h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

~*~Also, Mr X - forgive me butting into your convo with effers but I think you are failing to make a key distinction. You seem to be equating thought with consciousness. Consciousness is the ability to conceive of oneself as an actual entity, to be aware of oneself as a thinking living being.~*~

According to dictionary.com, conciousness is: "aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc."

This doesn't seem to need language, because if Tess (she's a dog) is left alone in a room for more than maybe 15 minutes, she gets lonely and goes looking around the house for someone else. She could only feel lonely if she was "aware of [her] own sensations [and] surroundings."

Furthermore, wolves use sophisticated hunting techniques and work as a cohesive unit to take down their prey. Although it could be argued that the howls they use to communicate are a form of language, they're a much less complex form than seems to be required for the argument.

>>Evolution doesn't work quickly enough to allow for happiness to have an effect (unless one subscribes to Lamarck's theory of evolution) any more than it allows beauty, wealth or any other human construct to have an effect. <<

Van, happiness isn't a human construct. It's hardwired into the body eg endorphins are part of that.

I disagree about the time thing. I mean, I agree that evolution happens over lengthy time periods, but I disagree that happiness wouldn't figure in that. People with better endorphin metabolism are going to do better (generally) than people without. How is that any different than people with better eyesight or people in sunny climates having more melanin?

Also evolution isn't only about the individual. Humans survive as a species because they work collectively, and so social structures and phenomenon are important parts of that. Menopause is considered an evolutionary adaptation because it frees up older women from childbearing which means that the children in the tribe are better cared for, and therefore the species reproduces more successfully. Most female mammals die once they stop reproducing, humans don't.


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Did someone just compare the consciousness of babies and slot machines?

Cats obviously have a degree of self-consciousness, that's why if they do something clumsy when someone is watching they pretend it didn't happen or that it was intentional.

Nice bit of reductionist thinking, kea I understand that there are physiological reasons for human happiness but capability does not result in execution; hence my genome/phenome distinction. Plus, no matter how high my endorphin metabolism, my resistance to disease is more important to my survival.

I'd also argue that happiness is a human construct purely on the basis that happiness is subjective; like love. Is love 'hardwired into the body'? As Huey Lewis (& the News) said "The power of love is a curious thing, makes one man sad and another man sing." The capability may be present, but the outcome is never guaranteed.

observation about s

>>Nice bit of reductionist thinking, kea<<

Why thank-you Not really a surprise though is it, given I've been arguing for pluralism all this time


>>Plus, no matter how high my endorphin metabolism, my resistance to disease is more important to my survival.<<

But endorphins (and happiness) have a distinct effect on disease resistance. Sorry to be all non-reductionist now, but the human body, like the rest of the world, operates in complex interacting systems. 'Happiness' doesn't exist in isolation.


Didn't follow the genome/phenome bit. Can you explain?

>>How does that apply to happy humans who are homosexual, infertile, paraplegic from birth &c.? And a human's happiness can be affected by his or her phenome though his or her genome remains the same. <<

From your earlier post. Hmm, are we even talking about the same thing? Are you saying that because non-reproducing humans can be happy then happiness can't be an evolutionary asset?

I've argued that homosexuality is desirable in an evolutionary sense (because it provides
extra adult labour for the tribe, and because it possibly tones down overly macho or heteronormative aspects of human culture). No-one challenged that if those things were true that they wouldn't have an effect on evolution.

"According to dictionary.com, conciousness is: "aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.""
That covers my definition so I'm happy to go along with that, but beware of arguing from dictionaries

"because if Tess (she's a dog) is left alone in a room for more than maybe 15 minutes, she gets lonely and goes looking around the house for someone else. She could only feel lonely if she was "aware of [her] own sensations [and] surroundings.""
Reverse argument there. I could quite easily write a computer program which, if it detected no other beings in the near environment would explore its environment until it found some. One could easily expand that to recognition of objects so that if said program detected nothing *it knew* in the area it would go off and find them.
Is my computer program lonely?
Is it conscious?
It does exactly the same thing as your dog, so is the dog's 'loneliness' just your anthropomorphisation of its behaviour?
Could there be another explanation for her behaviour other than consciousness? Perhaps another explanation for finding other members of her pack, since she is a pack animal and would normally associate with them all the time. To her, it could be that the pack has wandered off and her instinct is to rejoin it.
None of this requires self awareness or consciousness.

"Furthermore, wolves use sophisticated hunting techniques and work as a cohesive unit to take down their prey."
So do ants. And a very advanced social structure.

Same thing with this. Your working in reverse. What you need to do is to start from the hypothesis (wolfs are self aware/conscious) find something teestable and then test it.
Which is how we discovered the self awareness of dolphins, elephants and great apes - by testing them.
So, in this example, do you think that having a sophisticated (for a given value of 'sophisticated') hunting technique is an attribute that comes from consciousness? If so, why? Are there any examples where this is not the case? If so, why is the case of wolves different?

"Although it could be argued that the howls they use to communicate are a form of language, they're a much less complex form than seems to be required for the argument."
indeed. And I don't know the state of study on wolf calls but there is no reason why there can't be myriad subtleties which we have not yet detected. Or indeed communications we haven't even noticed yet.

I'm not arguing for the language theory just trying to clarify your arguments.
Personally I do think communication is inextricably linked with consciousness, but more in terms of our internal language and how we describe things.

It is an interesting question. What does thought consist of if there is no language? Does the brain have its own language onto which we map out external human languages? Some reports from feral children suggest that before they learnt language their thoughts were much more simple and direct. But it is an open question still.

In terms of humans I think it is quite interesting to look at the relationship between feelings/emotions and thought/language. I know how important and sometimes difficult it can be to express complex feelings, especially conflicted ones, (I have them a lot ) in words. But when I can, either with someone else, or through say writing a poem, it is a huge relief. In the past I had quite a lot of psychotherapy, and the idea very much, was to be able to express stuff like feelings eg of 'loss' or 'trauma' that I had bottled up from the past; they were often still vivid in my mind though, almost like a 'cinema'. This idea of putting feelings into words can be seen analogously as 'digesting' them.

Interestingly when I was ill once (psychologically), I had this relief image of like a waterfall crashing downhill every time I was able to speak a bit about what I was feeling, and I relaxed a bit before the water all went back up hill again...For bipolars the problem of articulating intense emotions is always a problem. But without it, it can lead to extreme states of mind such as severe depression or mania.

~*~I'm not arguing for the language theory just trying to clarify your arguments.~*~

I know. It's good. Unfortunately I need to go to school in about 20 minutes, then I gotta' finish writing my term paper, so I have to put this off until the weekend. Besides, I need time to think about it.

no probs
enjoy the term paper