I saw a book on display at the Worthington Park branch of the Worthington Public Library. The cover art caught my attention, and then I discovered that it was written by the same dude who wrote "Godel, Escher and Bach - the Eternal Golden Braid". So I grabbed it. It's pretty much what I expected, since it is a sort of continuation of the theme of GEB-EGB. The interesting things are that Hofstadter describes a continuum of consciousness, probably with no salient crossing point where on one side there is "us" and on the other side there is "them". He mentions the cognitive powers and consciousness of a mosquito as definitly being in the "them" catagory, since most of us dispatch them with no pang of guilt. But then, what of this continuum. Where are we? Self-installed at the extreme, of course. And what of all the other species? Who decides where they go? Certainly culture plays a role: an Indian Hindu would place a bovine in a very different position than an omnivorous Western Judeao-Christian.
So, what of this pecking order? What of the carnivores in the web of species that show little remorse for consuming what we would consider their neighbors on this continuum?
And what makes us special? I'm thinking it's thinking. Well, more like thinking about thinking. Some say that self awareness is what makes us human. Others say that it is our knowledge of our mortality. The burden of our humanity is the knowledge of our inevitable death. But what of suicidal whales, with brains much larger (does this imply more complex?) than ours. We assist them back to the open ocean, thinking they made a mistake, and they re-beach themselves. Who are we to think that those huge brains don't know what they are doing, that they will cease to exist, that their time here is finite?
But do they think about thinking? Do they make the loop closed? In essence, do they create a "strange loop"? Maybe we should ask them.
I think what makes us different is the knowing the value of knowledge. The genetic programming to make us curious learners has made us curious about everything, including curiosity, learning and. . . You get the point. The self-referential aspect of this mirrors the bigger, more profound concept of the matter and energy in the universe becoming self-aware. I think that the omnipresent mysticism of cultures throughout humanity was (is?) the first glimmer of this very important observation. Judeao-Christian mythology expresses this as the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Other cultures have their equivalent coming-of-age myth.
Anyhow, time to go see "Coraline" in 3D!
