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 raiden wrote:
quite right.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Still to each his own, and I like to think that, due to us being the only "animals" to have grown a sentience, and true conscience, there has to be something special to us

What's special about us is the relative masses of our brains to our bodies. Brain mass tends to rise linearly with body mass, except for us, where the brain mass is huge compared to our body mass.

Also, as a philosophy major, I've learned about several theories that posit that consciousness is an illusion.

 raiden wrote:
well, following the commandments of God, is actually rather easy.

That's not the point. By not following the commandments of the other gods, you will be going to their Hell/Hades/Tartarus/Whatever.

That aside, what I am saying is I would rather -be alive- than not exist at all.

Nobody can disagree with that. It is not what we are talking about though. We are talking about what happens when you stop "being alive".

Even if that life is a continuous cycle of an IG guardsman over and over again lol, I would rather do it, than cease to be.

I would rather be able to say, "well,... this sucks"

That is a very commendable attitude, but Sisyphus and Prometheus would disagree.

well its a damn good illusion! Lol, I was thinking about getting into philosphy major as I find myself wondering/pondering about these sorts of things more often than not. idk though lol.

 raiden wrote:
well its a damn good illusion! Lol, I was thinking about getting into philosphy major as I find myself wondering/pondering about these sorts of things more often than not. idk though lol.

Eh, I don't personally think it's an illusion. But there are people out there who do (coughdavidhumecough), and it's worth giving some consideration to if only to better understand the flaws in the argument.

And you should! It's a wonderful major, although you basically condemn yourself to the academic life. I don't mind though.

 raiden wrote:
quite right.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Still to each his own, and I like to think that, due to us being the only "animals" to have grown a sentience, and true conscience, there has to be something special to us

While I would contest that we are the only animal with sentience, you are right that that makes us special.
It makes us special in that we are the only ones with sentience and conscience. To stretch that sense of being "special" to anything more, is intellectually dishonest.

well, true, there is no real proof that we are anymore special due to these things, but, out of all the animals on earth, (humans being a rather young species even among those) why are we the only ones to have this? idk.

Like anything else in life. He's free to pursue what he believes. it doesn't effect my own little corner of the world.

Now if he tries to push his beliefs on others thats a different story.

 raiden wrote:
well, true, there is no real proof that we are anymore special due to these things, but, out of all the animals on earth, (humans being a rather young species even among those) why are we the only ones to have this? idk.

We are the only ones that have this because it is the natural consequence of our evolution. If dolphins were sentient and monkeys were not, then the Dolphins might ask "why only us??"

It's just how it worked out after millions of years of evolution.

 raiden wrote:
well, true, there is no real proof that we are anymore special due to these things, but, out of all the animals on earth, (humans being a rather young species even among those) why are we the only ones to have this? idk.

Neither do I.

What I do know is that our level of intelligence, consciousnesses and sentience isn't a highly regarded survival trait. If it were we would see more evidence of it in other species (living or extinct).
Other traits like mobility, vision and the ability to digest a wide variety of food show up all over, meaning that species with those traits survive to pass on those traits, making them highly regarded in terms of survival.
This is not the case with our level of intelligence.

Steelmage99 wrote:

 raiden wrote:
well, true, there is no real proof that we are anymore special due to these things, but, out of all the animals on earth, (humans being a rather young species even among those) why are we the only ones to have this? idk.

Neither do I.

What I do know is that our level of intelligence, consciousnesses and sentience isn't a highly regarded survival trait. If it were we would see more evidence of it in other species (living or extinct).
Other traits like mobility, vision and the ability to digest a wide variety of food show up all over, meaning that species with those traits survive to pass on those traits, making them highly regarded in terms of survival.
This is not the case with our level of intelligence.

Many theories suggest that the intelligence was an accidental culmination of a series of mental changes done to cope with not having all of that stuff you mentioned. For example, we're comparatively picky eaters, and our vision isn't as good as some other animals. So our brains independently developed the ability to detect appropriate food sources that we could eat, and also developed a system of pattern recognition so that if we saw something that looked similar to something we saw before, even the fuzziest hint could warn us of danger or alert us to the presence of others.

Combined with a series of other mental changes that we underwent for similar reasons, intelligence was just sort of arrived at by accident.

We do have better long-term mobility than most animals do, though. We were pursuit predators originally, if I recall correctly.