The redneck strike again.

[The Grand Nudger]

This shit is turtles all the way down, aint it? Except there aren't any turtles, just ignorance.

Dinosaurs were all sizes. If they hadn't been wiped out, one of the species could have evolved consciousness equal to human consciousness. I don't imagine there's any universal law that says only an ape species could have evolved our style of consciousness.

A couple seem to have been well on their way to precisely that. Amusingly, they were carnivorous. Takes a relatively robust operating system to outsmart your dinner(sometimes).

[Whateverist]

At the risk of seeming anthropocentric I wonder how much some of our other features would also have been needed, like opposable thumbs and pack living. I'm not aware of any dinosaurs which brachiate. But if they had survived to live in the same times that led to simians they might have made it up there. Then, during dryer times, they might have found themselves with an opposable digit or two walking around upright and living gregariously and cooperatively with their own kind. Hard to say which features are optional.

[The Grand Nudger]

Very anthropocentric. Sure, the way we use our hands may have contributed to our ending up this way but that doesn't suggest that opposable thumbs are the only way to skin a cat (ask a dog). The best we could say, if it were true, would be that it's one way to get where you find yourself. Dinosaurs, in their 160 million or so years had to deal with a variety of environmental variables, and thumbs are useful (see: Troodon). This should tell us that thumbs and weather does not a wise creature make - in and of themselves.

[Confused Ape]

Opposable thumbs make advanced tool making possible but is tool making necessary for the development of big brains and our kind of consciousness? Scientific discoveries would be next to impossible without thumbs and tools but philosophy doesn't need them.

[The Grand Nudger]

Seeing as how the majority of environments possible for any life to exist in are not environments like the one we live in, in our thought experiment, the majority of creatures which might express higher function as one possible outcome would not be limited to or necessarily related to our thumbs (our biological situation or limitations- or any limitations we might conceive of from our vantage point as humans on earth) - nor any philosophy as we have defined it. We appear to have been man-the wise before anyone ever found the time to sit down and really waste some brain cells on the meaning of life. Just pointing out that philosophy (or the ability to contemplate it) seems to be an effect of higher function, not a cause thereof. Granted, they have the effect of amplifying each other, in our species at least, or so it would seem.

[Whateverist]

Opposable thumbs make advanced tool making possible but is tool making necessary for the development of big brains and our kind of consciousness? Scientific discoveries would be next to impossible without thumbs and tools but philosophy doesn't need them.

Not unless it turns out that philosophy is somehow a bi-product of thumbs, tools and science. Not saying it is. Just saying this shit is complicated and causal relations can be convoluted.

[Confused Ape]

It's impossible to know what kid of philosophy big brained dinosaurs would have come up with but consciousness equal to humans doesn't mean they'd have to think like us. Speech would be essential for passing on ideas but, again, they wouldn't have needed human speech because speaking is just different noises strung together.

I think the real problem is imagining what a highly intelligent species which doesn't have a human style intelligence would be like. It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking we're evolution's greatest product so highly intelligent means just like humans.

[The Grand Nudger]

No, speech wouldn't have been required either. Plenty of ways to communicate without a voice. As you mentioned, but even more deeply, more fundamentally- they might not even try to communicate. It might be a situation akin to osmosis (acknowledging that there are problems with that comparison as well).

[Confused Ape]

No, speech wouldn't have been required either. Plenty of ways to communicate without a voice. As you mentioned, but even more deeply, more fundamentally- they might not even try to communicate. It might be a situation akin to osmosis (acknowledging that there are problems with that comparison as well).

Could you explain the bolded bit, please. I'm not sure what you mean here.

[Angrboda]

Are you getting confused about the Earth's Magnetic Field?

Here we have hypothesis from a materialistic-scientific point of view

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_shift_hypothesis

. . . . .

........and here we have hypothesis from a scientific-spiritual point of view
http://proutglobe.org/2011/05/the-poles-...positions/

While there are reputable studies showing that true polar wander has occurred at various times in the past, the rates are much smaller (1° per million years or slower) than predicted by the pole shift hypothesis (up to 1° per thousand years). Analysis of the evidence does not lend credence to Hapgood's hypothesized rapid displacement of layers of the Earth. Data indicates that the geographical poles have not deviated by more than about 5° over the last 130 million years, contradicting the hypothesis of a cataclysmic polar wander event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_shift_hypothesis

Moron.