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Politics : Evolution

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From: Brumar89	9/10/2009 8:45:06 PM
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Epiphenomalism and Evolution by Bilbo The problem of consciousness is one that materialism hasn't been able to solve. The most popular explanation is Epiphenomenalism — that consciousness is just a by-product of the physical activity of our brains. It has no causal efficacy in and of itself. This seems to be a problem when we consider the most popular explanation of how we got here — Darwinian evolution. According to that theory, we are the product of a blind process that favored organisms that could survive and reproduce more effectively than their competitors. So what's the problem? The problem then for Epiphenomenalism, is that our conscious beliefs have no causal effect upon our physical states. If we need to avoid a part of the jungle, because a tiger lives there, then it doesn't matter what we consciously believe. As long as we don't go into the jungle, we can believe anything we want to believe. We could even believe that we should not avoid that part of the jungle. In other words, there is no good evolutionary explanation of why any of our conscious beliefs need be true, given Epiphenomenalism. So whatever explanation we offer for the relationship of conscious beliefs to actions, Epiphenomenalism shouldn't be it. telicthoughts.com

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