[MD] What is SOM?

[Ham Priday]

 [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