re: Consciousness (The Monk and the Philosopher)

Is it possible, perhaps, that the emergence of a "consciousness" that can override the emotional drives by means of ration and thought (and applying these to the more dominant, primal, and base force of emotion) is the fruit of evolutionary process? I wonder if it is perhaps an adaptive mechanism that allows the organism to more efficiently manipulate the environment as well as the self.

How does consciousness promote the evolution of the organism? Through creativity and rationality and society. It grants the organism the ability to suppress desires when those desires may inhibit the organism. Consciousness is the breeding ground for rationality. Without consciousness, there can be no evaluation nor judgement in abstracted terms of variables. Things can only be defined as good or bad given the evaluation of their immediate impact on the immediate sense of emotion.

I believe this perspective is able to reconcile a significant debate within the scientific community regarding the nature of consciousness, specifically the question of its existence as anything more than an epiphenomenon. Reductionists have claimed that consciousness cannot be more than epiphenomenon. I believe that the above argument provides substantial basis for believing not only that consciousness exists, but also that it has

How has consciousness come about? Perhaps the various neurological underpinnings which give rise to consciousness have been selected for by the evolutionary process as any other inherited trait. Perhaps consciousness lends a significant evolutionary advantage to its alternative.

Furthermore, it is important to understand the primary force of consciousness as the ability to suppress desires dictated by the emotional circuitry of the brain. The so-called "free will" has humorously been refered to as "free won't." By systematically avoiding certain desires, behaviors, and thoughts, we are capable not only of shaping the immediate situation, but of patterning ourselves neurologically. By refraining from a particular negative thought, we eliminate it's circuitry in the brain. Similarly, y refraining from a particularly negative addiction, we eliminate the reward circuity it has develop in the brain, and then replace it with a stronger capacity for determining our own actions.

These thoughts are a response to "The Monk and the Philosopher." Conceptual influences from Antonio Damasio's "Looking for Spinoza" and Jeffrey Schwartz's "Mind and the Brain."