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Science Forum Index » Bio Evolution Forum » Why Humans are Conscious
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| Guest |
 Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 8:20 pm |
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On Jan 22, 7:25 pm, "Stephen" <stephe...@gmail.com> wrote:
Quote: Why do humans have a consciousness?
It's a direct result of the group/communal selective aspects of human
evolution:
1) A shift in world climate about 8 million years ago. (A shift in
Hadley cells [paleoclimatology--look it up].)
2) Resulting shift from a seasonless rain-forest habitat to a dry-
season dominated monsoon habitat.
3) Patchification of resulting treed habitat near source of perrenial
water into city-sized, town-sized patches of forest.
4) Emergence of large predators, especially in the surrounding
treeless or less treed habitat.
5) Resulting Isolation of (chimp)/A'pith communities at these treed
patches as a result of #3 and #4 above. (Note: isolation is essential
to the group selective aspects of this hypothesis. Without it
individuals or subgroups of a community site could [and would] easily
escape the dry season predatory massacres [see #6 below] that links
the fate of the members of a community to one another.)
6) Tendency of the predators to target community sites during the
desperate depths of the dry season that are impoverished, starving,
thirsty, experiencing internal strife and to ignore those that are
healthy, well-fed, and that maintain internal cooperation.
7) Emergence of large food-competitor species that, if left unchecked,
could and would rapidly deplete the resources in a (chimp)/A'pith
community thereby increasing the probability (see #6 above) that the
community site would be targeted by the opportunity seeking predators
during the desperate depths of the dry season.
8) Due to the implications of #1 through #7 above, the emergence of
cooperative rock-throwing, stick wielding behaviors in (chimp)/A'pith
directed against inmigrating food-competitor species. The communities
that were most successful in this behavior were the ones that best
avoided predatory massacres.
So, to answer the question, why did consciousness emerge in humans/
hominids? Because individuals that have consciousness/conscience are
more likely to be members of communities that are better able to
achieve the behavior/ends indicated in #8 above.
It's that simple. |
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| _DG |
| Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 8:55 am |
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Guest
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On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:20:56 -0500 (EST), claudiusdenk@sbcglobal.net
wrote:
Quote:
So, to answer the question, why did consciousness emerge in humans/
hominids? Because individuals that have consciousness/conscience are
more likely to be members of communities that are better able to
achieve the behavior/ends indicated in #8 above.
It's that simple.
I'm never sure when some of this stuff is tongue in cheek, but just in
case: Does this presume that there is an aspect to human
'consciousness' that is not present in other animals?
I mean, aside from the ability to deal with complex information,
monetary symbols, and the obvious stuff that humans are good at.
Sort of related: I saw something interesting last week. It's finally
getting cold here, and as you may know, squirrels bring leaves into
houses for cover. A squirrel was trying to get into a (human-built)
squirrel house but other squirrel residents were not letting him in.
He came down the tree, picked up leaves, took them back up, and
presented them at the entrance. (!!!)
I'm not joking about that. I have no idea what the motivation was, but
it looked like he was trying to pay his admission fee. I have not seen
anything like that before.
There is a dynamic exchange involved when they make this type of
survival decision. Squirrels have to weigh the disadvantages of
sharing a den or drey (nest) with the advantages of increased heat. No
buddies, you freeze. Too many, or too aggressive, they'll eventually
kick you out. That is done all the time. First time I saw the leaves
enter the picture though.
PS: They did finally let him into the house. |
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| feedbackdroid |
| Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 8:55 am |
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Guest
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On Jan 28, 11:20 pm, claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Quote: On Jan 22, 7:25 pm, "Stephen" <stephe...@gmail.com> wrote:
The previous post makes it sound like ONLY humans, and maybe some
apes, have consciousness. However, this overlooks the idea, discussed
by Dan Dennett and Gerald Edelman among others, that there is a
continuum of consciousness in the animal kingdom. To help explicate
matters, they talk about "primary sensory consciousness", which at
least all mammals have (and which some people consider that all
animals have to a lesser degree), and "higher-order consciousness',
which only the highest primates have, and which involves language and
general ability to think raitonally and to manipulate symbols.
The corrollary to this is that, the latter (HOC) evolved out of, and
on top of, the former (PSC).
