MEMO COPY in re Evolution of Self Awareness
Kent Paul Dolan
PaulC wrote:
> I was just wondering about the evolution of self
> awareness
For one fairly controversial, but at least fairly
coherent and complete, set of arguments on how
humans became self-aware, see, for example:
http://www.google.com/search?q=bicameral.mind
For arguments as to how minds individually, and
minds collectively, improve themselves, it is hard
to go wrong by starting with reading both
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
and
Lila
in that order, each by Robert Persig.
> I'm sure it has been discussed before (everything
> has of course) but what makes you, you and not
> somebody else?
The usual vague response is Nature + Nurture,
otherwise said, your genes plus your life
experiences.
The details aren't yet well understood, but are
under active investigation.
More surprising than what we don't yet know is what
we do know.
> Am I really just a biological machine?
Yes.
Learning to live with that reality is so hard,
intellectually and emotionally, that most of the
human race cannot manage to do it.
But don't say "just"; the biological machine that
you are is a wonderous product of nature's workings,
intricate still beyond mankind's ability to
comprehend in full.
> Is there really no meaning to life?
Life can have _lots_ of meaning, but it doesn't come
to you for free, poofed into existence for you.
It's like spice, you have to put it in yourself.
> Does it matter whether one blob of brain activity
> argues with another, since both will fade into
> non-existance in a few years.
If physicists are correct, the entire universe will
one day decay to impossibly long wavelength
photon radiation.
On the other hand, if mayflies could think, they
would envy you your unimaginable longevity.
Gaining perspective on "life is too short" comes
right after understanding that "there's nothing
wrong with dying and my conscious self ending when I
do, that's how life arranges to make room for new,
improved life".
> Are we really just dust that blows around a huge
> empty void?
Bad metaphor, use the beautiful one instead:
We're star-stuff born, recycled at least twice
before it became us and our world, and to
star-stuff we will and must return.
Our genesis occurred in some of the most
spectacular explosions nature offers,
supernovas, where the more massy chemical
elements that comprise us were cooked into
existence.
FWIW
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
William Morse wrote:
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
[snip]
> I nominate this for POTM,
Thanks, I'm flattered, but I'm pretty sure you have
to build a Subject: line like
POTM Nomination in re [original title]
for your nomination to be noticed or to count or to
be seconded.
xanthian.
You get rid of the middle "Re:" part because some
brain dead Usenet clients seeing ":.....:" in a
subject line, strip out all but the leading colon.
So, replies in discussions of your nomination might
come up missing the
POTM Nominatino Re:
part if they pass though such a Usenet client, which
would make that part of the thread pretty hard to
track.