[Arlo]:
Arlo has never felt slighted. But Arlo read your latest post again and yet
has no sense whatsoever for any evolutionary understanding of the origins
of human consciousness in your words. You, again, dismiss social
participation as a foundational cause for the appearance of man's "unique"
consciousness, but, again, offer nothing whatsoever as an alternative.
So I ask, again, Ham, if it is NOT social participation that lies at the
root of man's unique consciousness, what does?
And again I say that the root of man's consciousness is the division between
sensibility and otherness which is the primary dichotomy. (You may note a
parallel here to Bo's theory of Intellect which he stated as "the value of
the subject-object divide.")
You've agreed that at some distant time in the past there were
primates, from which man descended, that did not possess this
(or am I wrong about this?), and so I ask you, if not socialization,
then "what happened?" What changed? What is different about
modern man than his prehistorical primate ancestors that accounts
for his "unique consciousness"?
I make no distinction between "modern man" and the species Homo-sapiens. As
far as I know, modifications in head or neck shape, ratio of arm to leg
length, etc. are not a scientific measures of consciousness or intelligence.
If it is man the species whose origin you want to know, following is my
abridgement of a course overview for Washington State University.
"According to molecular dating techniques, the split between apes and humans
occurred between 5 and 8 million years ago. Recently, however, fossil
remains of Ardipithecus, Orrorin, and Sahelanthropus, have been dated from
the late Miocene-early Pliocene period. The discovery of stone tools at the
same site as a slightly encephalized fossil hominid led Louis Leakey to
pronounce that this fossil was within our own genus, Homo habilis.
"There are two fundamentally opposed points of view with reference to the
origin of anatomically modern Homo sapiens: 1) multiple origins, with
multiple populations of Homo sapiens smoothly evolving in parallel from
archaic Homo sapiens in each major area of the Old World (Africa, Europe and
Asia), and 2) a single origin, from an archaic Homo sapiens population, that
took place in Africa only, with subsequent movement into Europe and Asia
replacing archaic forms in those areas. This debate draws on molecular
genetics, archaeology, dating methods, and morphology, and has strong
implications for understanding present-day human variation and adaptation."
I have an undergraduate degree in Biology, not Anthropology. But as far as
I am concerned, either theory is equally acceptable.
[Ham, previously]:
[Human consciousness] is the immanent core of individual apprehension, as
inseparable from the subjective observer as his physical body.
[Arlo]:
What I am asking is "where does it come from?" You say
repeatedly that you "don't care" (my words), but you obviously
do if you dismiss social theories outright. So this "immanent
core", was it present in the primates from which we descend?
Probably not.
Was it present in the even earlier pre-primates that primates
descended from?
No.
If not, then what accounts for its appearance in the evolutionary
time-line? If not social participation, and not genetics, then what?
That's like asking, When does consciousness appear in the developing child?
In existential terms, consciousness develops over the life of the individual
in the same way that the brain does. Likewise, in evolution, it develops
gradually from genus to species, eventually emerging 'full bloom' in the
final form which you and I are concerned with. Evolution is our
experiential manifestation of cosmic purpose, otherwise known as Essence.
Have I finally addressed your questions satisfactorally?
--Ham
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