Quote:
Why do humans have a consciousness?It's a direct result of the group/communal selective aspects of human
evolution:
1) A shift in world climate about 8 million years ago. (A shift in
Hadley cells [paleoclimatology--look it up].)
2) Resulting shift from a seasonless rain-forest habitat to a dry-
season dominated monsoon habitat.
3) Patchification of resulting treed habitat near source of perrenial
water into city-sized, town-sized patches of forest.
4) Emergence of large predators, especially in the surrounding
treeless or less treed habitat.
5) Resulting Isolation of (chimp)/A'pith communities at these treed
patches as a result of #3 and #4 above. (Note: isolation is essential
to the group selective aspects of this hypothesis. Without it
individuals or subgroups of a community site could [and would] easily
escape the dry season predatory massacres [see #6 below] that links
the fate of the members of a community to one another.)
6) Tendency of the predators to target community sites during the
desperate depths of the dry season that are impoverished, starving,
thirsty, experiencing internal strife and to ignore those that are
healthy, well-fed, and that maintain internal cooperation.
7) Emergence of large food-competitor species that, if left unchecked,
could and would rapidly deplete the resources in a (chimp)/A'pith
community thereby increasing the probability (see #6 above) that the
community site would be targeted by the opportunity seeking predators
during the desperate depths of the dry season.
8) Due to the implications of #1 through #7 above, the emergence of
cooperative rock-throwing, stick wielding behaviors in (chimp)/A'pith
directed against inmigrating food-competitor species. The communities
that were most successful in this behavior were the ones that best
avoided predatory massacres.
So, to answer the question, why did consciousness emerge in humans/
hominids? Because individuals that have consciousness/conscience are
more likely to be members of communities that are better able to
achieve the behavior/ends indicated in #8 above.
It's that simple. |
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| Guy A Hoelzer |
| Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 8:55 am |
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Guest
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I suggest that an important auxiliary question implied by the one in the
Subject is "which of the non-human species lacks consciousness?" This might
help us to avoid the (IMHO clearly false) assumption that we are talking
about something unique or special about humans.
Guy
in article epk3o8$dcs$1@darwin.ediacara.org, claudiusdenk@sbcglobal.net at
claudiusdenk@sbcglobal.net wrote on 1/28/07 10:20 PM:
Quote:
On Jan 22, 7:25 pm, "Stephen" <stephe...@gmail.com> wrote:
Why do humans have a consciousness?
It's a direct result of the group/communal selective aspects of human
evolution:
1) A shift in world climate about 8 million years ago. (A shift in
Hadley cells [paleoclimatology--look it up].)
2) Resulting shift from a seasonless rain-forest habitat to a dry-
season dominated monsoon habitat.
3) Patchification of resulting treed habitat near source of perrenial
water into city-sized, town-sized patches of forest.
4) Emergence of large predators, especially in the surrounding
treeless or less treed habitat.
5) Resulting Isolation of (chimp)/A'pith communities at these treed
patches as a result of #3 and #4 above. (Note: isolation is essential
to the group selective aspects of this hypothesis. Without it
individuals or subgroups of a community site could [and would] easily
escape the dry season predatory massacres [see #6 below] that links
the fate of the members of a community to one another.)
6) Tendency of the predators to target community sites during the
desperate depths of the dry season that are impoverished, starving,
thirsty, experiencing internal strife and to ignore those that are
healthy, well-fed, and that maintain internal cooperation.
7) Emergence of large food-competitor species that, if left unchecked,
could and would rapidly deplete the resources in a (chimp)/A'pith
community thereby increasing the probability (see #6 above) that the
community site would be targeted by the opportunity seeking predators
during the desperate depths of the dry season.
8) Due to the implications of #1 through #7 above, the emergence of
cooperative rock-throwing, stick wielding behaviors in (chimp)/A'pith
directed against inmigrating food-competitor species. The communities
that were most successful in this behavior were the ones that best
avoided predatory massacres.
So, to answer the question, why did consciousness emerge in humans/
hominids? Because individuals that have consciousness/conscience are
more likely to be members of communities that are better able to
achieve the behavior/ends indicated in #8 above.
It's that simple.
