[MD] For Peter

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ham]
Why don't you feed your questions to an e-mail machine that will 
automatically post them at regular intervals?

[Arlo]
I should. Lest you forget that you haven't actually answered them.

[Ham]
I gave you the answers "I offer instead" and you called them "gobbledygook".

[Arlo]
Because they answered NEITHER question, directly OR indirectly. If 
you feel they have, then please, by all means, cut and paste your 
reply beneath my questions where you feel answers are given.

[Ham]
Your interest clearly lies in anthropology or paleontology, and not 
metaphysics.  I'm not an authoritative source of such information, 
nor do I believe it contributes to philosophical insight.

[Arlo]
First of all, my questions are about YOUR claims. YOURS. Second, how 
on earth you think you can make proclamations about what 
consciousness IS, without that implying or being concerned with where 
IT COMES FROM or HOW IT EVOLVES, is amazing. Your idea of philosophy 
really is "it exists, but we can't say where it comes from, why or 
how it evolved, but it just is". That's philosophy? I don't think so.

[Ham]
I've repeatedly said that evolutionary timelines and physiological 
development are not my specialty.  This isn't a lie or an evasion of 
your inquisition; it happens to be the truth.

[Arlo]
And yet YOU claimed that at one point primates did not have 
consciousness, and at another they did. THAT'S a claim about a 
timeline. And you said, "consciousness evolves from genus to 
species". THAT'S a claim about development. My questions are just 
simply logical follow-ups to YOUR claims.

[Ham]
Your questions relate to the phyla of species in a historical 
context.  Most of them are answered in the works of anthropologists.

[Arlo]
And these are the very answers YOU say are WRONG. About "what 
changed?", YOU say the physiologists who say "genetic mutations" are 
WRONG, YOU say the social theorists who say "the advent of social 
activity" are WRONG. So which answer of the anthropologists do you 
now say is RIGHT? About the evolution of consciousness, you say the 
physiologists who say "DNA" are WRONG. YOU say the social theorists 
who say "collective consciousness" are WRONG. So which answer do you 
propose is RIGHT?

[Ham]
I've shown you why your mechanistic theory doesn't hold water, and 
provided a metaphysical alternative that you reject without consideration.

[Arlo]
The only alternative you offer, albeit with obfuscating language, is 
"Essence, as God, poofed consciousness into man". You clearly stated 
this as "consciousness is a gift from on high". Okay, this is you 
"metaphysical alternative". But how does your alternative account for 
the evolution of consciousness (again YOUR claim)? The only answer I 
can gleen from your evasions is "Essence bestows up successive 
generations of primates a new and improved model of consciousness".

If you think for one minute that this (poorly conceived) theism 
disproves my "mechanistic" theory, then you are truly 
self-delusional. What you seem to want to do is to make claims, and 
then when those claims lead logically (as they inevitably do) to 
noticeable absurdity, you fall back into a cloud of language that no 
one else but Brilliant Ham seems to be able to understand.

And its not so much that I "reject" your metaphysical alternative, 
its that your metaphysical alternative (like Platt's) is simply 
theism. You have replaced Yahweh with Essence, and your Bible is not 
nearly as readable, but that's pretty much all you've done. Like 
Platt's "Qualigod" revision of the MOQ, the ONLY alternatives to my 
questions you have offered is "Abracadabra! Poof! Qualigod Made It So!".

The worst part is, like poor theists do, you lack all sorts of 
internal consistency in your arguments. YOU say "consciousness 
evolves", but they claim any follow-up question to that which you 
can't answer is just the result of a unintellectual mind.

It's that simple.

YOU claim "consciousness evolves". Got that. YOU claim this.

YOU claim "consciousness is not physiological". YOU claim 
"consciousness is not sociological". Got that. YOU claim these things.

But then the question, "Alright then, HOW?" you deride as being "mechanistic"?

It's this simple.

YOU claim that at one point primates lacked consciousness. YOU claim 
that at another point they had it. Got that YOU claim this.

YOU claim that "what changed in between to account for this" is 
physiological. YOU claim it is not "sociological". Got that. YOU 
claim these things.

But then the simple question, "Alright, then WHAT?" you deride as 
being "mechanistic"?

Can I be more clear?

The ONLY answers you've alluded to, as I said, are a "Divine 
Intervention" and an "Updated Model Supplied By God" theory. But you 
can't even be honest about THAT. Instead I get lengthy, irrelevant 
text about "Essence", and accusations again about "poor stupid Arlo 
who is too dumb to comprehend the Great Ham".

[Ham]
My thesis is certainly no more "Poof!" than your "mythos" of 
collective consciousness.

[Arlo]
Your theory is "Abracadabra! God Poofed It Into Being!". Mine is 
"Aha! An unintended consequence of natural evolution!" Fair enough. 
But at least from my theoretical perspective I have no problem 
answering the questions above. Yours appears to be to bereft for that.

[Ham]
I'd say it's the outcome of being stubborn as a kicking mule. Now 
THERE's an animal you can readily identify with!

[Arlo]
Gee. If you would have answered my questions at any point, this 
conversation would have ended back then. And yes, I admit to being 
stubborn when it comes to dealing with charlatans.