Saturday 14 December 2013

Explaining Consciousness Isn't Difficult!

Consciousness has evolved because it has proved to be adaptive. An organism is more likely to survive if it has an accurate model of its immediate environment. However, there is a trade-off between consciousness and other adaptive faculties in terms of the metabolic opportunity cost. The result has been that the characteristics/degree of consciousness varies between species. But what exactly is consciousness? I suggest that consciousness can be described simply as the model of reality that emerges when individual senses - sight, hearing, smell etc - are integrated with each other and with available cognition.