Human consciousness: a personally unique experience derived from the focusing of a common set of senses and cognitive faculties shared across healthy members of our species. On the whole, the complexities of our social interactions stand out in the animal kingdom, and at a ground level view, the range of beliefs and behaviors within not only our own species, but cultures, tribes, and families do as well.

There are two engines that drive the evolution process: 1.) natural and 2.) sexual selection. Natural selection can be described as the propagation of those traits which lend to the survival of an organism in a given environment, giving it time/space/resources to develop and reproduce. Sexual selection is the other side of the coin, those traits that attract a mate thus allowing an organism to spread its genetic material and reproduce. Both are impacted by social constructs, not merely one’s physically ability to sustain life and spread genetic material. This is because in human society, all of the requisite systems and processes to do both require consent in some form or fashion. That is why it is called “selection,” and why the term “survival of the fittest” refers to one’s fit within a social context, not literal physical fitness.

We can still see the residue of our ancestral naturally selected survival responses color our day to day interactions. The fight or flight response triggered by obvious disrespect in an email from the wrong person, clearly not an existential threat, but a modern threat to success and social status nonetheless. From this we can see how our definition of what matters has transformed over the years.

Consciousness can be defined quite literally to mean: “being aware and responsive to one’s surroundings.” If that’s it, than this consciousness could be attributed to many animated objects, from amoebas, and plants to… vehicles with sensors on them. This definition admittedly doesn’t account for autonomy: can the vehicle turn itself on or make directional decisions at will? If so, there might be greater credence to using the term conscious here.

This definition also does not encompass the ever expanding smorgasbord of expressions of human consciousness. There’s no acknowledgement of art, culture, emotion, or play. Without interweaving the role of selection, there isn’t a clear and obvious line back to evolutionary benefit for such behaviors. All these things that make us human.

There’s an additional layer to our cognition that allows us to distinguish ourselves from others, remember our unique historical narratives, and project goals/wishes/desires into the future. This layer that makes certain behaviors more attractive TO us as well in our own mate selection process. It’s this awareness of our subjectivity that defines homo sapiens, or “wise man”.

But this is unique in the animal kingdom, not entirely exclusive as we’ll see in the link below, but certainly the level at which we express our self-awareness is unmatched. It’s this distinctiveness that shrouds human consciousness in a cloak of ethereal mystery, in the minds of many. As if it is too novel to have been selected for in the evolutionary construct. And rightfully so! You might ask yourself, sure I enjoy painting, and I find it attractive when a potential mate does to, or at least appreciates good art, but why the heck would my ancient biology and future progeny benefit from me selecting a mate on such criteria?!

If we look elsewhere in nature, in an attempt to remove the subjective blind spot (or ego hurdle) that comes from analyzing ourselves, we find that in many animal behavior studies self-awareness is often correlated with cognitive ability (e.g. elephants, great apes, dolphins, and orca whales pass the self recognition test). Now correlation does not = causation, but that doesn’t mean the relationship should be overlooked all together. Nearly every animal (9/10) that passed the self-recognition test is well known for their cognitive abilities (I was surprised by ants, but find it adorable).

If we don’t abandon these connections exhibited elsewhere in nature, then perhaps self-awareness is at once 1.) an emergent property of higher level cognition as well as 2.) a tool that improves cognition, thus rendering it beneficial to the species, igniting non-linear improvements in human cognitive ability, and bringing about some of the most bizarre behavior and expressions of consciousness in the animal kingdom.

An emergent property is a property which results from the interaction of multiple component parts to a system, and whose expression is not mirrored within the parts of the whole which brought it about. In other words, an emergent property is a byproduct of the relationships between the system’s components. Think: the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

With this metaphor in mind, I propose that the human aptitude for complex language (including both symbolism and vocalization), and mental capacity (abstract thinking and memory), were the two rocket boosters (neurological and biological advantages) that unleashed our neuroplasticity and elevated our cognition to bear the emergent property of self-awareness.

Memory is a critical cornerstone for intelligence, just look at the thick textbooks and notecard stacks of a law student and you’ll quickly understand how important a deep memory bank and sound recall strategies are. We can even see how integral memory is to intelligence by considering its application in the adolescent tasks of object identification, or language learning.

When Pavlov conditioned his dogs to associate the ringing of a bell with food, the dogs had to internalize this relationship. They had to remember that bell = food. You can see here that “learning” what a stimulus means, is synonymous with “remembering” what it meant last time.

After a solid base understanding of the objects and archetypes in the world has been learned through associating words with images or actions, we once again lean on our memory to make sense of new inputs. This is called “pattern recognition”. Pattern recognition is the unconscious act of comprehending new stimuli through the lens of previously learned information (i.e. projecting your memories onto a new stimulus and categorizing it by like experience). We use this technique to protect ourselves from having to pay attention too much, a calorie demanding activity. But this technique doesn’t serve us well when attention to detail is needed, or when the complex connections of variables exceeds our previous mental frameworks.

Adaptive problem solving, the kind that cannot rely upon previous experiences or instinct, requires the ability to forecast the interactions of multiple variables (emergent properties), weigh the costs and benefits of each potential solution, and most importantly, assess the outcome in order to do better next time. This is the cognition we’re familiar with as humans, and it’s this awareness that we (subjective viewpoint) are in control (can change our approach infinitely before execution) as the problem solver, this metacognition, where we deviate from other animals (at least observably).

To be honest, “to be aware of your awareness” sounds more like rhetorical flair to me than a defining characteristic of human consciousness. But maybe there’s more validity in discussing rhetorical flair and consciousness than is immediately evident.

Language has allowed us to embark upon the frontiers of the universe, both outerspace and innerspace (the subjective human experience) and return with intelligence (outerspace) and/or consciousness (innerspace) expanding findings. Having the ability to communicate these findings to the rest of the tribe, whether through oration or writing, mitigating the possibility others will recreate our follies is truly a life saving technology. Therefore the ART of storytelling IS the type of technology that would be specially selected for in evolution.

It could be visualized that complex communication in the form of language, is the ink with which the blueprint for scientific, social, and cognitive progress is drawn.

As progress in these fields are made, new words are created to convey ideas previously not understood. Learning this new lexicon expands one’s mental map of reality, and therefore possibility. This map then carries the next frontiersman out to blaze new trails of understanding and once again begin the iterative cycle of human innovation and progress.

Our basic animal-like survival instincts may have evolved over countless iterations of abstraction to the point where modern humans feel disconnected from nature, but have no doubt that your fear of missing out (FOMO), social media addiction, and people pleasing neuroses are more connected to your ancient genetics than you may think. And while many modern characteristics of our social species are certainly novel when compared to others, our existence-long battle for pain avoidance and pleasure seeking is certainly not. The use of language has allowed us to codify those best practices allowing for compounding improvements against human suffering and brought about the level of introspection we have today.

In this post we’ve talked at length about language and verbal / written communication, but where does this leave the visual forms of art? Whats the evolutionary value of those masterpieces that can be described as food for the soul, enrapturing depictions of fictional or historical dramas that evoke strong emotions of all kinds. Why would a society so hungry for acquiring ceaseless resources to the point of engaging in war simultaneously revere a talented painter? We’ll explore the evolutionary biological imperative of emotion in a future post.