That assumption is just as naive as mine. Either argument is just as founded as the other. What proof do you have that it was simply a high protein diet of meat and the freeing of the hands that produced self awareness? It is an anthropological assumption, just as mine is. Not to mention modern primates have had thousands of years to evolve self awareness...there is absolutely no reason to assume that just because modern apes are self aware it means that their ancestors were as well. You said it yourself...you are "guessing" that our common ancestor wasn't less intelligent. Apes are also not nomadic in the way our early hominid ancestors were, so it is a stretch to say we lived exactly as they do now.

I also still can't see why it can't be a combination of the two. The freeing of our hands, a meat diet, and bountiful environment all combining to support the development of self awareness. At the very least, fossil records support that at some point a group of hominid ancestors ceased their nomadic activities and settled for a time, which would only have happened if the environment supported such an action.

Ah, we're talking past eachother. I haven't been clear .. I think the increase in the size of our brains (which has been a trend in our history since we split with the other apes) were tied to these things and what makes that a likely assumption is that lack of sufficient nutrients like fat puts a constraint on the development of the brain. For example lack of vitamin Bs has serious consequences for brain development and will cause serious damage to our brains today, so it's a likely assumption that we had sources for vitamin Bs during the time our brains evolved.

I'm not saying that self-awareness comes from a change in diet and ecology, although I see how it may have seen like it. I believe self-awareness, in essence passing a mirror test, was something we could do before our change in diet.

Yes, it's a stretch, but since all great apes have the ability of self-awareness, it seems like it's the least stretch to me. It's a matter of parsimony if you want. If our common ancestor was not self-aware, that means that self-awareness evolved independently two or more times depending on which common ancestor we're talking about, one for each great ape lineage which stems from it. That means that you actually have to make a lot of assumptions. If you make the assumption that our common ancestor was self-aware, that reduces it to one assumption because the trait developed once (talking only about this branch on the tree of life).

Alright, they settled, but how on earth are you gonna figure out if they were self aware? You can't tell, so you need some kind of reference, for example Koko or other animals which are self aware like bottleneck dolphins. Because animals who by our understanding must have generally lesser mental capability than our ancestors judging from the size of brains and so on still have self-awareness, that makes it more likely that self-awareness would have developed before nomadic cultures and so on.

What I'm thinking is that you got smarts and self-awareness mixed up. Certainly there were things in our evolutionary history which had to do with food availability that probably made us smarter. What I'm arguing is that self-awareness most likely happened before that. If you were talking about an increase in general smarts and adaptability, I would've been on the same page as you.

Well, I think it is one should be a little reserve before coming to the conclusion that Koko was self-aware, (self-aware as human consider themselves to be.) All animals with sight are keenly aware of of the visual surroundings in the world around them, as well as other senses that sometimes we are not so keenly aware of as they are. koko may have been keenly awre of what a gorilla looks like. But is it instint of recognizing the gorillaz it sees or was it condition to respond that way? Did Koko's caretaker condition Koko to act like she was doing something that we as humans would consider self-awareness?

Take the beaver for instance, it acts like it's acting as if it knows what it is doing exactly when building a damn as if it were a human engineer. But it that the case? Does a beaver have a self-actualization that it is a dam-builder and goes about it's day with a steadfast determination of realizing it's dam-building potential and endeavors to accomplish it's goal of building a dam or is it just plain instinct?

When someone accidently step on a dog, because it is stealthily lieing somewhere on the floor where it can not see it, and it yeps - is this proof of self-awareness? Or it is just a reflex?

Grant it, there are animals are animals that are highly intelligent, and even as we speak in Japan they are building humanoid computer robots that imitate human intelligence. But do animals and humanoid computer robots have the same exact self-awareness as humans beings do? Or is it instinct and nifty computer programming?

^What you're doing is trying to turn this into some meta-discussion on what self-awareness is. That's all well and good, perhaps there are different ways one could define what self-awareness is.

For me in this thread, it's pretty straightforward. In biology, if we talk about self-awareness in animals, we need to make sure we're talking about the same thing and the solution is this standard mirror test. Although there are some variations of this test, it's pretty much standard in that it has the ability to recognize oneself in the mirror as the criteria for passing. Koko is one of several gorillas to pass such a test. It's also been passed by dolphins, a magpie and other apes.

