Simon Conway Morris on animal intelligence (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 18, 2017, 12:46 (2658 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I don’t know if the complexification of the brain triggered the enhanced awareness or resulted from it.
DAVID: Not a chicken and egg problem. To me we are given a big brain and learn to use it.
dhw: What part of “we” decides and learns to use it?
DAVID: My brain is part of me and I feel I am inside my body. H. habilis probably had the same feelings and used his newly developed brain to develop new thoughts and concepts.
dhw: We have re-entered the mysterious realm of identity. [......]

DAVID: I don't get tangled up in all of your suppositions. My brain develops as I do in infancy. I control my brain, which it allows. In other words I use a part of my brain with my consciousness to make brain decisions. My consciousness is received by my brain for my use. All based on NDE research.

This is a head-in-the-sand approach. Firstly, we do not know the source of consciousness or what triggered the enhanced consciousness of humans. Secondly, you refuse to acknowledge that this has major bearings on the question of our identity – the “I” you keep talking about. You claim that humans “use” the enlarged brain to “develop new thoughts and concepts”. How can you have new concepts and thoughts without consciousness? NDEs imply that human consciousness exists independently of the brain, and the brain is only a receiver. Which comes first, then: the message or the receiver? If you really think the brain is the receiver, then it is consciousness and not the brain which develops new thoughts and concepts. That is dualism. It is materialists who argue that the consciousness which provides the new thoughts and concepts comes from the enlarged brain. It certainly is a tangle, simply because we don’t know the source of consciousness. However, it is a different tangle from your belief that consciousness comes from the brain and does not come from the brain.