perfidy

At least some of the time, anyway. Typically here at Perfidy, we like to talk about the brain-eating, stumbly undead sort of zombie, but Tyler Cohen at Marginal Revolution is talking about consciousness, and its obverse. The basic idea is that parts of your mind operate zombie fashion, without conscious monitoring and indeed sometimes completely bypassing conscious control. Christof Koch, in his The Quest for Consciousness, says,

"Zombie agents control your eyes, hands, feet, and posture, and rapidly transduce sensory input into stereotypical motor output. They might even trigger aggressive or sexual behaviors when getting a whiff of the right stuff. All, however, bypass consciousness. This is the zombie you."

The evolutionary advantage of programmed responses is clear, given that they do not require the processor-intensive cogitation that conscious thought requires. Consciousness then coexists with the zombie you. Consciousness is a more processor-intensive form of cogitation than the sort of rote thinking of the zombie mind. Its advantage is that it, combined with sensory input and short term memory, allows judgment and interpretation of the world rather than mere reaction; provides context and meaning for those actions; and even the possibility of prediction based on internalized models.

I'm not entirely convinced that consciousness is all its cracked up to be. While I am self aware, in the sense that I watch myself thinking, and acting - I find it hard to determine whether I am actually deciding and choosing things or merely providing a running narrative or play-play of actions determined by some other, non-conscious process. Think about it - how many things to you actually decide to do, in the manner of rational, cost-benefit analysis choosing? How hard is it when you make the effort? Or are you just doing what you "want" and providing an explanation for it. Why did you want it in the first place, and where did that come from - did you "decide" to like it? In most cases, are you (the little you, the homonculus that sits an inch behind your eyes) acting or providing a post-facto rationalization for impulses and reflexes coming from somewhere else?

Consciousness may be another layer of thinking - neurons firing and synapses twanging. It is a far richer and more flexible kind of thought than zombie thinking, certainly; but I'm not sure that it is any different, in kind, from the reflexes of the zombie mind.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm not in a position to argue.