Daniel DennettVerified account

"It’s important to recognize that if other species have experience, the very first things that they are going to be endowed with by evolution are abilities to feel pain or pleasure or suffering rather than complex, intelligent thinking."

Excellent article, very interesting.

The big question is, do other higher order species also have consciousness? And if so, to what extent is this consciousness close to ours?

Market economies don’t give a damn how the 99% perceive anything just so long as they provide privileges for the 1% to have a joy ride through life.

Take very basic instinct. Our endocrine system is made to want to have sex. This is genome related material. Biochemistry evolved to make more of us amidst the competition. But your mind knows when it’s “attractiveness” is lost despite the hormones still operational. “Dissonance”

You are incapable of rationalisation of your biochemistry. You can gain perspective but it doesn’t switch itself off by due diligence. It niggles at your subconscious. Even when it has been digested, the “confidence” of the “players” still distinguish peer group interactions.

Religions have marketed & exploited artificial versions of this interactive memeplex. How to trigger hormones & how to subdue them. How to oblige “attraction” & how to enslave it. Machinations that add generations of deception to await the unknowing minds of unsuspecting newborns

We can say most certainly that the “selfish genes” of the ruling classes, deceive the selfish genes of the underclasses; whether they are aware of it or not. It is in their biochemistry to do so & encoded into the defacto deception of maintaining any advantage already gained!