The Origions of Human Consciousness

[size=150]The first thought[/size] - Selfishness

Some one hundred thousand generations ago
enough neurons made enough connections
between the intuitive and analytical hemispheres
of an expanding primate brain
to allow a quantum leap in consciousness
to take place

An evolving ape
had a conscious thought
as an independent self
and became human

An eye
became an I
and an infant ego
took birth in the cosmos

An observer
apart from Nature
had become conscious
of consciousness itself

Who but God would have thought
that such a small step for man
would have such giant consequences
for all life on Earth

Whats to say,
That consciousness evolved one day?

To think and to feel, or to grease the wheels,
May be natural to,
The machine we call our world.

And if it should not, be static and still,
But flowing and changing,
In the evenescent winds of time immoral,
Must it still have come from Ginnungapep’s maw?

To think, to drink, to waste away,
On poisons all man-made.
Of thought and concious choice,
These ones rule the day.
Perhaps then, consciouness, of man, a curse has made?

But before these ramblings onward tumble,
Let me bring them to a stop,
For sweet mental masturbation,
Can only have, Oh so many cogs.
Are we conscious now, as the bird is conscious of the sky?
Or have we fallen, and in our darkest hours lie?

The Second Thought Generosity

The first consciousness of self
as an independent observer
was followed by the realization
that self could only be evaluated
in relationship to another

It is the value placed on self
by another
that determines ones own sense
of self-worth

Thus the one-time ape
who had once grabbed all the bananas
had to struggle with basic animal instincts
and learn the value of sharing
and in that process of evolution
woo the good opinion of another

and lo and behold,
from what that ape learned,
For in it lay the densest,
destruction of mankind,
Who’d never ever earned,
A day of bread in all their time.

For survival was thwarted,
By that false ingenuity,
Brought to bare, without a care,
Upon the objectivist spirit,
Never named, in man’s fame.

For us all, they’d cry, or you’ll die,
But we’ll kill you none the less.
So starved a nation or two in its day,
When the communist factions started.

So lend an ear, in social reprecussions fear,
For not all that is communal is good.
And perhaps, perhaps, collectivist evaluation,

Is nothing more, than insane sedation,
And more of that afformentioned mental masturbation.

=SPLURT=

[size=150]The Third Thought [/size]. Social Ethics

Having awoken to the self
in relation to support from the family
mankind transcended the hunt
and graduated into agriculture

In the paradigm of this new age
of planting, tending chores and harvesting
the cooperation of the extended-family
brought the evocation of the work-ethic

The domestication of Nature
posed problems of pestilence
no challenge was greater than the lions
who preyed on the herds
this initiated the circumcision lodges
and evoked the ethic of courage

[size=150]Fourth Thought War[/size]

Aware of self and friendship
disciplined by chores
initiated into courage
and conqueror of the lions
man the farmer prospered
and his herds grew large
He trespassed on his neighbor’s pasture
and clan vendetta began

The farmer/lion fighter
was now forced to be a warrior
patrol his borders
and wage war on his brother

As vendetta escalated
ruthless warlords arose
They united the clans
into national forces
and crowned themselves as kings
and so the Bronze Age
came to an end.

Somehow I feel like this belongs in Creative Writing.

Well because it’s not, I’ll treat it like a study. This is interesting what you say about 4 thoughts. (1) “Self”, (2) “Generosity,” (3) “Social Ethics,” (4) “War.”

That sounds quite accurate. It sounds as though our greed allowed us to grow in the beginning. Through the will to learn, we began to empathize. To feel externally. Somewhere in stage 3, we complicated things until we began to destroy one another.

Clearly these all overlapped throughout the eras, in fact they somehow seem out of the right order. But it sounds like you’re onto something. Perhaps we can see an evolution in the complexity. It began with “I” as opposed to food, water, shelter, mates, and so on. “I” was powerful because it allowed for ingenuity. Independance meant experimentation away from the norm. It elaborated into “us” as there were later many "I"s and co-operation introduced technology. Recognizing the power of “us,” we hoped to better refine “us” with its multitude of “I.” In modern day this “us” has elaborated into “social ethic vs. tactical empiricism” in which we struggle to define “us,” “them,” and “I.” We now struggle with philosophy and science to define “all this” whatever it is.

Hey MagnetMan, All,

I think you jumped a few steps in the chain to self-awareness MM - Afterall - How can there be ‘selfishness’ with no ‘self’…? That would be like the rabbit pulling itself out of the hat, would it not…? Where’s the magician…? Where’s the evolutionary-driver…?

I’ve been thinking that a kernal of self-awareness arises automatically within any bottom-up learning system, biological or otherwise, to fine tune a neural or computational network. Self-awareness as a delcate tuning fork, opposed to the sledgehammer blows of evolution and its henchman - Death.

Evolution drives top-down (inflexible/concrete) neural nets by penalizing failure with death, or loss of procreative options - which amounts to the same thing.

