Richard Dawkins, an Original Thinker Who Bashes Orthodoxy - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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“There are endless progressions in evolution,” he says. “When the ancestors of the cheetah first began pursuing the ancestors of the gazelle, neither of them could run as fast as they can today. Profiles in Science Richard Dawkins This is the second in an occasional series of articles and videos about leaders in science. Previous Articles in the Series » Related Exulting in Science’s Mysteries (September 20, 2011) RSS Feed Get Science News From The New York Times » Readers’ Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment » Read All Comments (258) » “What you are looking at is the progressive evolutionary product of an arms race.”
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So it would be no great surprise if the interior lives of animals turned out to be rather complex. Do dogs, for example, experience consciousness? Are they aware of themselves as autonomous animals in their surroundings? “Consciousness has to be there, hasn’t it?” Professor Dawkins replies. “It’s an evolved, emergent quality of brains. It’s very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.”