SYNTHESIZING CONSCIOUSNESS

From The Dimensional Universalist's Toolkit, an as-yet-unpublished work, describing in a suprisingly complex way how consciousness arises and is gradually modified:

1. First, there is some sort of relevance for consciousness.
2. Second, if something experiences pleasure, it can be motivated to have consciousness.
3. Third, intelligence arises from the interaction of similarly-experiencing selves. Each organism’s first encounters define what it means to have experience.
4. The process of biological defaulting leaves certain paths to follow, and the process of imitation leaves fewer alternatives than main options.
5. If there are exceptions, they are at this point defined by de facto intelligence, not biology per se.
6. Civilization and the animals undergo an ‘encounter with the opposites’ which provides the essential technology for change.
7. A second nature arises at this point which determines that group intelligence is determined by outside, exceptional conditions.
8. At this point, consciousness in a valuistic sense is about defining information and other factors which pre-figure the exceptional conditions of reality.
9. A second phase sets in when it is realized that this is a value-take-all scenario. However, the application is sometimes subtle. Some organisms do clever things for minor rewards, while others take all and find it still qualifies as wishful thinking.
10. There is a return to materialism. The conditions which have been defining how everything works all along become the real winners. Nothing is left for individuals.
11. Exceptional success becomes the only mark of progress. Most of the time, commonsense and democracy and war take over. But, sometimes, gradually, new paradigms emerge and change the whole playing field. Sometimes history is forgotten.