On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Abhijit Menon-Sen <[email protected]> wrote: > > Aside: "." should classify with lawnun and bonobashi, but it bothers me > because I can't read or write it as a word. It's a syntactical problem, > though, not one of identity: "va" was better, but so would "qx" be. I'm > just not comfortable writing ".," to address a person, but apart from
hey, i dont mind being addressed thus, so long the person is polite and not trolling. > Oh well. Life would be different if everyone used serial numbers. From, http://discovermagazine.com/2009/feb/16-what-makes-you-uniquely-you How does this primary consciousness contrast with the self-consciousness that seems to define people? Humans are conscious of being conscious, and our memories, strung together into past and future narratives, use semantics and syntax, a true language. We are the only species with true language, and we have this higher-order consciousness in its greatest form. If you kick a dog, the next time he sees you he may bite you or run away, but he doesn’t sit around in the interim plotting to remove your appendage, does he? He can have long-term memory, and he can remember you and run away, but in the interim he’s not figuring out, “How do I get Kruglinski?” because he does not have the tokens of language that would allow him narrative possibility. He does not have consciousness of consciousness like you. -- .
