This principle can be extended to non-life as well. Atoms, molecules etc. interact in a discriminating way with the environment. Interacting with the environment in a selective way is consciousness. Of course it isn't self-consciousness. Becoming aware that one is discriminating and how is a whole other level, but so is a modern human eye when compared to the first light sensitive combinations of atoms. Wow is it a mind blower. Of course I'm not doing Solms justice here, I'm sure. But it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Life selects and rejects.

What is Solms's explanation for how something becomes conscious/sentient? How does it happen? Can you give specifics other than it the idea that it just evolved to be that way? Like, how did it happen? Not just why? My guess is that he doesn't have an answer, otherwise he'd be a Nobel laureate ... But I'll definitely look him up!

I agree that the source for "everything" is in question (i.e., matter, energy, whatever). We have no clue where these things came from. However, we can observe them. Consciousness is in a category of its own. It's not "stuff. It's not something we can look at with a microscope.

He's way better than a Nobel Laureate. He pulled Chalmers' pants down around his ankles then threw him a bone compliment. Chalmers responded with a bluff, something like: "It has to be a little more than that, though." As if he was now evaluating Solms revolutionary idea, when in fact Chalmers whole schema for the thing, the hard problem, had been undercut and rendered moot. That's the way science goes.

I'm not saying he's "better than a Nobel Laureate" because he one-upped Chalmers. The dude is next level kind of like Magnus was next level at chess, or fill in your example.

Surely the how is the same as everything else ... a form a natural selection? Better and better forms of consciousness are better for survival. We kind of regulate what we need to survive by how we feel. When we are hungry, we aren't figuring up our blood sugar and nutrient status ... we just feel it. If we are too hot like out in the desert too hot, we don't know or figure anything about what our temperature is, we just feel it. THIS, says Solms, is a core survival ability. Feeling our way to homeostasis, feeling what we need to survive, has awesome survival value and is the function of consciousness. If we couldn't feel it, we'd be out on the savannah 100,000 years ago needing a blood sugar meter or thermometer to know what we needed.

Feeling is the key, and we feel via consciousness. It's intimately entwined with consciousness, and maybe the same thing. Check him out.

And so it flips the thing on its head, that consciousness arose from intelligence or complicated neural activity, and says that elaborations such as came later (abstraction, meta-awareness, intelligence) depend on it, not arose from it. And instead of the discounting of feeling often seen in the scientific method, it puts it at the base of existence, far more critical than higher abstract cognitive functions. Everything that exists feels, it feels via some form of consciousness, and it can't exist without feeling. I need food, I need water, I'm too cold in this zero degree environment, etc. ... all coped with via feeling.

Ultimately, what is selected for is one being - the Son of Man.

Consciousness is selected for, but in the grand scheme, consciousness serves as a stage, a light, an alter, and an identifier for the SoM.

The Son of Man is the selector also. He selects himself. The future version brings the present version into actualization. Doing so, brings the future version, the selector, into actualization at the same time.

If the SoM doesn’t judge, condemn, and reject himself, then he can’t select and actualize himself.

If the SoM allows himself to be rejected by himself, then he is not actually the SoM.

As an act of mercy, the judge allows himself to be murdered by himself. Is that my fate as well? It seems likely.

The following exchange:

A: "Who created the universe?"

B: "My father did."

Is enough to end any claim of seriousness on the subject by "B". It couldn't be more primitive, childish, or parochial.

This is only an answer for why we have consciousness, detailing its utility and approaching it from an evolutionary perspective. That's all well and good, but it doesn't offer an explanation for how it works. Is there a specific function in the brain that gives rise to consciousness? If so, what is it?

The best analogy I've ever heard relating to the idea that we can only prove correlation and not causation uses the example of a TV. I've seen people claim time and again that we can prove consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, because when the brain becomes damaged, or stimulated by drugs, for example, it affects an individual's conscious experiences. But how would we know that the brain isn't acting as a receiver? You can change the volume or contrast on a TV by pushing some buttons. You can also unplug it so that no picture are sound comes out. You can modify its components. Years ago, when television sets had antennas, those could be moved around to alter the quality of whatever channel was on. Even though all these things affect the TV, there's a constant signal coming from an external source. The TV doesn't create those moving pictures on its own.

So it’s the TV signal that goes to heaven, and not us?

What is your most fundamental identity when you say “I” and “us”? Your rational intellect?

Yeah, Craig1120 is against that rational intellect thing. It gets in the way of believing the fanciful, unsupported, not in evidence magic claims.

I agree the TV and radio analogy(?) is interesting. We don't know what causes consciousness ... or spin, or matter, or energy, or charge, or any of the building blocks of nature. We don't know if any of them are physical. Evidence has been accruing that they aren't. The emergent theory -- "consciousness comes from brains like duh obvious" -- has failed, I'm pretty sure. It was in evidence billions of years before brains evolved.

Of course this is one take. But it's cutting edge and the one I'm on board with for what it's worth. Have you listened to any Solms talks or Q&As? I love that stuff, especially Q&A where they are thinking live on their feet.

The rational intellect, as currently constituted, doesn’t go on nor complete the hero’s journey, reaching heaven. So if “you” are identified with your rational intellect, then the same is true of you.

What is this evidence?

I'm not familiar with Solms but will check him out. Feel free to share any links in the comments.

All organisms "behave" in discriminating ways in relation/response to the environment to fulfill their needs. They do this by registering what is going on in both themselves and the environment via sensations. This sensation is rudimentary consciousness, since elaborated on greatly into complex central nervous systems, brains, self-consciousness, meta-awareness. So one of the tenets is that consciousness didn't emerge from complex brains, but that the phenomena evolved from the bottom up. The hard problem of how unaware leapt to aware was never a thing. Rudimentary forms of awareness are part of the original package. And they simply evolved to what we see today, like everything else.

Along those lines goes the Solms theory, as I understand it.

That’s not what your original post said.

All evidence is that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. Those other properties are basic physical properties of the universe.

Yes we do. We have a massive amount of evidence about how all those particles behave, they are the very definition of physical. Our mental processes also have a great deal of experimental data confirming the actual physical processes that drive our decision, emotion and memory systems.

This is the evidence I’m asking for because it sounds like total malarkey.

What evidence supports this hypothesis but not correlation?

I tend to believe that physical processes influence consciousness as well as the other way around. Take nervous habits like scratching or biting nails. Maybe behaviors like those are driven by neural activities and are uncontrollable, but when one becomes aware of them, they can change those habits—and the conscious decision to change them, in return, affects the neural activities.

This is kind of a Jungian take on things and, I believe, where Craig is trying to go with some of the conversation ... We don't have control over the things we're not conscious of. There are unconscious parts of us that influence our behavior, and we can't do anything about them since we're not aware of them. However, if we end up noticing them, then we can make a decision to change them. This gets into the structure of the psyche, the unconscious becoming conscious, etc.

I have more interest in checking him out after reading this. The idea that consciousness is a fundamental part of reality seems right to me, but I have a hard time buying into panpsychism, which is what I'm getting from this comment.

Not sure what this question is exactly asking, but if you want evidence for our consciousness being driven entirely by physical property of brain, the first compelling evidence was behavioral and personality changes from traumatic brain injuries. Then you have modern studies on brain activities tu linked to types of thought process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

How are you not grasping that evidence for one way causation doesn’t negate two way causation?