Go read up on cetacea, and on our cousins - the apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, orang utans, gorillas, and others). Even look at our domestic pets (horses, cats, dogs, parrots even).

You think that none of these exhibit consciousness? you obviously live is a daze.

You argument is spurious.

Humans are conscious. Animals are not conscious. therefore humans are not animals?

That, as Spock might say, is illogical. (or simply, special pleading)

Regarding your assertions about DNA, you need to study some more. Human DNA is closer to chimp & bonobo DNA than any of us are to gorilla DNA (but that is still closer than non-apes). We are also further removed from C. elegans, despite sharing many of the same regulatory and developmental genes (SOD, HOX and others).

There are clear examples of where those changes have occurred (see Chromosome 2, our human chromosome is in fact two ape chromosomes joined end to end. This is such an accepted part of biology that the related ape chromosomes are now labeled 2p and 2q — you need to go far back in publication history to find them labeled differently)

His first (of three) books was “Descartes’ Error”. Descartes asserted that “I think, therefore I am”. To which Damasio responds that in fact “I feel, therefore I am”. It is the body, feeling the world in all its senses, that informs the mind. Without the feeling, the mind would be lost.

Nice post. I will have to read Johnson. Lakoff I know.

I’ve always found anthropology fascinating, and many of our best insights are gleaned from observation and study of apes and other social animals. Desmond Morris has always been one of my heroes in this field, and I remember reading “the Naked Ape” when I was approaching my teens. Other works, culminating in manwatching built on his background in zoology and crafted an incredibly influential body of work in anthropology.

I am ever grateful that I grew up in the UK, where Desmond Morris, David Attenborough, and James Burke (among many others) were available on prime-time TV. Their words (and pictures) inspired an early and continuing interest in observation and questioning - not simply an interest in ‘Science’ but in participation!

I agree with (and have thought about) many of the elements here. Like you I abhor the word supernatural. The prefix implies a state that is transcendent, better or superior to the mundane world of the natural that we inhabit. As you later discuss, many of the perspectives that support the ’supernatural’ are also cognates of delusion or insanity.

In light of that, I tend to think of such things as a-natural. That encompasses all fantasy and delusion (alternate worlds where the Roman Empire still exists; fairies and elves and unicorns and dragons and dwarves who mine gold and silver and fashion fabulous coats of mail; and the vast majority of religious thought and practice)