[MD] is-ness

[Ham Priday]

Arlo --


[Ham said]:
> Free-thought association, introspective revelation, acorn pancake recipes 
> and poetry fill the void of philosophic thought.

 [Arlo asks]:
> Does this mean you are ready to answer the question "Is consciousness 
> hereditary?"

What part of my comment relates to heredity?  Your persistence on this line 
of     questioning borders on the pathological.  Apparently you won't quit 
until you can satisfy your need to find a biological ground for 
consciousness.  Tell me, Arlo, when you look at the bright moon on a clear 
night, do you insist that astronomers tell you that the moon is 
incandescent?  Because that's what you're asking me to do with 
consciousness.

Your perspective of reality is entirely objectivist, which is unfortunate 
for someone concerned with philosophy.  For you, nothing is "real" unless it 
can be attributed to a material thing.  Thus, you look for consciousness in 
the plasma of gray cells and their synaptic processes.  But you won't find 
it there.  Even Pirsig wrote in LILA that "there is no direct scientific 
connection between mind and matter."

All your questions relate to the physical organism, on the false presumption 
that consciousness is physiological (or sociological).  Yes, the human body 
and its organic components have evolved from primordial creatures, just as 
your telephone receiver, its wires and  transfomers, were fabricated for a 
specific function.  But the caller's message is not in these components any 
more than your consciousness is in your brain and nervous system.  So your 
evolutionary questions are irrelevant, and there is no point in reinventing 
biological evolution.  This is not an "evasion" of your questions.  Since 
I've already conceded that the "being" of awareness is objectivized as 
substance in transition, I'm not about to revise Darwin's theory in order to 
accommodate consciousness.

Instead, I'll say once more: Consciousness is not a substantive thing -- not 
a biological or social organ or any combination of such things. 
Consciousness is the primary awareness of a knower, irrespective of its 
development over time or its identification with a particular physical body. 
Space/time perception is a function of intellection, which is secondary to 
conscious awareness and is the mode of sensory experience.  Without a 
knower, a living organism's sensibility is limited to non-cognizant 
responses to simple mechanical or electro-chemical stimuli.  This is what 
distinguishes cerebrates from, say, a worm or a fly.  (It isn't that 
consciousness resides in the brain, but that the brain develops to support 
the experiential function of conscious sensibility.)

Your remaining questions are also based on the "reality" of spatio-temporal 
existence, which apparently also presumes a  "moral" God:

> Why would "God" have let countless generations of early man live and die 
> with an "unformed" or "underdeveloped" consciousness?

Ask Darwin.  Evolution was his baby, not mine.

> Our last thread involved examining "what changed?" between 
> pre-pre-primates with "no consciousness" and
> modern humans with "consciousness", which I was finally
> able to draw your answer to be "God (Whatever sits "on high")
> intervened and waved his magic wand and, poof, primates
> that did not have consciousness suddenly had it. Would you say that is 
> correct?

No, I would say it's Arlo being assinine.  Physical existence is process, 
change in time.  I've said before that nothing comes into being 
instantaneously, which as an existentialist you should know.  Diversity and 
change are the mode of experience, not reality.  What appeared to change 
(experiential knowledge), and when it changed, is well documented in the 
textbooks of biological researchers and anthropologists.  I can't add 
anything to that, except to say that morality is a human precept based on 
man's experience and value sensibility.  So that while value may be regarded 
as an attribute of Essence, the concept of value as moralistic is man's 
invention.

> Arlo wonders what Ham will "fill the void of philosophic thought" with 
> here? Given that you are now advocating philosophic thought, and not 
> other, lesser, forms of rhetoric, I hope your answers are devoid of such 
> attempts at evasion (including uncalled for personal attacks after I had 
> been nothing but civil) as in our last thread.

The only personal attack I wish for you is an acute epiphany that would 
allow you to realize that your consciousness is the real Arlo and that 
everything else you are aware of is Arlo's experience.

Peace,
Ham