When we talk about self-awareness and I mention this test, then I am using a definition of self-awareness as whatever it is that makes you pass this test. If you want to talk about self-awareness as something other than that, then chances are we're still talking, but no longer about the same thing and the discussion will suffer from misinformation and talking past eachother as a result. Saying something about when humans became self-aware becomes entirely pointless without a solid reference point as to what self-awareness means, so then we might as well kiss the discussion goodbye. ;)

I still stand by the belief that self awareness requires some sort of lax survival needs to develop (though I'll concede that how it actually happened is more ambiguous than I previously felt...thanks Tore), but my god every single discussion with Neapolitan degenerates into this kind of crap. He obviously loses the argument and then starts to pick out tiny bits he might still possibly be able to defend, however poorly.

Neapolitan, do you really believe the things you say or feel they form a cogent argument or do you just like to type and this is the easiest way to do it? I really am curious...

Falling back to discussing definitions or other meta arguments is really a kind of cop out the way I see it. It's usually employed when people are not able or willing to partake in the discussion on the level it's at, so they take a step back and formulate meta questions instead. It doesn't take much knowledge to say "but how?" or "how do we define this?" or even stuff like "how do we know anything is real?", so it's kinda cheap, I think. ;)

Sometimes such posts shed light on important problems and solutions that are found on higher levels, but mostly not .. at least not when discussing on forums.

Meta arguments are fine when someone actually steps back and says, "wait guys, we need to look at the bigger picture.." Not when someone is trying to pass it off as part of the current discussion, hoping it will distract the other participants enough to where we all agree with what he is saying.

Btw, tore, what is it you study? I'm a plant biologist myself.

Agreed! I'm currently writing a thesis on wind dispersal of flightless invertebrates in the high arctic, so I'm mostly working on mites and springtails. I thought I'd try and get a job after that (I have a few months left), but I I'm thinking I might study ped for a year instead .. then I can be a teacher which I figure could be something else to fall back on should need be.

So, no real work experience as a biologist yet :) At least not one which pays.

I think there is a big difference of me getting entangle in a discussion, I really don't want to discuss the self-awareness of Koko, it just seems quite odd you would except it so unqestionablely where other scientist don't. Quite honestly if your enamoured with the mirror test and I am skeptical of the mirror test there is no reason to say that I am turning it into a meta-discussion. We just disagree, and whether it is or not a meta-discussion I don't know, but all I know is that the consciousness of human beings is different than the consciousness of animals, and many in the scientific community will notice that as well, too. And basically I think that can be part of the discussion of whether or not humans will continue to evolve or not, because one has to look back at the past and see where humans came from and examine what seperates us from then and now to understand where the human race is headed. Will the future of the human race include a further evolution of the mind along with the possible hypothetical mutations in its genetic code in the evolutionary trajectory of the human race to the point it will turn into another species?

Well, anyway the more import question I asked but overlooked was . Like hypothectically speaking maybe a thousands of years maybe of millions years from now, will the Human species be considered a living fossil species like the Ginko biloba or the Coelacanth?

I don't mean to butt in and derail the flow or anything, but self-awareness, in context with what Tore is talking about (I.E. the ability to recognize one's self as an individual at least to the extent of differentiating between another animal and one's self via observable characteristic relationships) is most certainly provable with the mirror test.
The mistake you're making is thinking the idea of the mirror test assumes the animal somehow has the same concept of self-realization as we developed humans do, when it most certainly does not.
The very basis of the mirror test is to ascertain whether an animal (or human child, which have also been subjects in the mirror test experiment) can use visual or environmental cues to demonstrate a basic sense of self and individuality... or, SELF AWARENESS. Awareness of one's self, as being independent of any others.
Passing this test indicates that the subject already realizes itself as an individual, and recognizes that fact due to being able to distinguish between the mirror image of itself and the actual physical self.
Where one animal may see a mirror image of itself and attack it, thinking it's another animal (which happens), others may recognize that the image in the mirror is their own self and notice discrepancies that may have been placed on the subject for the test, and correct those discrepancies as any other self-aware being would. (which happens).

I think that's a clear example of the difference between animal survival awareness and an individualistic sense of being. While no one is claiming that animals ponder the existence of god or why they're put on this earth or have an awareness of personality, the idea of self awareness in animals is not a new phenomenon and is demonstrated in its true form whether you want to believe it or not.