From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kim Jones
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2014 12:44 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: It Knows That It Knows
On 20 Jul 2014, at 5:22 pm, "'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List"
<[email protected]> wrote:
Are you suggesting that language, or our superb mastery of tool-making had
little or no effect on how our own human “self” evolved?
Chris
Not on how it evolved after it switched on, no. I am saying that a self needed
to exist in some sense initially for language and tool-making to be possible.
The self does not evolve. The self is what makes observes evolution. Knowledge
evolves. Consciousness expands (perhaps). The self simply is. It is outside the
space in which these things you speak of evolve.
I see no evidence that the self cannot evolve. That “self is not itself
emergent. To say that self simply is veers off into mysticism. It is not
offering an explanation for how the self appears on the scene. I see nothing
magical at all about the self and prefer not to romanticize it. I am – like you
– curious about its nature etc. and feel the best way to make headway in
understanding this is to both do a comparative study of all the various kinds
of self-aware species and the mind/brain functioning that clearly underlies the
self – in each of these species.
Until we have much better understanding of brain/mind functioning at the
dynamic level of the networked neurons chatter all we have is conjecture and
hypothesis; it is premature to speak of anything in this area of knowledge with
the language of the definitive.
I can say clearly we will see the sun tomorrow – though clearly that is
incorrect J -- but can we clearly state anything about our “self”?
Chris
K
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