MemeMachineGo!

From a Washington Post article:

The feeling you have as you read this sentence, Wegner argues, is an illusion pulled off by a complex machine in your skull. It not only reads and understands this sentence, he says, but also makes you feel as if you have experienced the reading of the sentence. In other words, the brain, not content with being a remarkably complex machine, also convinces itself that it isn't a machine at all.

But why would it bother? The brain, Wegner contends, produces consciousness to give itself a feeling of having done something. This feeling helps the brain recognize similar situations when they arise -- the next article in the newspaper, for instance. Being aware of its actions, the brain-machine can better decide whether to read another article.

I think it's a grave mistake to demand an explanation for "why would it bother?" As I've ranted before, evolution doesn't exist for our benefit. Taking memetics and the hypothesis proposed by Susan Blackmore in The Meme Machine seriously, I think we developed the capacity to imitate by random mutation; this imitation had survival value and was selected for, giving rise to sexual selection for it, eventually giving rise to memetic evolution as a semi-independent force in human development.

Just as simple life gave rise to multicellular and ever more complex forms of life through the relentless and impersonal march of evolution, so memes evolved into co-adapted meme complexes (or memeplexes, as Blackmore shortens it).

The idea of the self is one such memeplex. It has thrived simply because the environment has selected for it. Memetic evolution doesn't exist for our benefit any more than genetic evolution, but just as much, what we are is its result. And in case you missed it the first time, I'll plug again Blackmore's Waking from the Meme Dream.

Of course, all this only addresses part of the hard problem. Finding the mechanism by which consiousness occurs is a different, and fascinating, problem.

(The Post link via Follow Me Here)