Continued from Space

Consciousness and intelligence are two entirely separate matters. Intelligence would be identified as ever increasing complexity and data with which to react to stimuli.

People don't think. They react. All external stimuli trigger thought. Thinking is an interdependent process.

Just sit and look at your monitor and try to think a non-stimuli based thought! It's impossible. The thoughts come from visual or mental cues. Past experiences and present surroundings determine your thought processes.

Consciousness, which has been described as self-awareness, is more aptly described as the ability to reflect through past actions and reactions, forming new data and combinations of data there from.

All humans are conscious, but we measure intelligence based upon the amount of data they can peruse and its complexity and usefulness.

Some spelling bee champions memorize the dictionary and know how to spell many words, but this does not guarantee that they are geniuses. Folks can acquire specialized knowledge but it serves them only in a limited capacity.

Nature provides ample evidence of this specialization in the animal kingdom. The difference between animals and humans in this regard is that humans specialized knowledge seldom directly relates to their survival or species perpetuity.

Human consciousness therefore is elevated from that of the animal kingdom, because there is a whole new dimension of data complexity as well as a refined ability to create new data from old. Humans can ponder their own existence. It takes little imagination to realize that human consciousness is still just a pale reflection of other forms of consciousness which must exist in an infinite universe and which make us appear as "dumb animals" to vastly more complex and comprehensive thought processes.

The working man was a beast of burden. Industrialization and tools gave man the ability to use his mind to free his body and the thinking class expanded well beyond the nobles, scholars and literate clergy.

Human consciousness has parameters. It is confined to thoughts in language. Words confine the thoughts which always possess an emotional element. The writers and poets have tried to convert feelings into conveyable data with limited success. I think everyone here would agree if humanity had the ability to share feelings immediately they would understand each other much more and be able to perceive others actions and motivations. So the next level of consciousness might naturally be expected to be one which is that of the telepaths - the beings who can transmit thoughts and feelings directly from brain to brain.

In the fifties, they were big on wondering how humanity would look in 2000. It was suspected we might all be shorter, balder and with larger heads to accommodate an increased brain size. Scientists weighed and measured Einstein's brain to see if size somehow made folks smarter than another. When it was discovered his brain was normal and in no way unusual, folks sort of gave up on trying to figure out how intelligence is manifested in consciousness and why some folks in the exact same surrounding assimilate and accumulate data and have an ability to recombine existing data into new forms. By the sixties, the civil and equal rights movements made it increasingly difficult for scientists to pursue any research which might demonstrate some physical basis for increased intelligence.

The paper LJK linked to supposes that consciousness is a passing stage species go through to survive. It is my opinion that consciousness is stratified and that it will only grow increasingly more complex and add new abilities to process data and channel energy for any evolving sentient species such as humanity.

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