The Origin of Consciousness and the Mind-Body Problem

Introduction

Not chaos, not

The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,

Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out

By help of dreams—can breed such fear

and awe as fall upon us often when we look

Into our own minds, into the Mind of Man

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) The Excursion, Preface

From the simple life is what you make it, to the philosophies of Plato, Kant, and Nietzsche, we have sought to find answers to ultimate questions such as, What is reality? What is truth? Does God exist? What is the meaning of life?" From the first animistic beliefs, to secular philosophy and science, humanity has sought answers to these and similar questions. Over time, we have asked questions about who we are and how or why we feel, think, and act in the ways we do. As our self-awareness has grown over the centuries, such questions have taken on increased importance. This is reflected in the relationship that we have with ourselves. The study of human thought and behavior involves holding a mirror up to ourselves. This mirroring process requires the use of symbolic language which is the basis for our consciousness. As such, a main objective of this book is to show that consciousness is not the strange, mysterious phenomenon that philosophers and neuroscientists claim it to be, but that it can be defined in terms of language, thereby giving it a practical foundation. Toward this end, we will show how the evolution of language led to the origin and evolution of consciousness, the mind-body problem, and the mysteries of mind and self.

Although many people find the nature of language and consciousness interesting, the mind-body problem may seem to be an obscure, esoteric subject that has little relevance to us. However, because the evolution of language and consciousness led to this problem, understanding it is central to how we see ourselves, the world, and our place in it.

What makes the evolution of symbolic language and consciousness so significant is that it ultimately deals with the essence of reality and subjective experience as well as the ideas of God, soul, self and mind, all of which embody long-standing philosophical issues. Language is the tool that philosophers have used over the centuries to try to explain and understand these subjects. Their inability to having done so has been their intense focus on using language to explain these conundrums rather than to take a step back and see how the evolution of language has created them. Since it is so natural for us to use language to explain what puzzles us rather than to think about how language could be the problem, this is not surprising. Because the dynamics of language itself are largely invisible to us, they have remained unexplored and unappreciated.

Fascinated by these issues from an early age, I felt with enough time and patience I could eventually come to understand the relationships between language, consciousness and the mind-body problem. Although one could attribute this to youthful exuberance, I made it one of my life’s goals, and while I often put it aside, I always came back to it. Because I was determined to follow my intuitions rather than force a theory into existence, I accepted the fact that the time it would take to understand these issues would be unpredictable. While there were many dead-ends, the important insights that occasionally revealed themselves led to this theory.

During the years it took for this book to come together, I sometimes had doubts about the validity of my conclusions. However, a turning point came in April of 2014 when I presented them at the Conference of Consciousness in Tucson, Arizona. Encouraged by various participants that my ideas were innovative, extraordinary and even brilliant, I spent another year and a half working to further organize and clarify them.

There were two objectives to writing this book. The first was to show how the origin and evolution of symbolic language was the basis for the origin and evolution of consciousness. Indeed, as we will see, language and consciousness are two sides of the same coin. The second objective was to show how the evolution of language and consciousness led to the mind-body problem, which was addressed in Part I, Chapters 2 and 3.

Chapter 1 sets the stage for both of these objectives by explaining how our creation and use of language led from biological awareness to linguistic consciousness. This is based on the first and most basic function of language which is our capacity to label and describe our perceptions and sensations. Chapter 2 deals with the origin of the mind-body problem which was based on this capacity. This enabled us to distinguish between our objective and subjective conscious experiences, and led to our evolution from subjective monism to the dualism of mind and body. Chapter 3 discusses the hard problem of subjective experience and the nature of the explanatory gap, both of which prevented us from moving from dualism to physical monism.

Part II, Chapters 4 and 5 discusses how the evolution of language and consciousness enabled us to greatly increase our ability to explain our objective and subjective experiences. This ability to explain our experiences is the second essential function of language. Chapter 4 addresses how the evolution of language and consciousness enabled us to create the physical explanations which led to developments in science and technology, and the metaphysical explanations which resulted in religion and the humanities. Chapter 5 extends the discussion of metaphysical explanations by showing how they evolved from the spiritualistic to the mentalistic.

Part III, Chapters 6,7 and 8 addresses how the evolution of language and consciousness facilitated our ability to communicate our experiences. This is the third necessary function of language. Chapter 6 discusses the evolution from social communication to our capacity for intrapersonal voices and dialogues. Chapter 7 discusses how these two kinds of intrapersonal communication led to the ideas of the soul and the dialogical self, respectively. Chapter 8 explains how the dialogical self led to self-awareness.

Chapter 9 summarizes how, through the evolution of language, our capacity to label and describe, explain, and communicate our experiences created consciousness. It also outlines how our previous subjective monistic mindset evolved into a dualistic way of thinking which resulted in the mind-body problem, and why the next paradigm is physical monism.

Unlike books which drill down to unearth ever smaller bits of knowledge, this work focuses on the larger picture of the evolution of language and consciousness. As such, it is about how language brings our experiences to life by endowing us with the unique capacity for consciousness. The simple and intuitive nature of this theory is based on Occam’s razor; this principle of parsimony has made the fewest possible assumptions regarding the evolution of language, consciousness and the mind-body problem.

