Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken G
As you know, reasoning from a perspective of "everything that exists does so for direct survival advantage" is a trap. As primate males often compete to reproduce as well as to simply survive, the latter is not the whole story.
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Yes, it wasn't a coherent argument. More of a passing thought.
But the underlying idea is a question about whether depersonalization has positive or negative survival value in situations more extreme than the one I encountered.
Noyes et al. have some interesting data relating to depersonalization in accident victims, at the time of the event. There are also accounts from survivors of, for instance, the
Herald of Free Enterprise sinking, and a helicopter ditching in the Atlantic, in which survivors describe performing complex tasks while in a depersonalized state. The helicopter survivor had undone his lap belt before the machine rolled, and so was the only person who fell on to the inverted ceiling of the aircraft. The others were then trapped hanging in their seats, because they were unable to undo their belts while their weight applied tension to the buckles. In what sounds like a depersonalized state in his narrative, the survivor walked the length of the aircraft between his dangling colleagues, stood beneath an open hatch as water poured in and the aircraft filled with water, and then floated free through the open door as the machine sank, drowning everyone else on board.
Now, one of the hypotheses relating to the evolution of consciousness is that it derives from our ability to model the thought processes and behaviour of others. As part of that facility, the hypothesis goes, we also started to model our
own behaviour (the behaviour of
eburacum45's
agents, or Dennett's
daemons), and it's this internal modelling that produces our perception of "self".
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that that's the case. Perhaps we might retain a faculty to suppress that whole layer of modelling, and just go with the activity of our neural agents, if pressing need arises. In some cases, ignoring our self, and the selves of others, will produce survival (albeit with a high level of guilt in the example given).
The success or failure of this "neural strategy" would depend critically on the competence of our neural agents. In familiar (or practised) situations, the agents will do the right thing. In unfamiliar settings, they'll perhaps do dumb things.
I don't believe there's much evidence to support this as a hypothesis. I just find it an interesting idea that seems to fit several observations.
Grant Hutchison