[MD] The Quality of Freedom

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ham]
You see, Arlo, you are stuck in the time warp of causality and are 
continually trying to "rephrase" my ontogeny in temporal terms.

[Arlo]
Not at all. I am trying to understand how your ontology accounts for 
the appearance of "man's cognitive faculties" in the cosmos. You seem 
to be okay with the statement "Well, it is here, that's all that's 
important". To me, understanding better how/why it got here is much 
more interesting, and telling. And that you seem to absolve 
"philosophy" of any responsibility to account for the man's 
observations, is strange.

It is not enough, IMHO, to say "man evolved from apes", without 
offering an explanation of whether or not that evolution included the 
evolution of man's consciousness. And if consciousness DID evolve 
from its "level" in pre-historic man to its "level" in modern times, 
then you have to also account for a mechanism by which that 
consciousness evolves? (E.g., did it evolve over generations due to 
genetic adaptions? or did it evolve as the resulf of 
socio-enculturation? Or did it evolve by another mechanism different 
from these?)

Also, since you consider man's cognitive faculties an "essent", would 
you also consider the cognitive faculties of apes also "essents"?

Believe me, I do understand why you refuse to enter this arena, and I 
don't think its to serve "philosophy".