[MD] Consciousness a la Platt

[Christoffer Ivarsson]

Arlo!

Yes, we seem to be in agreement on the major point's I'd say. But what get's 
me wondering is this the creation of the mythos - I'd say that the mythos 
naturally has to begin to develop for the intellectual level to form.. When 
you describe the intellectual level as beeing

> "the level of symbolic self-reflection, when humans turned from using 
> their symbols
> to represent experience and considered them as real "things in themselves"

I tend to both agree and disagree. It seems to me that when humans started 
this process, of actually reflecting over "things" in the mythos this is the 
seed of the intellectual level, however, I still think that identifying the 
core conflict between the two levels is paramount if we are to truly set a 
division point - since all levels start out growing as children within their 
parent levels we can see the process that is eventually leading up to their 
forming, but it is only when they aquire a distinct different view of how to 
pursuit Quality that they can be identified as fully formed levels I think. 
Reasoning along that line I would say that when humans started to view 
examine things in the mythos for no other propose than understanding them  - 
only then are they truly driven by the intellectual level.

So; conscious reflection over the symbols created by a growing mythos NOT in 
service of the mythos.

What do you say? Perhaps we are more in agreement than not?

Regards
Chris

> [Chris]
> I don't know If you'll agree with me, but from where I'm sitting it
> seems plausible that consciousness the way it is identified (witch is
> rather badly) now had to develop from the social level and into the
> intellectual level.
>
> [Arlo]
> That's the way I see it. I think, as I've mentioned a bit ago, that
> Tomasello's work on "The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition" ties
> directly into the MOQ. His central premise is that at some point in
> the timeline the evolving neurobiology of primates (biologic level)
> attained a degree of complexity that beget an unintended consequence
> (meaning neurobiological evolution was not moving towards this
> directly nor purposefully) of allowing primates to have "shared
> attention" (what he points to as the beginning point for social
> symbolic activity). As the complexity and sophistication of the
> primates' symbol use evolved (evolution occurring because the
> collective consciousess formed by shared social activity would be
> added to and modified over time by primates who assimilate this),
> eventually self-reflective symbols became involved (Hofstadter's work
> here is enlightening) and what we think of as "modern consciousness"
> appears. (I hold that the intellectual level itself is the level of
> symbolic self-reflection, when humans turned from using their symbols
> to represent experience and considered them as real "things in 
> themselves").
>
> To rephrase this along the lines of the questions that Ham and Platt
> are incapable of addressing.
>
> What changed between early primates without consciousness and humans
> with consciousness is... a level of neuro-biological complexity
> brought about by DNA-driven biological evolution that spawned the
> unintended consequence of allowing shared attention and hence the
> emergence of social activity.
>
> The mechanism by which consciousness evolves is.... the collective
> consciousness (the "mythos"), which evolves over time as new
> generations and new individuals assimilate it and add to it and
> modify it. Successive generations of primates assimilated a greater
> and more complex collective consciousness than their forefathers and
> foremothers, and their activity moved it further still.
>
> And to restate, from here the growing complexity of the social level
> (shared symbolic activity) hit a level of complexity where it was
>able to become self-reflective (the experiential descriptor "blue"
> went from being a modifier in shared activity to a "thing in itself",
> "what is blueness?"). The "self" is one such self-referential loop.
>
> [Chris]
> Something like that anyway. I'll need to look this over more
> carefully I feel. But What do you say?
>
> [Arlo]
> I'd say we are on the same page, at least mostly. Agree?