do. But how long will this last. You will get bored. The fact the light comes on provides no real motivation to act. We need a CM to feel Pain when the light comes on. The Pain provides the motivation to survive. You will never get bored. It will always work. There were probably many other types of CM experiences that guided Evolution, but Pain was probably one of the first that developed. So we need a separate CM concept even for Evolution to work. I think it is possible that the real purpose for Evolution is related to development of the CM. The CM could be the driving force behind Evolution providing Motivation in the form of the Desire to avoid Bad Experiences and to seek out Good Experiences. This will have the incidental effect of increasing Survival Rates and thus guiding Evolutionary Outcomes.

When I reach for my coffee mug I have a Conscious Visual experience where I See my hand moving toward the coffee mug. If My hand is off track I sense this in the Conscious Visual experience and adjust the movement of my hand. If I did not have the Conscious Visual experience I would not be able to pick up my coffee mug, or at least it would be much more difficult with just Neural Activity. So the Conscious Visual experience is just Data that helps us interact with the world. This Conscious Visual Data is absolutely necessary for us to function. Similar arguments can be made for the Conscious Auditory experience, the Conscious Smell experience, the Conscious Taste experience, and the Conscious Touch experience. All these experiences are just a type of Data that our Conscious Minds can analyze.

Why do you need a why?

The Primacy Of Consciousness:

The Scientific view of Consciousness is that it is some kind of byproduct of Neural Activity in the Brain. Most Scientists believe that Consciousness is not very important and some go so far as to say that it is just an Illusion with no real purpose. Philosophers have invented the Philosophical Zombie as a tool for thinking about Consciousness or the lack of Consciousness. The P-Zombie is supposed to live and interact with the World just like any one else except that it would not be Conscious.

But from the Inter Mind Model (http://theintermind.com) point of view the P-Zombie would be blind and would not be able to interact with the World. The Inter Mind (IM) and the Conscious Mind (CM) are further processing stages that are absolutely necessary for Sight. Neural Activity is not enough. All we know about Seeing is through Conscious experience. We experience the Conscious Light (CL) that's inside us. Take away the CL experience and what's left? Blind Neural Activity is all you have. You will not See anything. The Primacy of the CL experience for Sight is undeniable, and the same is true for every other Conscious experience that you have. You don't know anything about the Physical World except that which you obtain through your own internal Conscious experiences.

Scientists need to find a way to understand and study Consciousness. They have to stop hiding their inability to study Consciousness by trying to minimize its importance. The Primacy of Consciousness must be understood.

As computers become more and more capable and can interact with people and other computers in complex ways, we as yet have no indication at all that they are the least bit conscious, — Unseen

It's going to be difficult to ever say if they're really conscious rather than simply just good emulators from a behavioral perspective, but on the other hand, the difference can have so little practical value that it hardly matters. The same goes for other people, really, as it is.

Just exactly WHY are humans (and higher animals as well) conscious at all? It seems totally unnecessary and seems to have no survival value, either. — Unseen

It's extremely useful to survival that animals are able to do things like formulate type abstractions (so that they can recognize things in the environment that are dangerous versus not dangerous, for example). So consciousness definitely has survival advantages. With creatures like humans, we'd have to be very, very different than we are, with very different capabilities, to be able to survive long enough to reproduce without consciousness.

I would argue consciousness is the product of a central all spanning consciousness. Each person and animal is a subset (keyword subset) of the central organism. Just as we are complex thinkers with many brain cells the central organism is also extremely complex. This is a common notion in new age religions as well as some eastern religions.

i don't feel this basic proposition contradicts my chosen religion/philosophy/belief system.

Just exactly WHY are humans (and higher animals as well) conscious at all? It seems totally unnecessary and seems to have no survival value, either. — Unseen

Really? Doesn't consciousness allow us to deal with the world we live in, better than it was before we were conscious? For, in our evolutionary journey to our current state, there was a time when we weren't conscious. :chin:

Yeah i would say the book "Sapiens" by Noah Harrari attests to this and various other books on evolution.

This argument involves a strange condition called Functional Blindness where no Neurological deficits can be found in the Brain but nevertheless patients report that they are Blind. The cause of this is a medical mystery but seems to be related to certain types of Psychological problems like depression. No Physiological explanation can be found no matter what type of test is conducted. The Neurons are Firing but the patient is still Blind. It seems almost obvious that the Conscious Experience is necessary for moving around in the World without bumping into things. The Neural Activity is not enough.

One thing that people forget is that the brain operates on particles small than the electron. (Quantum particles). Evolutionary process was not limited to the technologies of the 1800s.

I would argue consciousness is the product of a central all spanning consciousness — christian2017

What would that idea be based on?

just speculation. Science can't answer all of our questions with our current understanding of scientific evidence. At any given point in time we have make decisions on the information that we have at that point in time. Proverbs chapter 1 from the jewish bible or christian bible says a wise man seeks after knowledge. I wish you the best.

So just make up some fantasy that we like the idea of?

Yeah, why not? what are the consequences of just making stuff up as you go along.

Read my profile if you like. Click on my name if you like. No wrong answer from me.

i stated my theory. Do you have a counter theory? Saying you don't know is completely fine.

One thing that people forget is that the brain operates on particles small than the electron. (Quantum particles). Evolutionary process was not limited to the technologies of the 1800s. — christian2017

If this is a comment on something I said then I don't know which of my posts you are referring to. If it is just a general statement of fact then I agree with sentence #2 but am not quite sure about sentence #1.

thats fine. Mostly subjects such as this are conjecture. We can't assume we've hit the point in human history that satisfies our own conception of the threshold of necessary truth. Do you dig me? Any given species is limited by time in my own opinion.

See my profile or click on my name. no wrong answer.

thats fine. Mostly subjects such as this are conjecture. We can't assume we've hit the point in human history that satisfies our own conception of the threshold of necessary truth. Do you dig me? Any given species is limited by time in my own opinion.

See my profile or click on my name. no wrong answer. — christian2017

I agree that Conjecture and Speculation are all we have with regard to what Consciousness is. Everything is still on the table. Science knows absolutely Nothing about the Phenomenon of Consciousness at this point in time.

i would agree with that for the most part.

The only actions we take which are instant are reflexes, which are REALLY decoupled from consciousness!

I don't see why humans lacking consciousness (having experiences) couldn't function in the world much as an intelligent robot would. (The zombie terminology confuses the situation, I think.) A human whose brain processes information without consciousness seems entirely possible.

Consciousness is helpless to do anything. All of our actual thinking (assessing, planning, reacting) goes on in the preconsciousness before we even become aware of it.

I don't see why humans lacking consciousness (having experiences) couldn't function in the world much as an intelligent robot would. (The zombie terminology confuses the situation, I think.) A human whose brain processes information without consciousness seems entirely possible. — Unseen

I hoped that my previous posts explained why the Neural Processing is not enough. Maybe Brains can evolve that don't need Consciousness but our Brains have evolved to need Consciousness. Consciousness is a further processing stage beyond the Neural Activity. We are effectively Blind without the Conscious Visual Experience. The P-Zombie is a standard Philosophical tool for talking about the necessity of Consciousness.

Individual Cells might not have consciessness. Our desire to procreate is what makes us procreate. A robot is predestined to react how its maker/creator/builder built it IMO.

But consciousness is merely observational. The actual activity that means anything and/or results in anything like actions is pre-conscious and isn't conscious at all.