On 10/25/2022 at 10:36 AM, Boydstun said:
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I do not think we should join philosophers in their old arm-chairing of the evolution of consciousness or self-consciousness. We should rather overrule them or congratulate them with findings of modern developmental cognitive psychology***** and anthropology. For example, Michael Tomasello’s A Natural History of Human Thinking should be used to grade the arm-chair folk. One sorry blindness of philosophers from Descartes to Schelling is their failure to notice the fundamental social requirements for human consciousness.
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Welcome, Hedonic, to _Objectivism Online. _I like very much that you have shown the photograph of (I’ll assume) yourself. It is a help in keeping visceral that one is writing to a human being.
Wouldn’t you say that behind the rise of Homo sapiens as tops in violence with other animals was their evolving brain for better communication with each other and for greater creativity in techniques, weapons, and other utilities? It strikes me that humans got to be winners against other animals by getting greater intelligence useful for socially organized defenses and for better discernment of subtleties of nature. Humans came onto the American continents from the west and won against the sabertooth tiger. Nature remains a dangerous giant, as when there are earthquakes, but the pretty good survivability of humans against the elements and disease and starvation and wild animals seems to me due to human intelligence.
There is a tendency in humans to personify nature and collections of individual people. They tend to make up invisible powerful person-like spirits or gods. Humans tend to blame themselves when something goes bad for them in the world. An they tend to give credit for the good things they have made by themselves to the non-human higher spirits and gods.
I think it is alright to somewhat personify human kind in the old way of speaking with the term man. One can keep in mind that one is speaking of our kind across its history of particular developments, calamities, and successes. At the same time, by man one can speak of the outline of an individual who carries human kind in its composition. He deserves a pat on the back, and he can be sketch of a role model for human goodness, while recognizing full well the haywires of human kind past and present. Where there is no fallibility, there is no intelligence.
I have previously compiled the information that directly answers your question. When I find it, I’ll add it to this thread.