[MD] What is SOM?

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ham]
I do hope Arlo no longer feels slighted...

[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? 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"? You 
dismiss "social participation", and into this void the only thing I 
see you offering is some form of genetic adaptation/mutation. If not, 
if you propose something else, please correct me here.

[Ham]
[Human consciousness] is the immanent core of individual 
apprehension, as inseparable from the subjective observer as his physical body.

[Arlo]
Okay. But this simply restates "it exists". 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? Was it present in the even earlier 
pre-primates that primates descended from? If not, then what accounts 
for its appearance in the evolutionary time-line? What? If not social 
participation, and not genetics, then what?