[MD] Consciousness a la Ham

[Heather Perella]

Arlo,

    We all know this is the usual jib-jab from Ham.  Good work Arlo in clearly pointing out how Ham evades and gives empty rhetoric (him saying to you that you have an "inability to understand".  Wow, that's such a good logical argument by Ham it just convinces everybody I bet (obviously sarcasm).  It's his time and time again of statements like this that brings out the sarcasm.  I use this sarcasm intellectually to clearly distinguish his argumentation.  Ham may have tried to use "evolve" to attract people to his thesis for "evolve" is an issue that has come up as something people understand to be apart of life, so, he's trying to use this concept to attract them, but then keeps the concept "evolve" empty in the sense that he really does not find a need for it, so, in this case, Ham should at least retract his previous statement ""consciousness evolves from genus to species" and reexplain himself in another way, maybe he could admit he made a mistake, I
 don't know.


woods,
SA
--- On Sat, 8/23/08, ARLO J BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:

> From: ARLO J BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu>
> Subject: [MD] Consciousness a la Ham
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Date: Saturday, August 23, 2008, 3:06 AM
> [Arlo asked Ham]
> The mechanism by which consciousness evolves is....
> 
> [Ham[
> ...the individuation of 'being-aware' from the
> Sensibility/Otherness dichotomy.
> 
> [Arlo]
> This makes no sense, and certainly is not an answer to the
> question. I'm not
> sure if you're deliberately obfuscating here to avoid
> an answer you know would
> be ridiculous, but it seems clear that you simply have no
> answer. Despite
> claims about what is NOT, you can offer nothing about what
> IS.
> 
> You said, quite clearly, "consciousness evolves from
> genus to species". That
> is, over generations consciousness evolves, successive
> generations of early man
> had improved consciousnesses over their predecessors. This
> is YOUR claim. And
> yet, when asked a simple question about HOW this happens,
> you retreat into
> smoke and evasion. 
> 
> Physiologists would say that consciousness evolves because
> of genetic mutations
> and changes in the neurobiology of primates over time that
> are passed on
> through DNA. Social theorists would say that consciousness
> evolves because
> socialization unleashed a collective unconscious that is
> added to with each
> successive generation an so primates assimilating this
> collective  will, with
> each passing generation, assimilate something greater. Both
> of these answers
> (which you deny) are straightforward answers to "how
> and why consciousness
> evolves, how and why it changes over time". 
> 
> You deny these, and yet can offer no answer whatsoever (the
> jumblygook above is
> NOT an answer to this question) as to how your lauded
> "consciousness" becomes
> greater/more evolved in subsequent generations of primates.
> 
> The ONLY answer I can draw from your posts is that
> "Essence" simply bestows
> upon subsequent generations of many "new and
> improved" models of consciousness
> each generation. And even to this you seem incapable of
> speculating as to
> "why"? Why did "On High" give early
> pre-primates a very unsophisticated
> consciousness and yet give us moderns a much more
> sophisticated consciousness.
> Your answer, "as him", was amusing but another
> evasion.
> 
> [Arlo had asked]
> What changed between early primates without consciousness
> and humans with
> consciousness is...
> 
> [Ham]
> ...the development of consciousness.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Clever, but even a gradeschooler sees the circularity in
> that.
> 
> Again, YOUR claim was that early on in the evolutionary
> timeline there existed
> some distant ancestor of "man" that lacked
> consciousness, call him a
> pre-pre-primate. You claim also that at some point in the
> timeline
> consciousness appears.
> 
> I ask, again, what changed that prompted this appearance?
> 
> Physiologists would point to a specific genetic mutation
> (or several). Social
> theorists would, as I've said, point to a time when
> neural evolution led to the
> unintended consequence of shared attention which beget
> social symbolic activity.
> 
> You DENY both of these, but offer nothing, and I mean
> NOTHING as an
> alternative. The closest thing to an answer I could read
> from your posts was
> "Essence poofed consciousness into the timeline",
> a sort of Divine Intervention
> when "God" went "Abracadabra!" and
> suddenly there existed "consciousness". But,
> you deny this as well. 
> 
> So I ask again, into this timeline spanning "no
> consciousness" among
> pre-pre-primates and "consciousess" among latter
> man, what changed that
> precipitated consciousness' appearance?
> 
> Your little jabs about my "inability to
> understand" are funny, but I'll be open
> to anyone else in this forum who can explain to me how what
> you give are
> "answers" to my questions.
> 
> 
> 
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