Human Consciousness

If you were to read a book about the history and evolution of human consciousness, what all would you hope was included?

How much would you expect to learn about non-human consciousness, or primate consciousness?

How much would you expect to learn about spiritual, religious, or philosophical assessments and understandings of consciousness?

Would you expect to learn predictions about the future evolution of consciousness?

Would you expect anything pertaining to AI / machine consciousness?

Thanks

What is the function of sleep?

As in, the function of sleep as it pertains to human consciousness? Are you curious about mechanisms around conscious awareness and how sleep impacts awareness? Or the role of dreams in consciousness, and extensions such as lucid dreaming?

Sleep is the brain's way of taking a shit. Okay, I'm not 100% serious, but:

Sleep does allows the brain time to rid itself of metabolic build-up, such as glutamates, that are consequent to cognitive activity.

Sadly, sci-hub doesn't have any of the papers I requested, but you can read one of them here.

There are probably other mechanisms that relate to other metabolites, but...not my field.

I really just opened up this thread to say sheesh...what an enormous topic for a forum thread - why not just open up a conversation on Life, the Universe and Everything?

My personal feeling is that consciousness is a massive red herring, an essentially irrelevant and material side effect of our recognition and categorization algorithms, over-emphasized in the human species by our reliance on intelligence, and blown massively out of proportion by our desperate need to feel a little less unimportant in the big black scary universe.

What's your definition of consciousness that leads you to the red herring conclusion?

My definition of consciousness is contained in my last post: a multifactorial and mechanical side-effect of neural evolution - in other words, a property of matter. I also think that elements of it will turn out to be ancient and heavily conserved - it would not surprise me in the least to learn that there's a threshold for minimal consciousness dating back millions (or even billions?) of years. I know that some philosophers believe that there's a difference in kind between human and animal consciousness, but I think they're wrong, and that the differences are less fundamental and more a matter of selection, complexity and scale. In other words, it's part of a widely-distributed phenotype, variable in consistency, and important for survival.

Having spent many years in the Cartesian camp (mind as distinct from matter), and then the Jungian camp (the collective unconscious - which I still love for its literary scope, and for its ability to tie the world together with a pretty pink bow), I have turned my back on cosmic/religious/philosophical and non-material interpretations of consciousness. We progress through time, both as existential beings and as points on the scale of evolution, building logical categories such as: food/not-food, predator/not-predator, mate/not-mate. And somewhere in there, perhaps at the very beginning, comes the realization: me/not-me. Poof - we're at least a little bit conscious, and it's not such a big deal. Not, that is, until our brain grows too big for its britches and begins to see itself as special.

Well this sounds like a bunch of hippy shit...

Go out on the streets and see how much the uneducated and unfunded youth think about your theory... Load image: sick

I would primarily be looking for the evolution of the two hemispheres and how they have evolved to help support the idea of the creation of consciousness. I'd like a breakdown from neuroscience/neurobiology - toward epistemology - to philosophy.

So I should go out and.. literally do the same full time job I have already been doing for the past 6 years, serving the exact same demographic you feel I should go work with... heh, okie...