[Ham] My answer is that consciousness comes from "on high", from the Source, the Creator, Essence. But you're not satisfied with my answer.
[Arlo] You've not given me an answer previously. Now you have. When I asked, from pre-primates without consciousness to humans with, "what changed?", I now take you answer to be "God intervened and waved his magic wand and, poof, primates that did not have consciousness suddenly had it". That's only moderately in jest, of course, but I think that sums up your position, no? [Ham] You want me to say that consciousness is either a genetically-formed component of the central nervous system or a socially-formed concept of self-identity. [Arlo] No, I said if its not one of these, what is it. In the last post I tossed out "Abracadabra" as another option. That appears to be the one you are going with. [Ham] You want me to date its emergence as an evolved organ and localize it anatomically. [Arlo] Since its such a vital component of your thesis, I'd think you'd want to have answers to these questions. Why you ran from the "God poofed it into us" rather than being upfront all along, I have no idea. [Ham] This is my epistemological thesis. It is NOT an anthropological conclusion or a sociological paradigm of the kind that you seem to demand. [Arlo] You use the idea so often, I thought it'd be worthwhile to see your ontogenetic explanation for where it derives. I don't "demand" anything but straight-forward and logically consistent answers. Saying that "man has consciousness, but where it comes from and how we have it and what is the process(es) by which it appears and evolves is of no concern" is not a strong thesis, in my opinion. An overview of social theories place the appearance of consciousness in "man" at the time when the biological complexity of his evolving brain brought with it the unintended consequence to hold shared attention (via symbolic representations) with other beings in his world. Early brains at this time were more limited, but as biological evolution continued, so too was the growing complexity of man's internalized social world. This is the appearance and process of consciousness, and it holds true for infants, who while born with much more biologically evolved brains than our simian ancestors, and as such much more capacity for social embodiment, the unsocialized infant will possess no greater "consciousness" than the earliest primates. He possesses more potential (the hardwiring) to be sure, but lacks the software, so to speak. As opposed to this, you offer a "divine intervention", where somewhere along the line "God" (or "Essence") suddenly made our primate line "conscious", and this consciousness resides like an ethereal organ that is not tied to genetics or social life. As for the infant, he is born with this ethereal organ which, like his hair or bones or muscles, develops and grows over time... but not according to genetics or social involvement... it just "grows", on its own. If this is wrong, if you find this a mischaracterization, please correct me. [Ham] Apparently, you are unable to comprehend subjectivity as anything but a subset of objectivity. [Arlo] Well.. I am a commie. You know how stupid we are. [Ham] You are an intelligent, knowledgeable, self-seeking person like all of us; yet you refuse to acknowledge that your conscious awareness is "the real" Arlo Bensinger. [Arlo] I most certainly do. I just know that my "conscious awareness" is neither bound solely to my genetic boundedness or floats exclusively in some social netherworld, but is the fulcrum point where the two meet. It is the (to paraphrase Hofstadter) strange loop that emerges from the contact between social and individual worlds. [Ham] Considering the narrow perspective of your worldview, it's a wonder to me that you can understand Pirsig's Quality heirarchy, much less Ham's Essentialism. [Arlo] Yeah, its a wonder I can tie my shoes. Stupid, stupid, Arlo. Nice try, though, love this kind of rhetoric. (So much for my being "an intelligent, knowledgeable, self-seeking person"...) [Ham] I'm sorry you can't accept my explanation, Arlo, although it doesn't surprise me, based on our previous correspondence. [Arlo] You've not given me an explanation before, but now you have. "Abracadabra and poof there was consciousness". I accept that. Don't agree with it. But I accept it. There are some follow-ups to the abracadabra theory I'd love to ask, but since it took so long to get here... But here is one... Since, you've stated, consciousness is NOT tied to genetics, from the moment when Essence poofed consciousness into existence, why did it need to "evolve"? Why was early man not given the modern consciousness we enjoy today? And, since you've said consciousness evolved from earliest-man to modern-man, what evolves if its not a "thing" and not an "existent"? We know, for example, that DNA is the conduit for biological evolution over time, but how does the consciousness of my children become more advanced, even slightly, than my own? We have earlist-man with barely a consciousness and then generations later we have tool users. This begets this question... is consciousness inherited? Is it passed on? Or does each new baby start with an unrelated, immaculate "consciousness"? If the later, then why is there a slow evolution of consciousness? Is it like autos, is God churning out newer and better models each year? But, for consciousness to "evolve", it has to be inherited, no? So explain to me how this happens? Not sure what that last poke is about. Took me a half-dozen posts just to get an answer out of you. And yes, in our last exchange I was also unable to get any answer out of you at all (remember the question? what are the "values indiginous to North America" and what are the "Hispanic values" that are replacing them, and how will this "destroy America"? I'm not asking again, don't worry...) Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
