Speaking as a professional scientist, allow me to assure you that you don’t have the first flipping CLUE what the word “evidence” actually means. Now, don’t feel bad - the vast majority of the nonscience world has only a pretty vague notion of how to separate fact from opinion - but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re just flat-out wrong about what it is.
Put simply, evidence MUST be objective fact. Everyone who views evidence, no matter what their personal views are, must be able to agree on an observable, objective fact for it to be evidence. Well over 90% of what you’re presenting as “evidence” has already been filtered through your own personal worldview, and is mostly interpretation rather than just simple fact.
But since you’re redefining every other word in the language, we can just add “evidence” onto the pile.
"Consciousness is NOT learned behavior, it governs behavior, it does not teach it. It learns behavior in humans, its programmed behavior in animals; an obvious difference. "
Not exactly.
For any living thing to learn, it must be conscious. Captive flocks of Cranes have no knowledge of migration. But, eggs layed in captivity and placed with wild birds will produce young that migrate with their new parents. They learn the route and time of migration. Judgement is involved in the process and mistakes are made. If it were ‘pre-programmed’ all individuals would migrate and they would not make any mistakes.
So, please share with us your examples that define conscious behavior in humans and how do they differ from those of ‘animals’.
You seem to think that being a Theist means you get to decree what’s the Truth and what’s Obvious. The rest of us are expected to listen politely and nod our heads and not Ask Questions. We do have a problem with that around here. But we do tolerate it - thats why “witnessing” is allowed in GD. But when your only response to being asked questions is “Everybody’s picking on me!!!”, that’s not even witnessing. That’s martyrdom. And if you go back and read the moderator comments, it’s not the witnessing drew the threat of closing the thread – it’s the martyrdom.
You put forward as an “obvious” factual statement that humans did not survive the ice age. My questions about that statement have absolutely nothing to do with theism or anti-theism. I don’t give a damn whether God Did It or not. I’m just very curious where you came up with that idea, since I’ve never heard it before, and it’s not consistent with my understand of what the Pleistocene earth was actually like.
Since figuring out how much ancient Homo sapiens were conscious of is really just speculation, maybe we should try a little closer to home. At what point in their life do humans today attain consciousness? Are they conscious from birth, or is it a gradual awakening as they grow older?
Again, I think it has something to do with memory. I have few recollections from early childhood, and none from before about age 3, yet I was there and I experienced it all. But I don’t believe I was conscious in the sense of the word that I am conscious now. I certainly had no consciousness that I am aware of when I spent nine months in the womb.
Was that consciousness always there? I suspect not. Potential for consciousness perhaps, but it seems to me the word implies more than just learning things; it has something to do with the ability to process and reflect on things even when we are not actually experiencing them, like the way I am thinking as I type on this iPhone right now. Meta cognition.
When I am unconscious, like when I am asleep, I am not thinking (except in dreams, which is only part if the night time experience) although my brain is still functioning, but I am not in the driver’s seat. In fact, when I am unconscious, I do not appear to be aware of anything at all. Perhaps consciousness is not a fixed state at all, but rather a state that we come in and out of depending on our body and the time of day. Maybe so it is for the evolution of Homo sapiens as a whole; consciousness is perhaps not an either/or proposition. Just some ideas.
In support of** Biffster’s** valiant effort to actually discuss the topic …
I personally think babies are born conscious. After a bit of “WTF?” they set out pretty quickly exploring their world and learning how it works. It just takes a fews before permanent memories start forming. I don’t think any of us actually remembers learning to talk, but doing so was certainly a conscious process, and we remember how to do it.
I also think any reasonable definition of consciousness goes way back in the pre-human lineage. When my cat stares at me to tell me his food dish is empty, or leads me to the door so he can go out, that’s not instinct. There are definitely thought processes going on in that little furry brain.
I agree. The problem as I see it is that consciousness is such a slippery term. IANA neurologist but I think consciousness is an emergent property of the brain rather than something you either have or do not have.
Still, according to one recent study, new research shows that babies display “glimmers of consciousness and memory as early as 5 months old.”
Hey, want a scary thought? What if your god doesn’t exist?!
