It depends on how you define consciousness, but it seems to be a function of higher mammals. I think consciousness can be adequately explained in evolutionary terms because even simple organisms have an awareness of their environment, it is then just a question of sophistication.
I think requiring a definition of consciousness somewhat avoids the question.
Even automatic doors seem to have an awareness of their environment;
as would any technology with sensors, like robots.
Any discussion will always have assumptions, and a concept of 'I' would have to be
assumed to address the question. This is because consciousness needs to define itself;
so it is like 'the set of sets'; or something else just as mysterious.
The only positivist definition possible would limit consciousness to the individual
addressing the question. We have no way of being certain anyone else other the self
is anything more than an automaton. This world and life could just be a dream;
and the rest of beings, just something in the imagination of the self.
In this situation; everything is conscious.
Alternatively, if we suggest that all biological organisms have consciousness,
then does the debris of my sneeze also have consciousness?
How about a detached lizards's tale?
An amoeba, or a virus?
You see, when you analyze it in these terms,
you end up with something like Zeno's paradox.
At each point that we try and break down life to its minimal point of awareness,
we must reach a decision as to what the smallest quantum of consciousness actually is.
We end up with quantum consciousness; just like Planck ended up with quantum energy and quantum time.
So a single person may consist of a number of what Star Wars fans call 'midichlorians' -
(I'll use this word with my tongue in my cheek)
but then we just end up with a schizotypal definition of consciousness;
something along the lines of Terry Pratchett's 'Small Gods' perhaps?
alternatively to midichlorians - we have a single quantum of consciousness called 'the soul'.
So perhaps we need to distinguish between
individual consciousness, and
God-consciousness.
The question is still relevant to Theists, because we are trying to fathom why atheists have their particular mindset.
And this is why the question actually is leveled most-specifically at agnostics and dualism:
We still want to know if atheists actually have consciousness?
It is possible that many persons or beings do not have awareness because the first reason I personally have for believing in God:
is that it is unreasonable for consciousness as a concept to arrive from anything else other than consciousness.
That is such a clear idea to me, that I cannot think of a clearer idea to compare it with metaphorically.
A bad (but best) comparison I can think of would be that black gives rise to white. Or that white is actually black.
Or that everything is actually nothing; or that nothing is actually everything.
This is why I am so scathing of abiogenesis; even though it is just as mystical as any other explanation;
what annoys me is that so many pretend that it is so logical and non-mysterious.
Abiogenesis is just another rabbit-out-of-the-hat routine.
And abiogenesis was disproved for the first time with the invention of the microscope, btw.
I don't think anyone actually knows.
BUT, "God did it" is not a satisfactory answer.
I think you first need to define 'Consciousness' before your question can be addressed (which will run you into several pages of posts
before ending in nowhere land).
My understanding is that Consciousness is what I call God/Brahman and it is something fundamental and cannot be understood in terms of something else. Consciousness/God/Brahman is a mystery we cannot get behind (to quote a famous quantum physicist). In the case of humans it is a spark of this Consciousness/God/Brahman incarnating/animating a collection of atoms designed to allow Consciousness to experience finite existence.
The Marxist Materialist answer to this is that there isn't a hard distinction between animal and human consciousness.
Animals possess a degree of consciousness in their sensation of their environment as the "primary" signalling system. So do humans.
But humans differ in having a "secondary" signalling system: language. Marxists argued that mans social production led to the development of a primitive form of language as a means of communication. The ability to recognise these signals as sounds and form them into words which equate with meanings corresponding to an object is the basis for abstract thought. For example the word "tree" is utterly meaningless unless it corresponds to an object.
The degree of abstraction grows more complex as we move away from words and concepts describing things, to describing their relations and their properties. So the idea that a tree "grows" is an abstraction relating to the passage of time. From this eventually we derive our concepts and language that give us "consciousness" in the recognisable sense.
The key weakness with this position is that it is neo-lemarckian: it says that traits aquired in the lifetime of an organism can be inherited, such as through the development of vocal chords improving our ability to form words, or the increase in brain function as language develops into abstract reasoning. This is contary to our current understanding of genetics but is not entirely discounted. This is however the most plausible explanation I have heard of, but its not a subject I am familiar with. I hope thats what you are looking for.
When you go outside in the rain, what's the exact moment you transition from merely "damp" to "wet"? How many raindrops does it take?
Even if your opinion of abiogenesis were correct, this would still be the wrong section. But you know that don’t you.
We both achieved it sometime before our birth. Is pregnancy paranormal?
I don’t do labels and I can only tell you what I think. Please don’t presume I speak for anyone you choose to identify as atheists, agnostics or materialists or that anyone else speaks for me.
Consciousness doesn’t have a definitive technical definition and isn’t really a binary switch but can cover a whole range of quite different things. I suspect the earliest development of something that could fall within the scope of consciousness would be animal instincts, reactions to the environment that aren’t directly mechanical like flying towards light, swimming in to warmer water or avoiding other creatures. Those kind of things exist in some of the fairly basic multi-cellular creatures that exist today so probably developed relatively early in the history of animal life.
I’m not sure who that statement is aimed at but I certainly don’t claim to know abiogenesis occurred. I see it as a viable hypothesis but it’s not the only one and it’s also a fairly generic concept so even if it were correct, the details of when, how and why it occurred could vary significantly.