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| Guest |
| Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:30 am |
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On Jan 29, 10:55 am, _DG <_...@nospam.com> wrote:
Quote: On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:20:56 -0500 (EST), claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net
wrote:
So, to answer the question, why did consciousness emerge in humans/
hominids? Because individuals that have consciousness/conscience are
more likely to be members of communities that are better able to
achieve the behavior/ends indicated in #8 above.
It's that simple.I'm never sure when some of this stuff is tongue in cheek, but just in
case: Does this presume that there is an aspect to human
'consciousness' that is not present in other animals?
Not necessarily, no. But it is plainly obvious that humans have much
more of it than the other species, including our closes cousin chimps--
most significantly. |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:30 am |
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On Jan 29, 10:55 am, Guy A Hoelzer <hoel...@unr.edu> wrote:
Quote: I suggest that an important auxiliary question implied by the one in the
Subject is "which of the non-human species lacks consciousness?" This might
help us to avoid the (IMHO clearly false) assumption that we are talking
about something unique or special about humans.
The point of the thread as I understood it is what is the selective
origins of *human* consciousness. |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:30 am |
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On Jan 29, 10:55 am, "feedbackdroid" <feedbackdr...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Quote: On Jan 28, 11:20 pm, claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net wrote:
On Jan 22, 7:25 pm, "Stephen" <stephe...@gmail.com> wrote:The previous post makes it sound like ONLY humans, and maybe some
apes, have consciousness. However, this overlooks the idea, discussed
by Dan Dennett and Gerald Edelman among others, that there is a
continuum of consciousness in the animal kingdom.
Sure. To some degree. But human consciousness is orders of magnitude
higher than that of any other species, most notably our closest
relatives, chimps.
To help explicate
Quote: matters, they talk about "primary sensory consciousness", which at
least all mammals have (and which some people consider that all
animals have to a lesser degree), and "higher-order consciousness',
which only the highest primates have, and which involves language and
general ability to think raitonally and to manipulate symbols.
The corrollary to this is that, the latter (HOC) evolved out of, and
on top of, the former (PSC).
Why do humans have a consciousness?It's a direct result of the group/communal selective aspects of human
evolution:
1) A shift in world climate about 8 million years ago. (A shift in
Hadley cells [paleoclimatology--look it up].)
2) Resulting shift from a seasonless rain-forest habitat to a dry-
season dominated monsoon habitat.
3) Patchification of resulting treed habitat near source of perrenial
water into city-sized, town-sized patches of forest.
4) Emergence of large predators, especially in the surrounding
treeless or less treed habitat.
5) Resulting Isolation of (chimp)/A'pith communities at these treed
patches as a result of #3 and #4 above. (Note: isolation is essential
to the group selective aspects of this hypothesis. Without it
individuals or subgroups of a community site could [and would] easily
escape the dry season predatory massacres [see #6 below] that links
the fate of the members of a community to one another.)
6) Tendency of the predators to target community sites during the
desperate depths of the dry season that are impoverished, starving,
thirsty, experiencing internal strife and to ignore those that are
healthy, well-fed, and that maintain internal cooperation.
7) Emergence of large food-competitor species that, if left unchecked,
could and would rapidly deplete the resources in a (chimp)/A'pith
community thereby increasing the probability (see #6 above) that the
community site would be targeted by the opportunity seeking predators
during the desperate depths of the dry season.
8) Due to the implications of #1 through #7 above, the emergence of
cooperative rock-throwing, stick wielding behaviors in (chimp)/A'pith
directed against inmigrating food-competitor species. The communities
that were most successful in this behavior were the ones that best
avoided predatory massacres.
So, to answer the question, why did consciousness emerge in humans/
hominids? Because individuals that have consciousness/conscience are
more likely to be members of communities that are better able to
achieve the behavior/ends indicated in #8 above.
It's that simple.- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text - |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:30 am |
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On Jan 29, 10:55�am, Guy A Hoelzer <hoel...@unr.edu> wrote:
Quote: I suggest that an important auxiliary question implied by the one in the
Subject is "which of the non-human species lacks consciousness?" This might
help us to avoid the (IMHO clearly false) assumption that we are talking
about something unique or special about humans.
