Robert M,
Your post (#75) gives an excellent summation of some key differences between the animal and the human form of consciousness. I think you’re right that reductionists like Bob gloss over this fundamental difference, largely because they see no way to account for the progression within the limits of current scientific knowledge. (Notice how Bob K equivocates between consciousness—whether animal or human--and the “physical process” which engenders it. This is much easier to get away with when we are discussing perceptual level functioning.) One major challenge here, of course, is that of accounting for free will as exercised on the human conceptual level.
David Kelley had some terrific insights on this in a lecture entitled “The Nature of Free Will.” The following is my paraphrase of some of what he had to say:
Consciousness emerges as a control mechanism at a certain stage of development within a biological nervous system, to preserve an organism’s ability to function as a unit—i.e., to deal with external factors by the standard of the organism’s survival needs. With man, the same problem breaks out at the level of consciousness itself. The conceptual mind is in danger of being pulled in numerous different directions at once, as man is confronted with the need to make choices in the light of an open-ended amount of knowledge. To preserve his capacity to function as a unit—i.e., to survive—man was in need of a higher level control mechanism—the capacity to focus. Within a complex system of neural organization, such as the human brain, an event could easily be the product both of antecedent factors (i.e., evolution) and other simultaneous factors operating at higher and lower levels of this organization. The capacity to focus (“free will”) is a product of upward causation (evolution) and constrained by it, but the choice to focus is an instance of pure downward causation—of conscious activity directly affecting neural activity.
(Again this is my paraphrasing. Kelley deserves credit for the insight, but should not be held responsible for my interpretation.)
You say:
the consequental development of this, tho, is by physical 'laws', even if at this point we not know sufficient to detail it...... remember, logic is non-contradictory identification, and as such, I see no contradiction in this progression of complexity, even if some of the steps not as yet provide 'proof' other than at present an 'intuition' as to how it fits....
Although I question your comment that the exercise of conceptual-level volition must adhere to ‘physical laws’—we cannot say at this point whether something else may be involved beyond the laws of physics—you re certainly right in stating that we presently have nothing much beyond “an intuiton” as to how it all works. The fact that Kelley must resort to metaphors (“upward” and “downward”) to explain the process demonstrates how little we presently know.
| 
Never let man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul! Any other issue is doubtful; the evil effect on himself is certain.
