Diebert, you wrote:
In the end, a baby cries because IT is hungry or feeling uncomfortable. That it doesn't conceive itself yet consciously in such way is not the issue. The underlying mental process is already in place and is why I call it a natural process to develop ego, it's how a complex organism has to work with the complexity of signals and self-maintenance, to put it in a bit chilling mechanistic way.
Conceiving itself consciously is indeed the issue. How can there be self image/ego without self image? “It” might be crying because “it”--this objective/subjective whole other--is hungry or uncomfortable, but the “I”--the
illusory self-image--has no part in the manifestation of that hunger. In fact, the only difference between “primal” and “egoistic” emotion is
self-image. That’s the very opus of ego (well, ego is the opus of the id/ego/superego triad, in fact---its joy, its tragedy, its comedy)--the illusory separate self/self-image as distinct from causal and/or primal processes. When ego comes into existence is necessarily
incidental to its coming into existence; whatever developmental processes precede it, contrast it, are just that--preceding and contrasting developmental processes from the perspective of self or other. They have significance and are revelatory in those terms only since they only come into view with ego; with self(/other)-image and/or consciousness.
Consciousness, as we speak of it here, is a separate element altogether; perhaps it could be conceived as an evolutionary refinement. The Id/ego/superego triad pointing to, from the perspective of consciousness, the automatic/emergency system designed to get the organism through its most vulnerable stage/s of life.
It’s distinct and separate in the same way that pure logic does not have its
foundation in the empirical, any conceived relation or co-existence notwithstanding.
More later.