Let’s exemplify with recognition systems - discerning one ‘face’ from another. Offspring that cannot easily fix and find their mothers’ faces are offspring not long for this world. Equally a mother who cannot differentiate between young may well feed the offspring of another to the neglect of her own. As long as there is a great population, the evolution of a network for recognition could be driven by the simple deaths of those who fail, leaving successive generations increasingly adept at recognition as they unknowingly ‘compete’.

This kind of neural net evolution requires no conscious awareness on the part of the evolvee. Why…?

Behaviour “recog” →
a:(Quality)good–> (Outcome)probably die/discontinue neural-net geneline.
b:(Quality)bad–>(Outcome) probably live/continue neural-net geneiline.

Why…? Because the qualification scale and outcome is reasonably black and white. You pass and live, fuck up and die. The quality of achievement falls within the range for the process of evolution to imediately ‘notice’ and penalize. The magician who tweaks the net, is external to the evolvee. The magician is starvation, predation, disease, temperature - whatever enviromental factors apply. ie: in a that (bad) variation of the network gets thrown out completely - whereas in b that (good) version of the net is ‘allowed’ to copy itself into the next generation and undergo another itteration of quality-control.

Learning by dying. Species-wide Learning by the ‘luck of the draw’ at the expense of the individual. Rather a harsh school:

“A+ - you get to live!!! B- BLAM.”

This unconscious ‘learning’ process produces networks that are extremely advanced… More advanced than any we can contstruct ourselves so far. However, and it’s a very big ‘however’… It’s wasteful. It’s slow to the nth degree. Imagine if Sony brought out PlayStation 2 after a 30-year interval… [-X

X-Box would win… :laughing:

Where does self-awareness come in…? Or rather more importantly ‘why…?’ What advantage does it give…?

Self-Awareness allows a neural net to learn, to become more proficient at providing a beneficial response to a given stimuli, without having to die. It allows individual “in-house” learning. This process of individual learning - producing individuals with at least a chance of becoming better, more skilful, faster etc. benefits the species in-toto. There is a secondary plus: An unconcrete net, which will learn, takes less space, allowing you to fit more ‘compressed’ programs into the same space. Important during birth, given the restrictions on birth canal width and cranial diameter. A human baby coming straight out of the chute with its brain fully wired up and fine-tuned would get stuck. Try squeezing the Mekon through Dan-Dare’s ass.

Think of learning as a process of ‘decompression’ for an extant skill/behavioural-programme.

How does awareness help…? By setting the criteria by which the success or failure of any particular attempt - any ‘run’ of the neural net - is judged.

Baby learning to walk#1: Self sets goal “I want to go there.” And designates where ‘there’ is. Reward: Pleasure (chemical change manifesting as percieved ‘positive’ change in emotional brain-state) Penalty: Frustration sorrow (chemical change manifesting as percieved ‘negative’ change in emotional brain-state) ie: penalty is unpleasent but SURVIVABLE.

=> Overall - baby learns to walk in about a year or so.

Baby learning to walk#2: Survival (evolution) sets goal “Get to mama before your brother” having already designated mama. Reward: Food/life (at expense of brother) Penalty: No food, and eventual death. ie: Penalty is NOT SURVIVABLE.

=> Baby learns to walk in 1,000,000 years.

I may be exaggerating.

Anyway, in summary:

  • ‘Compressed’ learnable abilities give a lifeform an advantage over those lifeforms without.
  • For a species to be able to fine tune an abillity or behaviour quickly, at the individual level, within a generation, would allow it to adapt its behavioural set to a wider set of enviromental factors, more quickly, than a ‘one-size fits all’ hardwired species.
  • To allow an individual net to be tweaked, there must be penalties that are survivable, and rewards that are instant (and subjectively/self-referentially pleasurable - ie evolution doesn’t understand the concept of “I wanna sweetie” because evolution doesn’t know what ‘sweet’ means).
  • To specify the criteria by which outcomes are judged, and so judge attempts, without ‘waiting’ for the ultimate judgement of external evolutionary/enviromental factors - there must be self-awareness, and awareness of external conditions.

ie: Self-awareness arises from the (evolutionary) advantage of being able to learn quickly, on an individual basis.

ie: Bambi is to an extent… Self-aware.

Tab.

FIFTH THOUGHT Conscientious Craftsmanship

Aware of self
reliant on neighbor
disciplined by chores
initiated in courage
blooded in War
men conscientiously polished their crafts
and built might nations of industry
and towering cathedrals to God
and so the Iron Age came to an end

SIXTH THOUGHT Physical Determinism

His character established
on the foundations of the first five disciplines
his intellect sharpened by an analysis of Scripture
man protested against religious dogma
and began to measure the universe
and so the Steel Age came to an end

SEVENTH THOUGHT Metaphysical Realization

His growth complete
and adulthood attained
limited by the finite
men exploded the atom
and uncovered the origins of Consciousness
and became aware
that the Cosmos was aware
and was given charge of the World

and so the Nuclear Age began

Hi, MagnetMan,

I remember you saying that your experience with societies in different stages of evolution (i.e., Stone Age, Iron Age, etc.) taught you that there was a tripartite division, viz. beautiful people, not-so-beautiful-but-not-really-ugly people, and ugly people. I cannot find the thread anymore, so I’m asking you in this one. Is this division like a pyramid? Or are most people somewhere in the middle?

