Consciousness And Intelligence

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization invites its readers to imagine that:

life

consciousness

intelligence

civilization and

technology

- have developed not once but many times in one small corner of a single galaxy. It seems to be increasingly likely that life is common but organisms could just be unicellular. How probable are multicellular organisms, followed by the other four developments listed above?

I think that the initial transition from unconsciousness to consciousness was the single most important qualitative transformation ever. Every other change either potentially prepares for this one or is a refinement of it. Some philosophers regard animal sensation as a natural phenomenon but think that rational self-consciousness might require a supernatural explanation. I agree that reason and self-consciousness are further qualitative transformations and are unique to only one species on Earth. (Our species would probably have killed any potential competitors.) However, I regard human mental abilities as refinements of consciousness. A species that cooperatively manipulated its environment would begin to think and communicate about that environment. And its members would begin to reflect on themselves in relation to each other and also to their environment.

What has happened once can happen again. So I think that both consciousness and intelligence might be common and, if so, would have been brought about entirely by organism-environment interactions in accordance with natural laws.