If an individual is living in a hierarchic organized group it has to know his own position. It has to reflect the social structure and has to know the position of all other individuals and his relation to them.
This question may be a key question in understanding the phenomenon of consciousness.
This question is the counterpart of the question if a zombie could interact in a social manner with other zombies. I think this would be impossible.
Possibly there exists arguments which contradict this view. I like to invite you to this discussion.
This may be a key question in understanding the phenomenon of consciousness and its evolution.
In social groups - so my hypothesis - you can find such behavior, because the individual has to calculate his role and his relation to others and - this is essential - their behavior in relation to himself. So the individual must have a concept of himself mirrored in the mind of the others individuals to anticipate their behavior.
Bees live in hiearchically social groups and have developed a form of collective intelligence that is very effective but which does not resemble much our own. Humans are mammals and all mammals have developed some form of social organisation. One of the defining characteristic of mammals is the way the egg developed inside the female, the long gestation, and the requirement of maternity: feeding, protection and even parental training by close proximity and imitation of the youngs. The mammal brain is designed so as to learn from others and from experience in general and for that the brain store some important aspects of the experience of everyday during dreaming. What is important in experience is what is important for life of the animal (high emotional content) . The social life is a location of culture, here culture defines as aspects of behaviors that is not genetically coded but that is embodied in the habit of a group and implicitly transmit from one generation to the next by learning. The amount of cultural information that can be transmitted this way is limited but it has a speeding up effect on natural selection by the Baldwin effect. So the biological evolution of mammal, because of high learning (dream) and group living has accelerate the speed of natural selection by a Lamarkian Baldwin effect. There is much more to say on this subject that led to the rapid evolution of the mammals and what are the main social and cognitive factors that played. Now lets go to the more social mammals before the evolution of homo sapiens sapiens: the hominidae. The homidae societies are highly political. Alliances are formed within hours and understanding these, the political game, is of tremendous importance. It has to be understand while it happens and cannot wait days to occur. So there is a tremendous Baldwin pressure on natural selection for rapid learning of developing social patterns. It is why thinking, dreaming within waked time, the splitting the mammal awareness between a regular mammal aweness and a self-enact one for the acquisition of rapid leaning through thinking has evolved. Language, thinking, imagination, self-consciousness all are consequence from the splitting of the mammal awareness and rapid political learning in homonidae society was the primary factor that led to this evolution.
Louis,
I would evaluate your last post as assent to the proposition expressed by me above.
Wilfried,
The biological context for the evolution of the unique human consciousness was first the mammalian social learning brain and the splitting of the mammalian awareness which I defined as the primary characteristic of our consciousness that lead to all other specific human competence has primarily evolved in the context of highly political hominidae societies where rapid social learning of prime evolutionary importance. So to your question
Is living in a hierarchical social group necessary for the awake of conciousness?
I answer : yes.
Regards
Happy New Year
to all who have contributed their valuable posts and to all who will do this soon.
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