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Ever read Escher, Gödel, Bach? Self-awareness isn't either/or, it's a continuum.
I really wouldn't cite that book as proof of anything, although cognitive science is one of the very few subjects in the book he knows a lot about. It's a speculative exploration of ideas based on some things he has observed in those topics he knows well, extended into areas he knows much less about. Even he wouldn't say it's proof of anything.
Before agriculture, our mythology served to keep us in harmony with our environment
Was this the result of the mythology, or was that mythology the result of having to live like that?
We managed it for a hundred thousand or a few million years
The fact that our distant ancestors lived differently at a time when they had very little choice doesn't mean anything about what we're capable of when we do have power and choice (on a social group/species level, before anybody starts). I sincerely hope we can find our way to better ways of thinking and living that last, but what our ancestors were doing in the last Ice Age and earlier is objective proof of nothing at all. We aren't facing their challenges, and they weren't facing ours.
You keep citing as absolute facts things that aren't proven. One problem with that is that any progress to better ways of doing things really does need objectivity.
itsbruce-
I really wouldn't cite that book as proof of anything, although cognitive science is one of the very few subjects in the book he knows a lot about. It's a speculative exploration of ideas based on some things he has observed in those topics he knows well, extended into areas he knows much less about. Even he wouldn't say it's proof of anything.
I never purported to offer proof; seeking proof of awareness is obviously a mug's game. Hofstadter offers many a compelling insight, though. That awareness and intelligence is built on countless nested self-referential feedback loops, is a notion which appears fairly self-evident once you've got your head around it, I'd have thought.
I don't cite anything but my own existence as an absolute fact (which, incidentally, I don't expect anyone else to accept as an absolute fact). The rest is guesswork, with certainty ranging all the way from 'perhaps' to 'I will die on this hill'.
Kimmo
Ever read Escher, Gödel, Bach? Self-awareness isn't either/or, it's a continuum. Self-referential feedback loops are what give rise to intelligence, and the more of them you have, the more intelligence you have. Metacognition is how we avoid being manipulated via our primitive drives.