Meantime, this site can quite casually handle any discussion along the lines of what you’ve advanced.
I’m thinking this makes sense. We can also have altered states of consciousness, like amnesia, fugue states, high fever, drug-induced episodes, hallucinations and so on. Also religious visions. They may be tethered to the real world but also largely access that twilight zone of the imagination that we encounter just as we are falling asleep, think we are falling, and involuntarily twitch or jump in our beds. It’s like where consciousness and unconsciousness meet. Unless one believes we are conscious when we are asleep; that’s a different kettle of fish.
Makes more sense that consciousness is an emerging quality and one that can only be measured indirectly at best. I believe the word transcendence is also part of it, as in the ability to perceive oneself from outside oneself, like the person who “sees” himself or herself on the operating table during a near death experience. Something closer to the concept of a soul, the ghost in the machine, may have been where Mickiel was going with this.
Found a photo of me, taken just after I was born. I recognized myself because the baby had the same foul-tempered look on its face as Adult-I encounters every morning in the mirror. Favored his left eye, too. From this I gather that the baby had just woken up, it wasn’t his idea to wake up, and he was pissed about it. Do I have a conscious memory of that moment? No, but Baby zone (I didn’t have a first name yet) was conscious that he was conscious and didn’t like it.
Consciousness on its simplest level is knowing what you like and what you don’t like. My cat is conscious enough to know that I have entered the room, and if she yells I will feed her. She is also conscious enough to know she doesn’t like her dry food. It’s not that it does not meet her nutritional needs, and she’ll force it down if I’m not here, sullenly, not mechanically. It’s that she likes canned food better, so she is motivated to yell at the big, stupid food machine until he give it.
So there are two ways that the cat is conscious: First, she has food preferences based on factors beyond simply filling her belly. Second, she is aware that that fat lummox will give her the good stuff if she complains enough. Third, she is motivated by those facts to do something to change her situation. So the suggestion that this cat, much less Homo habilis, is not conscious is patent nonsense. In fact, I am willing to give consideration to the idea that morning glories have faint glimmers of consciousness.
My cat operates much the same way yours does, Dropzone. Every night, without fail, she’ll stand in front of the pantry or meow at me if I open the fridge door, and invariably I’ll give her a little something. She has nothing to lose and it usually works. Operant conditioning and schedules of reinforcement really. Maybe that explains most human behaviour too.
If “consciousness” is the wrong word…what is the word for the ability to reason abstractly?
Human babies are born without this. They acquire it around age two or three.
I’m thinking of the “dollhouse test,” where a child realizes that the dollhouse he is playing with is a model of the actual room he is in.
Another test, which some animals pass, is the “mirror test,” where there is a realization that the guy in the mirror is “really me.” Again, very young children fail this, but at a certain age – around two or three – it all clicks. “Oh, that’s me!”
What is the word for this…and what animals have it? I think dogs have it to some degree, cats maybe a bit less, chimpanzees most certainly.
Using the age two or three guidelines, I believe this be part of what Piaget calls the Pre-Operational Stage, where the child is beginning to gain an awareness of the world around them, though still from an egocentric point of view. They believe everyone must feel as they do, and also they have animism, where if a car is not working then the car must be sick. Everything is filtered through their view of the world. Not sure if this fits with what you’re saying though.
Self-awareness. Humans, chimps, dolphins, elephants yes. Dogs, cats, no. But dogs have no non-human equal in ability to read human emotions. They evolved that way.
Well, self-awareness according to a single test. I’m waiting for other tests.
Speaking of mirrors and my pets (have you noticed that everything gets around to my pets eventually? ;)), got a dog who was taken aback by hisreflection, but seemed to realize it was him because he started checking out his very handsome, white teeth. NOT a threat display to the mirror dog, but seemingly a casual inspection. Unless he and the mirror dog were showing off, which is possible. And then there were Lucy and Harpo, aware of themselves but trying to fit the other into their self images.
Wolves are a good example of animals that exhibit conscious behavior. They have complicated social interactions. They learn and subsequently teach, they are adaptive and self sufficient. Hardly pre-programmed behavior.
