Nah. Never been big on SciFi like that. What's the breakdown or do I actually have to watch it? (or i'll just read the wikipedia article)
Im not sure i agree with his example, especially if its the hall mark of what he considers the secondary consciousness. I own a dog and i can tell you it can plot and strategies in reference to previous events and in some cases startlingly well. In addition in one of my previous jobs i had to go into peoples back yards for technical inspections and their were certain dogs that anticipating me positioned themselves in the most perfect way...is he suggesting that these things are by chance and not some conscious scheming(based off previous events)?
It was just an example. I doubt that it's the hallmark of his argument as there are animals that have way more sophisticated behavior than dogs. Which leads to the concept of intelligence, which is often conflated with consciousness. Although there's a wide overlap between the two, consciousness refers to the 'waking-aware' aspects of our mental lives and intelligence the degree of imagination, creativity and efficiency. In other words, consciousness precedes intelligence.
Bearing this in mind, and the fact that intelligence is highly dependent on memory: short term (what he calls "remembered present", primary consciousness) and to a much greater extent, long term ("remembered past", secondary consciousness). Dogs just don't have the neurophysiological apparatus to support long-term memory like humans. He explains the reason for this when he talks about the evolution of the brain. So there's the supporting empirical evidence of the physical brain anatomy and dynamics which he presents in the lecture that you can't just ignore.
Long-term memory affords you a more extensive repertoire of events and scenarios to generate ideas within changing contexts during decision making and problem solving. These involve planning, foresight and judgement that animals like dogs and even chimps or dolphins aint built for. As in, it wasn't an evolutionary necessity.
Sure your dog can anticipate several patterns that precede a specific significant action that you perform, like feeding it, or bathing it, or locking it in it's kennel. It can act in a way that appears to be planned but it's not doing shit like predicting that you're gonna come home late from work because it remembers it's the Thursday the 25th of November and your turn to take the fellas out for drinks and then prepare ahead of time by stashing extra food away on the 20th. Only dog i know with kinda anticipation is Brian from Family Guy.
It's all about the efficiency of making use of new or recollected information in a new context. Even idiot savant humans that have kick-ass ability to recall detail suck at making use of it in a new context.
Also, there's the common mistaken notion of complexity in behavior trending with intelligence or consciousness. In fact, many complex behaviors in animals (like termites building massive intricate colonies, intricate nest architectures of some birds, etc.) are innate and no learning is needed. They're wired from birth. These behaviors are inflexible and animals are incapable of performing them at will. Just like yawning, sneezing and blushing for us. They're what's called 'stereotyped' behaviors. Often confused as intelligence or a human like consciousness but they're not. There's no self-awareness and no innovation, imagination or creativity that even comes close to human capability. Even squirrels stashing away acorns prepping for winter. That's not anticipation or planing. It's a Melatonin hormone driven response modulated by seasonal climate changes.
With this how can it not be encode for by some form of rudimentary "programming"? he mentioned in the video how dynamic our brains are and i get that...but the fact that we're so similar in what" we do as people" suggest that we cant be that "context-dependent, dynamic," their has to be some sorta static underlay, some common recipe(algorithm) for the cake, or else we all wouldn't have things that look like cake would we?
We are very very far from similar in what we DO as people let alone what we ARE. The later differences he clearly explains in the video when he talks about embryo-genesis and neuro-genesis.
But watch these clips:
The theory of neural Darwinism (Part 1)
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Why I don't think the brain is a computer
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you've never heard of ghost in the shell?
