[MD] Consciousness a la Ham

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Arlo reposts]
Arlo would still like answers to these questions.

[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.