Paul2

I would think so. but how do you gauge brain development anyway? by cell count? good point.

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I'm not sure if intelligence and/or instinct dictate consciousness, however I disagree with your statement that humans are capable of ignoring their 'instincts'. Trust me, when you're faced with a 'fight or flight' situation... you will follow your instincts without even thinking.

Having never had to experience a fight or flight situation, i can't comment.

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and one of my questions... do other forms of life experience consciousness?

I don't think so. I've not seen anything that would lead me to believe that they do.

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and concerning communication skills, why should humans be so conceited to think they're the only animals capable of communicating. You've never communicated with an animal? You probably haven't had a close pet then. Heck, I can communicate very well with my house cat.

I never said animal's are unable to communicate. I have 2 dogs. I can "communicate" with them, but it's more like me reading their body language. They're hungry, they'll sit by the food dish. etc. stuff they've learned to do over time. Unless they communicate in a way we've not detected yet, my dog's don't sit around the kitchen table discussing "do humans communicate?" or any other subject. It would be quite interesting if they did.

Mad Kally

What can I say to this? You are the most unique human that ever lived.

Paul2

My mommy says i'm special.

Mad Kally

Poor thing. If a pitbull runs over and starts ripping you to pieces, you'll just stand there and let it kill you without the fight or flight response. Be very careful. Do not go out into the real world! I'll bet you'd let my chihuahua rip your shoes to pieces too. He's hell on shoestrings. Don't even think about your ankles!

Paul2

So the fight or flight responce is the only thing that tells me to take out my knife and stab it in the throat? I'd say that would be me thinking "crap, this thing's vicious. Thankfully i carry around a big knife." and then repeatedly stabbing it. ??

Mad Kally

And there you have it! The fight or flight syndrome!


Don't mess with my dog or you will experience the full effect of my deadly laser beam eyes!

Paul2

Well then, problem solved. confusion over what fihgt or flight is exactly. Anyway i'd say me stabbing him was a concious decision, but choosing to act in a violent manner could be an instinct. fun stuff.

Mad Kally

Fight or flight is a part of your autonomic nervous system. Eventually the parasympathetic nervous system takes over and slowly brings you back to a more normal state. Nothing mysterious about it. It's called physiology.

For Paul2:

Anatomy = structure

physiology = function

excreationist

I'm *assuming* that something was aware (my 2nd stage of "intelligent systems"). I used Piaget's stages to *approximately* describe how these aware systems become more sophisticated... I was too lazy to rewrite it in terms of saying how awareness changes... (I have trouble with complex things like that)

excreationist

It's called synaesthesia. The possibility of synaesthesia means that our different "senses" - like colours, taste, recognizing letters, etc, are experienced in a similar way by us (i.e. they're just kinds of physical data that can get mixed up)... rather than things like colour and taste, etc, being fundamentally unique things.



You might have started to fall asleep when your car veered off the road. Then the shock might have caused you to devote practically all of your "working memory" (short term memory) to dealing with the immediate problem. This caused the less important things, like your previous memories of journey, to get discarded. I think that's why we forget trivial things (in our short-term memory) after a while - because we use it for other more important things and then the old stuff is discarded. This happens to me quite a lot... if I'm distracted by something I lose my train of thought, etc. (I forget about what I was thinking about, etc)
If your journey was unusual it would have been encoded in your long-term memories and be quite easy to recall. I guess it was quite uneventful (at first) so perhaps it wasn't even encoded in your long-term memories - or it is just hard for you to recall it.