The journey to self-consciousness

Evolutionary pressures over millions of years established the human brain as we know it today. The discipline of evolutionary psychology has shown that evolution left us with neural mechanisms tailored to specific functions that work without us being aware of them. This has been called "the Swiss army knife" theory of inherent capacities.

For example, the brain contains mechanisms for facial recognition, language acquisition, fear of evolutionary old pests such as spiders and cockroaches, cheater detection, coalition formation and concerns about purity and contagion. These abilities are universal to humanity.

While evidence of the formation of these mechanisms may be speculated upon from a consideration of the circumstance of small hunter-gatherer troops, clear delineation relies on psychological assessment. For example, it could be speculated that the male human should be sensitive to the reproductive period of a woman's cycle by way of pheromones as has been demonstrated for other mammals. The absence of such mechanisms in humans stands as a warning that simple speculation from origins may be suggestive but not necessarily reliable.

Thus, attributing Human male proclivity towards multiple sexual partners may not necessarily be explained by an innate and unconscious sexual drive that spreads his genes to as many women as possible. "The selfish gene" may be a "just so" story lacking any empirical evidence.

The function of these mechanisms may be found in the world religions, especially those dealing with purity, coalition formation and anthropomorphic ideas about God as a person (as opposed to the triune identity). These proclivities are natural, in that every person inherits them. Notions of ritual purity, the notion of who belongs and who does not is automatically triggered by mechanisms that deal with coalition formation.

Ideals of righteousness are influenced by mechanisms that influence exchange that understand sacrifice as means of appeasement. It also influences how we understand salvation as in the substitutionary theory of atonement in which God gives his Son as a substitute for the sins of the whole world ie, atonement is understood as an exchange by which humanity is released from its sin. Without wilful intervention, these mechanisms automatically support aspects of religion such as purity and righteousness.

These mechanisms can be overridden by conscious thought as fear of spiders and cockroaches may be modified by habituation. Indeed, inherent disgust at faeces or vomit, for example, are regularly overcome by nurses and medical practitioners. However, for this to occur one must possess a higher form of consciousness that bypasses the natural response. This higher form of conscience is culturally acquired and modifies automatic thought and behaviour. It may be called "self-consciousness" in order to distinguish it from the usual understanding of consciousness as awareness.

A self-conscious person can make the decision to transcend natural impulses. This ability distinguishes us from animals that are conscious of their surroundings, are capable of complex behaviour that includes learning and strategy but, as far as we know, have no sense of self or the concept of their own death.

Learning can produce automatic mechanisms that are laid down along with those inherited. While language acquisition is inherent, writing is not. It is significant that preschoolers are well along the way to full fluency in language, however they must be trained to read and write that language. Once this training has been established, reading and writing becomes automatic as does playing a musical instrument, the golf swing and arithmetic tables.

Many of our mental functions are unconscious in the way, for example, crossword clues seem to just appear in the mind without ratiocination. Thus, unconscious mechanisms may be learnt and play out their role without awareness in a similar way that inherited mechanism do.

Julian Jaynes of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind fame proposes that the word "consciousness" should properly be restricted to the ability to understand one as a self. This is a more restrictive understanding of the word that ordinarily understands that awareness and consciousness are the same thing. In other words, consciousness is more properly "self-consciousness" that refers to introspective thought, thought that has the self as its object. This way of thought invokes others as also describable as an "I" which is the first step towards compassion.

If I feel threatened or desperate then we can imagine others feeling the same. We have "theory of mind" once compassion for others is learnt, it too becomes automatic since we do not necessarily analyse another person's situation before we feel compassion for them. For most of us, when we see a person down the sights of a rifle, we automatically know that this is a person like us whose life is precious to him. The gaining of such ability is one of the central hallmarks of being human.