The alien hypothesis?

[John Doe]

clearly, I and he never said cognition and thinking
define conciousness or are of paramount importance in
defining it...however, try to make a meaningfull - no
matter how counterintuitive - mental "model" of
conciousness without any thought going on at all, and
you have something on the order of a notch below a
coma...the something-in-there ( meaning our brains )
that is experiencing something to experience, is
somehow "thinking"...otherwise you have a vacuum...if
you can't begin to say what something IS, AND you
can't begin to say what it's NOT, then you haven't
said anything...

--- Keith McMullen <keithsz at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> it is a bigger mistake to assume the paramount
> importance of cognition 
> and thinking.....consciousness is neither.....
> 
> On Oct 21, 2005, at 4:32 PM, John Doe wrote:
> 
> well, for a truly meaningfull answer as to what Mr.
> Pinker has to offer instead of language, you'd have
> to
> read the Language Instinct...an over simplified
> answer
> would be that there are nonverbal "modes" of
> cognition
> going on all the time in us, and that it is a
> mistake
> to assume the paramount importance of language in
> manner of thinking...
> 
> 



	
		
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