Some 5% are exceptional
Some 90% are normal
Some 5% are handicapped

Give or take a few petrcentage points, I see this ratio as universally true throughout Nature.

For more check The Fundamentals of Mass Psyhcology on this forum
also on my BLOG. Click on it below

Cheers

But can you write how old we are when we are self-aware. When are consciousness is developed enough to say that we are aware at this moment - this is my first philosophical question.

The next is strictly connected with the previous - are we self-aware at the moment of our comming into this world from our mother womb?
I mean - what is abortion and what is a murder?
When fetus have a nervous system he/she can feel pain. The same with a new born baby- however in the last case we say about murdering without any doubts (in case of annihilation) - in case of fetuses some people say - it’s not a murder. But if both creatures don’t have any self-awareness…
Where the border lies?

:unamused: :unamused: :unamused:

In the seven threads above I was refering to the evolution of our collective consciousness. Though hominids branched off from other primates some six to seven million years ago, I do not believe that self-awareness {the consciousness that made us humans} took place much before 2.5 million years ago

Individually I believe we do not become self-aware until we are weaned - IE. between two and four years old. Prior to that time, from birth onwards, though all the sense are fully alert, I believe that the infant experiences the body of itself and that of the mother as one and the same. This is why it is vital for the mother to never get beyond sense range of her infant. The panic of separation triggers the crying reflex. From a behavioral point of view, infants, as soon as they can talk, refer to themselves in the third person. They do not say “I” much before three or four.

If self-awareness were the criteria for murder, then killing an unweaned baby of two or three years would still be called abortion. So where do we start?
For me, the moment of conception is sacred. It is the only way one can continue one’s own life with a clear conscience. The reasons for any artificial interference have to be because it is life-threatening for the mother. In the case of rape, I would not dare to judge. That decision is between the mother and her god.

Selfishness in this 1st sense is not meant in opposition to other. I am not talking about sharing yet. It refers to self when experienced as one alone, as a separate observing entity. This is the first rise of human consciousness.

One sees this magical moment of 1st awareness repeated infinitely in the conscious development of every child. The sense of “I” as a being separate from the mother, arises in infants after weaning - from between the second and fourth year. At this stage it is intensely selfish. It is up to the parents to evoke the second thought and get the child to realize that the value of self cannot be known except through the affectionate “I” and eye of another. Thus the ethic of sharing is a crucial component in the learning curve and is vital in the development of the future social intelligence.

The value of sharing should be firmly seated by the age of seven, when the third thought arises and the child lets go if the relative nature of the here and now and becomes increasingly conscious of time and space in artificial terms. Usually that is when we start them to read the clock. It is at this stage that the tedium of daily chores should be intriduced as an essential discipline in the further consentrated development of the self and the quality of its future character. All future tasks and challenges in life will have elements of tedium in them, thus patience and concentration powers should be seated between the ages of seven and puberty.

Ah well, MM, I missed your point. On second reading I presume now you mean the rise of consciousness in (a) human. Or did you mean a (social) conscience…?

So - You’re firmly in the ‘nurture’-camp, regarding children…? Why not just write an instructory pamphlet…? Good luck with finding an audience for it here. :laughing:

===============
MagnetMan,
Is there an eighth thought? In discovering the atom, is man going back to God? is man going to perish, not all, because of the principle of sex. My belief is that everything is sex including the atom.

The very first self-conscious thought our kind ever had, has to have been the wonderment of looking out from his/her over-hanging brow and dimly realizing that he/she was here and that was over there. That was our first separation from Nature. Now, four Ages later, we are so far removed from Her She is a stranger and we think She is inanimate and unconscious even though we were born out of Her.

If both parents take a hand in instilling solid family values and take the personal time to emphasise fundamental personal and social ethics up until puberty, the nation would end up with a self-motivated, self-educated self-policed citizens for life. If nobody here wants to buy into that, its their loss not mine. Unfortunately it is also a national loss, for we will have to keep over-seeing, policing and legislating ourselves until doomsday - at a cost of some 80% of our GNP. We could save all of it and put it into our crumbling, grid-locked infrastructure if we had the gumption to change the way we dump our kids in crowded classrooms and make them rote-learn predigested information for twelve years and more. As it is only 1% excel in that boring system, which leaves concerned parents nothing to laugh about. It is no wonder millions are heading for homeschooling. Homs-schoolers would do well to dump the text books until puberty and get on with developing and encoureaging their natural intelligence, before script indoctrination. That way they can think for themselves before they get swamped with technicalities and turned into little more than robots on the mass production line…

:smiley:

Much as my gene-led belief system cries nature, I’m considering teaching my son and daughter to read, write and basic mathematics myself, in a fairly ad-hoc manner, starting at 4. My son already speaks English and Turkish with a reasonable degree of fluency, and is starting to naturally connect cause and effect in the real world, both in real-time and in the abstract. Clever little mite.

You’re a little ivory-tower for my taste dear MM., regarding the malleableness of human nature, but I at least hope you are right. Hawks and doves my friend, hawks and doves.