[MD] Consciousness a la Platt

[skutvik at online.no]

Arlo, Chris, All.

25 Aug. wrote:

[Chris] before
> > 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.

I agree and will add that the self-consciousness concept is created 
by the intellectual level (SOM) I don't know if I have asked you 
Chris, but it has been my fixed inquiry  since day one of this 
discussion. We know that almost all creatures sleep, consequently 
they must wake up to a reality different from oblivion ...no? It's 
plain that regarding animals it's biological consciousness, next 
comes social consciousness and then intellectual consciousness, 
in other words VALUE PERCEPTION. To this day no one has 
commented it     

[Arlo] replied
> 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). 

I haven't heard about Tomasello or noticed your rendering of his 
work (not consciously!) but I have forwarded this idea long ago ... 
In my case to explain the emergence of the (illusion of the) 
subjective - of a mind, or of a consciousness -  in SOM. About 
"...some point in the timeline ..etc" is almost identical to my own 
only that I said that this neural complexity included the storage of 
previous experience and the ability to retrieve it and "for an inner 
eye" to manipulate it through logical gates. If they had language to 
say "if I do this what will happen". 

About Tomasello's "unintended consequence" I don't know, but 
never mind, Nor do I know what "shared attention" means, my idea 
is that this is intelligence so frequently confused with intellect, not 
only MOQ's 4th level, but even as these two phenomena are 
defined in dictionaries. But most of all it created the 4th levels 
illusion of an "inner world" that to idealist is all there is. By this I 
mean that animals (the biological level) apply and still applies this 
capacity without calling it "in my mind".

OK, animals don't have language, neither aloud nor silent as 
thoughts,  but even after language (at the social level) there was 
no inner/outer distinction. But who is it that speaks about "social 
symbolic activity" Tomasello or Arlodello? ;-) If it means 
manipulations of symbols in a language sense I agree.

> 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), 

This is definitely Arlo and I agree if it means that language grew 
more sophisticated, that goes for "collective consciousness" too 
with the caveat that it is as seen from the intellectual level. What is 
for sure is that the 3rd. level knew as little as the 2 nd. about any 
S/O distinction in the form of "symbol/what's symbolized" or 
"consciousness/ what's one is conscious of". These are intellect's    

> 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"). 

Do I understand you correctly? Intellect ... when humans turned 
from using symbols to represent experience? At least this is 
completely upside-down. 3rd. value era was when humans 
considered "symbols" to be the real thing (meaning they did not 
know any "symbol" reality) Language was not mere words but the 
means to sway the forces through correctly performed rituals and 
so on. Religions of the semitic kind are social patterns and the 
Catholic Church regards the sacramental bread and wine to be 
literally flesh and blood. While the intellect-influenced Lutherans 
say that they are symbols. 

This is ar much as I can manage.

Bo