Guy
in article epk3o8$dc...@darwin.ediacara.org, claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net at
claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net wrote on 1/28/07 10:20 PM:
Consciousness is often portrayed as something uniquely human which you
rightly point out it isn't. It is also something which is thought of
"separating" us from all other species and something wonderous. It is
associated with intelligence. Clearly, IMO, consciousness is "not
enough" to make the necessary changes we need to make as a species. It
is necessary but alone it is not enough.
Michael Ragland
Quote:
On Jan 22, 7:25 pm, "Stephen" <stephe...@gmail.com> wrote:
Why do humans have a consciousness?
It's a direct result of the group/communal selective aspects of human
evolution:
1) A shift in world climate about 8 million years ago. (A shift in
Hadley cells [paleoclimatology--look it up].)
2) Resulting shift from a seasonless rain-forest habitat to a dry-
season dominated monsoon habitat.
3) Patchification of resulting treed habitat near source of perrenial
water into city-sized, town-sized patches of forest.
4) Emergence of large predators, especially in the surrounding
treeless or less treed habitat.
5) Resulting Isolation of (chimp)/A'pith communities at these treed
patches as a result of #3 and #4 above. (Note: isolation is essential
to the group selective aspects of this hypothesis. Without it
individuals or subgroups of a community site could [and would] easily
escape the dry season predatory massacres [see #6 below] that links
the fate of the members of a community to one another.)
6) Tendency of the predators to target community sites during the
desperate depths of the dry season that are impoverished, starving,
thirsty, experiencing internal strife and to ignore those that are
healthy, well-fed, and that maintain internal cooperation.
7) Emergence of large food-competitor species that, if left unchecked,
could and would rapidly deplete the resources in a (chimp)/A'pith
community thereby increasing the probability (see #6 above) that the
community site would be targeted by the opportunity seeking predators
during the desperate depths of the dry season.
8) Due to the implications of #1 through #7 above, the emergence of
cooperative rock-throwing, stick wielding behaviors in (chimp)/A'pith
directed against inmigrating food-competitor species. The communities
that were most successful in this behavior were the ones that best
avoided predatory massacres.
So, to answer the question, why did consciousness emerge in humans/
hominids? Because individuals that have consciousness/conscience are
more likely to be members of communities that are better able to
achieve the behavior/ends indicated in #8 above.
It's that simple.- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text - |
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| Guy A Hoelzer |
| Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 12:46 pm |
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Guest
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in article epo6ch$1s7k$1@darwin.ediacara.org, claudiusdenk@sbcglobal.net at
claudiusdenk@sbcglobal.net wrote on 1/30/07 11:30 AM:
Quote:
On Jan 29, 10:55 am, Guy A Hoelzer <hoel...@unr.edu> wrote:
I suggest that an important auxiliary question implied by the one in the
Subject is "which of the non-human species lacks consciousness?" This might
help us to avoid the (IMHO clearly false) assumption that we are talking
about something unique or special about humans.
The point of the thread as I understood it is what is the selective
origins of *human* consciousness.
I was trying to caution that this may be a bad question, like "have you
stopped beating your wife?" A more similar bad question would be "what is
the selective origin of human legs?" Our ancestral species have had legs
for an awfully long time before the origin of humans, so legs didn't
originate in humans at all. I think the same is likely true of
consciousness.
Guy |
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| Guy A Hoelzer |
| Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 12:46 pm |
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Guest
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in article epo6ch$1s7b$1@darwin.ediacara.org, claudiusdenk@sbcglobal.net at
claudiusdenk@sbcglobal.net wrote on 1/30/07 11:30 AM:
Quote:
On Jan 29, 10:55 am, "feedbackdroid" <feedbackdr...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Jan 28, 11:20 pm, claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net wrote:
On Jan 22, 7:25 pm, "Stephen" <stephe...@gmail.com> wrote:The previous post
makes it sound like ONLY humans, and maybe some
apes, have consciousness. However, this overlooks the idea, discussed
by Dan Dennett and Gerald Edelman among others, that there is a
continuum of consciousness in the animal kingdom.
Sure. To some degree. But human consciousness is orders of magnitude
higher than that of any other species, most notably our closest
relatives, chimps.
