I’m back, at last, with a paper on Animal Consciousness
OK, so there hasn’t been a post in the past month. This is not because I have given up on y’all; it’s because I just now finished up the final exams in a pretty intense end-of-semester rush. However, I’m now free free FREE for the summer, and so posts should resume on a much more regular basis.
Just so that you know that I really had work to do, feel free to peruse my final paper for the Kant & Transcendental Idealism seminar I took: What Do A Pig And Socrates Have In Common?: The Debate Over Animal Consciousness in the Critical Philosophy.
More posts to come in the near future!
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As far as K-consciousness goes: The desire to communicate and express in humans has been enviromentally selected to a fervor. As expression develops, so does the ability to recieve expression. Consciousness is the result of this development. Receiving expression becomes understanding and empathy. The ability to identify others as like yourself, and identify yourself as like others.
Self-consciousness arises as beings relate to other similar beings. Due to selection pressure, this relationship stengthens until perception of self emerges for further development. Eventually the perception of self becomes intrinsic to the being.
H-consiousness: This issue underlines the fundamental problem of language. I believe that understanding H-consciousness is possible for a human mind, but definitely not through rational discourse. It is through regression to an altered state of consciousness. I feel the need to emphasize that no amount of description of the logical consequences of this type of consciousness will assist in the understanding of it, yet its descriptions are identifiable to those who can relate. Yes, it is “spooky.”
Many animals genetically close to humans probably have this kind of consciousness. However, for more distant animals, any sort of direct human understanding approaches impossibility.
Just to clarify: The human conception of an undirected brute consciousness does not arise during regression, but after it. The altered state can be percieved only after it has passed.