This entirely new paradigm uncovers previously invisible real world aspects about the topics explored. As such, there is more to this book than first meets the eye. To get the most out of this concisely written work, it is suggested that it be read more than once with sufficient time between readings to allow these ideas to percolate. As with the proverbial onion, each reading is likely to provide new insights and perspectives. We will now begin with the nature of awareness, the functions of language and the origin of consciousness.

Part I

Language, Consciousness and the Mind-Body Problem

Chapter 1

How Language Created Consciousness

The purpose of this chapter is to show how the origin and evolution of that most remarkable cultural tool––symbolic language, led to the origin and evolution of consciousness which has been the basis of our spiritual, intellectual and cultural progress over the past ten thousand or so years. Over the last several decades researchers have focused on the nature of consciousness rather than on the nature of mind, with the implication that they have moved from the realm of philosophy to that of science. However, while the existence of consciousness may be hard to refute, it has been still harder to define. As such, all they have done is gone from one ill-defined idea to another. While the origin and nature of consciousness has been of prime interest to neuroscientists, philosophers and psychologists, their quest will turn up nothing because like mind, there is no agreement about what consciousness is.

The inability to clearly define consciousness is demonstrated by the fact that some have claimed that all species possess it, while others have argued that none do. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that consciousness is inherent throughout the universe! In this case it would seem they are using the idea of consciousness as a substitute for the idea of God. However, while there is a logic to this, it still leaves us in the dark about the nature of consciousness. In essence, trying to understand it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. What makes this task especially difficult is that no one has any idea of what the needle even looks like. Without a clear definition of consciousness we cannot sensibly study or understand it. Therefore, the main objective of this chapter is to provide a logical, operational or functional definition of consciousness which will be based on the origin of symbolic language.

Before we can understand how language created consciousness we must first define two basic phenomena. In Section 1 we discuss the nature and two sources of our biological awareness. In Section 2 we address the three functions of language. This sets the stage for Section 3 where we explain how the first function of language which is our capacity to label and describe our perceptions and sensations created our linguistic awareness or consciousness of our objective and subjective experiences.

SECTION 1 - BIOLOGICAL AWARENESS

In the beginning was awareness. At least a billion years passed before awareness became consciousness. Consciousness is an order of magnitude beyond biological awareness. To what do we owe this miracle, you ask? The answer is language. It was no accident that the origin and evolution of language coincided with the origin and evolution of consciousness. However, we must first begin by defining biological awareness as the essential quality that defines all living beings. The difference between inanimate matter and animate beings is the presence of awareness. This means that all life from single-cell organisms, bacteria, plants, insects, fish, amphibians, and mammals to humans possess biological awareness.

This brings us to the physicality of biological awareness. Since every living organism is a unique matter-energy being, each one responds to the external, physical world and to its own biophysical structure in its own way. In other words, based on their different perceptual, sensory and motor abilities, each organism interacts with its external and internal environments differently. Even individuals within the same species differ as to the degree and contents of their awareness. This is, of course, based on differences in their physical structures, chemistry, and environmental experiences. The physical attributes of an organism, together with its physical experiences, determine the nature of its awareness.

Awareness is the main biological function of the brain which processes our perceptions of the external world and the sensations arising from within us. As such, the brain is a neurobiological structure which acts as a sieve through which pass various perceptions and sensations that are biologically processed by specific cerebral structures. By comparing the brain to a sieve, I do not mean it is a passive structure through which perceptions and sensations indiscriminately flow. Instead, it is an organ with unique biological characteristics determined by genetic and developmental factors. These factors influence which stimuli we will be receptive to, how they will be processed, and what behavioral effects they will have. Awareness, therefore, involves the selective filtering and processing of events taking place within the external environment as well as within our bodies and brains. Our actions are the physical manifestations of our biological awareness. This brings us to the two sources of awareness, our perceptions of the external world, and the sensations that arise from within us.

PERCEPTIONS AND SENSATIONS AS THE BASIS OF AWARENESS

The building blocks of biological awareness come from two distinct sources which account for all of an organism’s experiences. These are all the stimuli or perceptions that have their origin in the external world and to which an organism is receptive. It also includes all the stimuli or sensations that are generated by and within the organism and to which it is receptive. What we share with all forms of life are these two sources of awareness––that which comes from the external world and that which has its origin within the organism. These two sources are the foundation of biological awareness which define the phenomenon of life. What makes for the enormous variation in the biological complexity of different forms of life is the incredible variety of perceptions and sensations to which they respond.

Table 1.1

The Two Sources of Biological Awareness

To better understand biological awareness Table 1.1 defines the fundamental difference between our externally based perceptions and our internally based sensations. However, because The Oxford Dictionary of English ¹defines perception and sensation somewhat interchangeably, we will instead use the newer and more accurate terms, exteroceptive and interoceptive, respectively. Exteroceptive is defined as relating to stimuli that are external to an organism and to which the organism is receptive. Interoceptive relates to stimuli produced within an organism to which it is receptive. (Included are our proprioceptive/kinesthetic sensations, and the random and spontaneous firing of cells at various levels within our nervous systems.) In each case, the emphasis in on where the stimuli originated