You posted this twice now, but your claim seems to be merely an hypothesis.
I might add that it is an hypothesis that would be extraordinarily difficult
to test. I find this is usually the case when someone uses the rhetorical
tactic of claiming something is "obvious", as you did in your previous post.
Here you turned to a quantitative claim of "orders of magnitude higher", but
I am not even sure how to distinguish higher from lower in this context.
How about deeper vs. shallower, or more vs. less complex? How would you be
able to tell if chimps or dolphins, for example, had higher consciousness
than humans?
Guy |
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| Anthony Cerrato |
| Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 12:46 pm |
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Guest
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"Guy A Hoelzer" <hoelzer@unr.edu> wrote in message
news:eplfvt$tfc$1@darwin.ediacara.org...
Quote: I suggest that an important auxiliary question implied by
the one in the
Subject is "which of the non-human species lacks
consciousness?" This might
help us to avoid the (IMHO clearly false) assumption that
we are talking
about something unique or special about humans.
Good idea. Perhaps if I give my idea on what consciousness
is it will be easier to do thus (not really though.)
My explanation for consciousness is very simple--it's all
simply a phenomenon of _human_ (and perhaps other animal's)
memory! This is not in itself so simple--is the memory
phenomenon
due to a unique type of brain organization as to how it
processes memories, or is it due to a unique biochemical
system which mediates memory--either of these could have
been acquired by mutation[s] in (certain) animals in the
past.
Now, regardless of the details of the process noted above,
at the macro level one can say that the consciousness is
embedded in the array of sum total memories existing at a
particular time.
IOW, you are the sum of all your memories and that aggregate
memory, when accessed by your brain, IS your personal
Consciousness (C).
Now, it should be noted that any particular memory is not
unchanging throughout one's life--memory is constantly
edited in background even as it is being stored, i.e., it is
compacted,
supplemented, redacted, and otherwise revised/recoded, as
required by the brain's spatial and connection needs.
However, this process is wholly transparent to the user at
all times.
Now let's examine the process behind what determines the
"strength" of one memory over another. The main factor which
determines that one memory is stronger than another, i.e.,
has a greater number of neuronal interconnections, is simply
"Emotion" (E). This is associated with the amygdala and is
well known through brain imaging studies.
Memories which have strong emotions associated with their
formation are stronger that those which don't. Most of C is
a result of the strongest memories you accumulate throughout
your life! And what is it that mediates your emotional state
at a given time? It is the aggregate of
biochemicals--primarily, but not solely the
neurotransmitters in the brain--and their relative
concentrations at a given time which mediates one's E state!
Thus my conclusion is that aggregate memories form the basis
for C, and thus to compare different animal species to
humans, one must learn to what extent their memory extent
and storage
processes differ from that of humans and what precisely is
the most important factor in brain differences.
The only guess I will make is that very small brains (e.g.,
very small animals including mammals and fish) will not be
conscious
but many other animals may well be. ...tonyC
Quote: Guy
in article epk3o8$dcs$1@darwin.ediacara.org,
claudiusdenk@sbcglobal.net at
claudiusdenk@sbcglobal.net wrote on 1/28/07 10:20 PM:
On Jan 22, 7:25 pm, "Stephen" <stephe...@gmail.com
wrote:
Why do humans have a consciousness?
It's a direct result of the group/communal selective
aspects of human
evolution:
1) A shift in world climate about 8 million years ago.
(A shift in
Hadley cells [paleoclimatology--look it up].)
2) Resulting shift from a seasonless rain-forest habitat
to a dry-
season dominated monsoon habitat.
3) Patchification of resulting treed habitat near source
of perrenial
water into city-sized, town-sized patches of forest.
4) Emergence of large predators, especially in the
surrounding
treeless or less treed habitat.
5) Resulting Isolation of (chimp)/A'pith communities at
these treed
patches as a result of #3 and #4 above. (Note:
isolation is essential
to the group selective aspects of this hypothesis.
Without it
individuals or subgroups of a community site could [and
would] easily
escape the dry season predatory massacres [see #6 below]
that links
the fate of the members of a community to one another.)
