This Was Originally Written in September of 2012. This content is free to distribute/share on STEEMIT. Distribution or sharing of this content on other platforms requires permission from the author- ME. Just ask, I'm cool as fuck about that shit.
So I am reading this book and it has a chapter on Human Consciousness (It's on the origin of mankind in a scientific/evolutionary manner). So the author is trying to ask why human consciousness exists and what it's nature is with the evolution of the brain. They discuss whether consciousness is essential to survival and could it be a by-product of natural selection- that conscious species developed to help gather resources to survive (food, shelter, etc). The author talks about one zoologist Richard Dawkins (maybe you have heard of him) who has this to say on the subject:
"He speaks of the need for organisms to be able to predict the future, an ability that is achieved through the equivalent in brains of simulation in computers. This process, he asserts, need not be conscious. And yet, he notes, "the evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness." Why this should have happened is, he contends, the most profound mystery facing biology. "Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself."
The author goes on to argue another potential theory is that consciousness is the by product of large brains.
I think something of a combination of the two is most likely- larger brains have more neurons and mass, so they are more capable of processing more information from the senses. I think as an adaptation to survival the brain learned how to not only take in and process information but to also bet against it, to think about it analytically. Thus simulation comes into play with the byproducts of consciousness (thinking about the self in the current [thinking about time and the past and future probably evolved later] ) and imagination. Imagination is important because it allows us to conceive our thoughts. I think when consciousness first evolved that imagination was part of the simulating capabilities of the bran. Maybe a precursor, or perhaps the essential part of analyzing the information the senses take in the world is to think of the world in the absence of sensory data- to artificially represent it in the mind.
Thus the ability to imagine things came as a natural advantage to survival.
However how can life imagine things if it can't comprehend them with understanding, or with meaning? What is thought without language?
Language I think evolved in part as a way to represent the world in the mind. To categorize it. Using sounds to describe things and having words for things naturally puts them in a category, your attributing some quality to that variable that is constant with it. The brain is like a giant computer, it has to archive data just as it processes it.
Before language evolved as a trait I think imagination within consciousness was relegated to a systematic thinking of images seen by an organism through it's visual centers to systematically approach the world. If you will, when an organism thought of something it was simply recalling something it has seen before with it's own eyes or registered with it's senses. This type of thinking is limited though- the organism can't think about things it has never seen before, nor can it think about the visually recalled item outside the context of the recollection. I term this type of thinking "Vision-Recollection Based Thinking" in that it is a by product of the sense of sight. I'm sure with any sense, even ones we humans lack like a dog's super smell, or a bugs UV vision that the same can be applied- thoughts only occur if the sense is triggered or the main catalyst to the thought. (I think insects do not posses consciousness however, I believe they are automaton like natural machines.)
Back to vision-recollection based thinking however, we have to think about how the brain can recall images to think about them. The answer to that I think lies in DMT. As we know, DMT is a powerful hallucinogenic that is present in all mammals. I think mammals naturally represent life that has consciousness, or at least rudimentary access to some form of it. (Just as insects represent life that simply is. It is primitive and robotic. Like a simple calculator rather than a computer...)
DMT probably exists in mammals to aid in this visual thinking consciousness. It probably is the element that allows the process to exists. DMT is released when humans dream (a form of simulation and recollection combined) and at death. When you close your eyes and concentrate on a particular object and "see" it thats probably DMT being released in minimal amounts as a natural process of the brain.
"DMT The Keyholder" by Joshua Cureton depicting BAPHOMET
Link to Artist Page: https://joshuacureton1.deviantart.com/