Evolution, Consciousness and Complexity: From Biological Systems to Self-Awareness

The Earth has maintained practically identical and stable conditions for tens and tens of millions of years, (Fig. 25) thus providing biological life with the way to continue its development according to the evolutionary line undertaken. The Earth is, in fact, a particular type of organic evolution system, an open and out-of-equilibrium thermodynamic system, on a planetary scale with abundant biological life supported by a flow of free energy coming from the Sun. This system includes biological life, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, dead organic matter, sediments and that part of the crust that interacts with surface processes. consciousness in the realms of nature
plant consciousness
thoughts of plants
instinct and animal consciousness
individual consciousness and collective consciousness
complexity, consciousness and self-consciousness If we reflect freely starting from modern evolutionary theories, it appears evident that the goal of biological evolution is to obtain an organism capable of incarnating in a stable way and for as long as possible a form of self-consciousness. If in fact the evolutionary goal were longevity, we would have that naturally the evolutionary chain would have oriented towards increasingly simpler organisms. Some endoliths have been estimated to be millions of years old. In terms of longevity, moreover, the mineral kingdom is certainly longer-lived and more resistant than ours. For this reason, if the impulse of natural evolution had been to maximize longevity, the evolutionary direction would certainly have been directed by perfecting its contaminations with the mineral kingdom rather than distancing itself from it. The attractive center of evolution would therefore be towards something simpler, more easily attackable and certainly closer to the mineral kingdom than to the animal kingdom. In the same way, if the primary goal of natural biological evolution had been adaptability, biological organisms would have benefited more from organizing themselves into simpler and modular structures, that is, with the double possibility of an autonomous life and a group life, rather than shutting themselves into increasingly complex and integrated structures. In short, if we analyze broadly the direction of biological evolution as we know it, we notice that it is directed towards organizing increasingly complex, organic structures but with an increasingly individual and specialized character. In fact, there is no theoretical reason why abiotic reactions should tend towards complexity. Yet biological life moves along the evident production of increasingly complex organisms. Eukaryotes have a larger coding genome than prokaryotes; higher plants and invertebrates have a larger genome than unicellular organisms or more generally protists; finally, vertebrates possess a larger genome than invertebrates. The search for complexity is correlated with the structuring of consciousness and the search for autonomy and physical integration is associated with the concept of self-consciousness. In the panpsychic conception we adopt, every form of energy is associated with a form of consciousness. However, we can converge on the fact that achieving a sufficiently complex structure is necessary to be able to manifest an advanced form of consciousness. This fact is so well known by contemporary science that in various scientific environments it is believed that consciousness itself is born magically, as a form of epiphenomenon, from complexity. However, we, while believing that there is a correlation between complexity and consciousness, do not believe there is a causal relationship between the two. The fact that consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of complexity is evident if we consider the obvious contrast between complexity, with its chaotic processes, and the unity of consciousness that we experience every day for tens and tens of years. Every day of our lives, although with great physical, emotional and mental alterations, we always feel ourselves, that is, the same consciousness. This perception clashes profoundly with the intrinsic chaotic nature of complexity. Even assuming the existence of a stable configuration of neurons such as to obtain a unitary consciousness, supposing that this is the epiphenomenon of a process that is chaotic by nature would lead to the conclusion that microscopic alterations of the brain structure should radically modify our consciousness, breaking its unity. Conversely, this effect is not found in the brain of an individual who evolves radically in the first years of life without ever affecting the perception of a unitary consciousness. Not only that, many cases have been collected in favor of the opposite phenomenon, that is, of individuals and brains capable of adapting after strong traumas and removals, maintaining the unity of consciousness and continuing to perceive themselves as themselves. Even more unsustainable this thesis becomes when we reflect on dream states in which this unity and continuity of consciousness is generally interrupted at least partially.