Consciousness is the product of a long series of adaptations.
And when we think of those many adaptations, and how they are coordinated and integrated, perhaps the first word that should first come to our minds is ‘Meta’.
Meta – indicating a higher level of abstraction or a perspective that transcends the original subject.
To make sense of this meta idea, let’s go back in time and visualize an early ‘meta’ in operation.
Imagine a simple, hypothetical creature standing before us; and this creature has two instincts.
One says, “See food, go eat it.”
And the other says, “See predator, run.”
Each of these reactions works quite well in isolation.
But what happens when the creature encounters food and a predator at the same time?
In the worst case, it becomes paralyzed; caught between its two reactions; and it gets eaten.
What’s missing for this creature is something that mediates; something at a higher level than its two conflicting instincts; something which can resolve the conflict in such a way that maximizes the creature’s survival.
(meta level) | decider| —-> survival maximizing decision
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(action level) | eat | run |Meta levels are adaptations. And like every adaptation, they occur thru chance mutations or copying errors. And they are only conserved in the creature’s gene pool if they serve to improve its success at survival and propagation
Our ‘eat or run’ thought experiment was a simple example of a meta level. But such mediating meta levels are fundamental and they are present everywhere in biological entities.
In our example, an effective meta level would almost certainly have urged the creature to run; regardless of whether food was present or not. Survival being more important than hunger’s cessation.
The problems that meta levels evolve to solve occur over and over again in biology. And the most important of those problems always involves survival and propagation.
But our thought experiment is not done.
Consider now the issue of how the creature runs. If it always runs in a straight line to safety, then that’s repeating pattern which a predator can observe and learn from.
And soon the observant predator becomes more effective at predicting where the running creature is going, then it will get better at catching its prey and its survival will improve.
This is a back and forth contest which will flip again and again as the survival of the fittest contests kick in on both sides of the predator/prey dual.
Soon, new prey, whose meta levels now urge them to run in less predictable patterns, will begin to manifest better survival rates. And their new, successful meta level urgings will, again, be conserved into their long-term gene pools.
But of course, the predators are doing the same thing. This is, after all, an endless ongoing arms race.
As we observed a moment ago, for prey, reducing predictability increases survival. On the other side, for predators, an improved ability to observe patterns increases their survival rate.
Now, combine those observations with the fact that the inherent nature of evolution, over time, is to create creatures of greater and greater complexity.
A prediction is a judgement made now about what will happen in the future.
But, as complexity increases, the usefulness of predictions decreases. This is because prey increasingly strive not to be predictable while predators work harder and harder to make useful predictions.
The net of those competing trends push the contests into ‘real-time’ on both sides.
Real-time, direct observations, without pre-judgements involved about what is happening begin to be the new currency of survival.
Instincts, hard-wired reactions, behavioral patterns and anything which is predictable all diminish in their usefulness as both prey and predator grow more sophisticated.
But, what then is a creature which has abandoned predictions and predictive behaviors for the real-time immediate?
Such a creature is biology which has become conscious.
It has evolved a yet higher meta level which now engages seamlessly with the immediate environment around it in order for it to respond in real-time to the unpredictable arisings before it.