Natural Consciousness

[url]http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4696315n[/url]

If elephants have the sort of representational abilities you're attributing to them, we should be able to get elephants to learn things from pictures (the location of food, for instance). Or, they should be able to draw novel representations, and not only the ones they've been trained to draw. We have no evidence that they are able to do either.

Elephants have more than just a reptilian brain stem. That's all any of us need for basic survival. A cortex helps us to analyze things. They have a cortex. Not as big as ours, but big enough to have an analytical and intuitive consciousness far above the limits you are trying to ascribe to them. They are not automated consciousnesses. That friendship with the tiny dog and the concern for its illness, the presentation of a flower; all show that they profess as much aesthetic appreciation and empathy with other species, if not more, than we do. They do not destroy other specie senselessly like we do. When an elephants sees a mouse, it does not trample on it. Dolphins have an even bigger brains than ours. Why? Who is to argue that they have might have a far better knowledge and understanding of the greater portion of this planet than we will ever attain?
Life is not just about collating data. It is about experiencing it. A King might not believe that a low-born peasant shares the same values. But that is because of bigotry and nurturing. Are we pseudo-intellectually bigoted about the intelligence of "low born" animals? How sure are you that we are not?

We never invented ourselves. Nature produced us. We all evolved out of the same first cell. Everything that was ever to be, had to be already imprinted in it. We are extensions of Natural consciousness, born of this earth, not aliens injected from some other dimension. We belong to the primate specie. Our base consciousness is natural. It is shared by all of Nature. Birds sing. We sing. Males battle for supremacy. Birds fall in love for life. Dogs mourn the death of human friends. Our specie developed a reflective ego. Why, only God knows. But it separated us from our natural base. Ever since then we have being trying to find our way back to God consciousness - through religion and science. That effort defines our survival dynamic. Animals and plants never got lost. They are God's repository. And every now and then He sends us message through one of them, via the gift of a flower, to remind the prodigal gambler of our natural family and our shared family values.