6) Tendency of the predators to target community sites
during the
desperate depths of the dry season that are
impoverished, starving,
thirsty, experiencing internal strife and to ignore
those that are
healthy, well-fed, and that maintain internal
cooperation.
7) Emergence of large food-competitor species that, if
left unchecked,
could and would rapidly deplete the resources in a
(chimp)/A'pith
community thereby increasing the probability (see #6
above) that the
community site would be targeted by the opportunity
seeking predators
during the desperate depths of the dry season.
8) Due to the implications of #1 through #7 above, the
emergence of
cooperative rock-throwing, stick wielding behaviors in
(chimp)/A'pith
directed against inmigrating food-competitor species.
The communities
that were most successful in this behavior were the ones
that best
avoided predatory massacres.
So, to answer the question, why did consciousness emerge
in humans/
hominids? Because individuals that have
consciousness/conscience are
more likely to be members of communities that are better
able to
achieve the behavior/ends indicated in #8 above.
It's that simple. |
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| Tim Tyler |
| Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:18 am |
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Guest
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claudiusdenk@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Quote: Sure. To some degree. But human consciousness is orders of magnitude
higher than that of any other species, most notably our closest
relatives, chimps.
You have access to a consciousnessometer?
Are you sure it's calibrated right?
Humans seem to be extremely similar to chimps in this
respect - as far as I can see.
Both have a sophisticated model of themselves and
their environment - as both are highly social organisms.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ tim@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply. |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:19 am |
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On Feb 1, 2:46 pm, Guy A Hoelzer <hoel...@unr.edu> wrote:
Quote: in article epo6ch$1s7...@darwin.ediacara.org, claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net at
claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net wrote on 1/30/07 11:30 AM:
On Jan 29, 10:55 am, Guy A Hoelzer <hoel...@unr.edu> wrote:
I suggest that an important auxiliary question implied by the one in the
Subject is "which of the non-human species lacks consciousness?" This might
help us to avoid the (IMHO clearly false) assumption that we are talking
about something unique or special about humans.
The point of the thread as I understood it is what is the selective
origins of *human* consciousness.
I was trying to caution that this may be a bad question, like "have you
stopped beating your wife?" A more similar bad question would be "what is
the selective origin of human legs?" Our ancestral species have had legs
for an awfully long time before the origin of humans, so legs didn't
originate in humans at all.
Guy, you are guilty of creative reading. I never stated that
prehominid ancestors didn't have consciousness.
As I stated, the subject of this thread is the selective origins of
human consciousness. A discussion about whether or not human
consciousness is distinctive from other species would be, IMO, an
inane discussion. It's obvious to all *reasonable* people that human
consciousness it is distinct and greater than that of any other
species. But if this is the subject you wish to discuss then maybe
it'd be better to start a new thread.
Quote: I think the same is likely true of
consciousness.
Guy |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:00 pm |
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On Feb 2, 10:18 am, Tim Tyler <seemy...@cyberspace.org> wrote:
Quote: claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Sure. To some degree. But human consciousness is orders of magnitude
higher than that of any other species, most notably our closest
relatives, chimps.
You have access to a consciousnessometer?
Are you sure it's calibrated right?
Humans seem to be extremely similar to chimps in this
respect - as far as I can see.
Both have a sophisticated model of themselves and
their environment - as both are highly social organisms.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ t...@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.
As I stated to Guy, it's obvious to all *reasonable* people that human
consciousness is distinct and greater than that of any other species.
But if this is the subject you wish to discuss then maybe it'd be
better to start a new thread. |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:00 pm |
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On Feb 2, 10:18 am, Tim Tyler <seemy...@cyberspace.org> wrote:
Quote: claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Sure. To some degree. But human consciousness is orders of magnitude
higher than that of any other species, most notably our closest
relatives, chimps.
You have access to a consciousnessometer?
Are you sure it's calibrated right?
Humans seem to be extremely similar to chimps in this
respect - as far as I can see.
Both have a sophisticated model of themselves and
their environment - as both are highly social organisms.
It's plainly obvious that chimp consciousness is closer to the level
of dog consciousness than it is to human consciousness. When was the
last time you carried on a conversation with your dog?
[moderator's note: This morning. Maybe your dog just doesn't like
you enough to talk to you? - JAH] |
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