Re: Why Humans are Conscious

in article eqoun0$2rgl$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, claudiusdenk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx at
claudiusdenk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 2/11/07 9:41 PM:

On Feb 6, 10:51 am, Guy A Hoelzer <hoel...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
in article eq5f3k$o2...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, claudiusd...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx at
claudiusd...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 2/4/07 12:19 PM:

On Feb 3, 12:00 am, dkomo <dkomo...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tim Tyler wrote:
claudiusd...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Sure. To some degree. But human consciousness is orders of magnitude
higher than that of any other species, most notably our closest
relatives, chimps.

You have access to a consciousnessometer?

Are you sure it's calibrated right?

Humans seem to be extremely similar to chimps in this
respect - as far as I can see.

Really? Can chimps work calculus problems too? And Sudoku puzzles?

[moderator's note: How would we know? -HAG]

How is it not obvious?

If you raised a human with the exact same environment and set of experiences
as a chimp, do you think we could observe their ability to do calculus or
Sudoku?

Irrelevant.

I disagree. If you admit that these abilities come from enculturation
rather than being inherent qualities, then I think it adds ambiguity to your
argument that undermines "obvious."

I think the answer to the question above is not so obvious.

The question that matters is what would happen if a chimps was raised
in a human family.

This is a loaded question. Human families are designed to raise human
children, not chimp children. Why do you think this would be a fair
comparison of the potential abilities of each? A better question might be,
given a customized and optimal environment for the raising of humans and
chimps, how far could each potentially go in their cognitive development?
Of course, we don't know what the optimal environments might be, especially
for chimps, so we can't really do this experiment. As our esteemed
moderator noted, "how would we know?" This leaves with even more ambiguity
and a less obvious answer.

Besides, any time some individuals claim something is "obvious" and a second
set of individuals claims it isn't; it isn't. :-)

It's obvious.

I think such an certain and closed minded response makes my point.

Guy


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