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How did consciousness develop? When did we learn to talk? Can animals be taught to talk? Can evolution explain being good? Isn’t human nature driven by selfishness, and nature “red in tooth and claw”? Are “minds” so different from “matter” that only a God could have created us? Could there be extra terrestrial intelligence on other planets? Can computers be developed to produce artificial intelligence? |
2.7 Evolutionary Psychology and Neuroscience Conclusions (Statement
13)
Science is developing explanations
of how our brains evolved and how they work now:
● Our minds and consciousness evolved, from simple
collections of neurons in worms and snails, to more complex central nervous
systems, to our large brains;
● Emotions evolved in animals to protect them, and they are
supposed to still protect us;
● Animals evolved co-operation, selflessness (lookouts),
family ties (elephants), herd instincts.
● Animals – eg hunting dogs – evolved a theory of mind.
● Animals evolved communication methods – by smell, body
posture, sounds, dances and rituals, which became symbolic.
● Our brains evolved extra “layers” in the neo-cortex, so we
could have longer chains of associations – more complex thoughts, better plans,
more controls on our emotions;
● Humans became more skilled, tool making, hunter gatherers,
called “homo sapiens sapiens”;
● Insight into the development of our basic sexuality,
differences between sexes, sexism, ageism, cooperation and competition,
xenophobia, racism;
● Language, learning and memory, technology, art and culture
developed;
● Insight into our need to belong, our mystical sense, and
predispositions towards religious belief;
● Perhaps we can discover evidence of extra terrestrial
intelligence;
● If we can develop good theories about how minds develop
(intelligence and emotion) then perhaps we can develop genuine artificial
intelligence.
… more
This brief summary will be updated after more work and review against the experts, and over the longer term it can be updated as science learns more, but it will only be replaced by a better story.
Neuroscience explains how our brain stem and the brain’s limbic system provide arousal (waking and sleeping), emotions and memories. Humans, like herd and pack animals, developed some kind of self awareness to be able to cooperate, when hunting and gathering.
Chimpanzees have an innate ability to register who co-operates fairly, and humans have a similar calculus of right and wrong, which is our moral sense. Like chimpanzees and gorillas, early humans became clannish, rejecting outsiders, which is our xenophobia and racism. Early humans developed gender roles based on sex with some parallels in gorillas, common chimpanzees and bonobos, which is the basis of our sexuality and sexism.
Our innate sense of physics, appropriate to animals who were hunter gatherers, is reinforced by early childhood experience – most things apparently do not move of their own accord unless motivated by a “spirit”. Like elephants, who display affection, cooperate in rearing their young and grieve the loss of a family member at “graveyards”, early humans began burying their dead with artefacts or preserving their skulls in their houses. Parietotemporal parts of our brains appear to produce feelings such as our sense of belonging, sensing an unseen ‘presence’, near death experiences and fleeting experiences of mystical union.
Humans acquired singing (as did birds and howler monkeys), probably about 200,000 years ago, before they acquired language, so music is often wordlessly “sublime”, and brain injure people can often retain the ability to sing even when they lose the ability to speak or understand language.
Humans acquired an innate ability to learn language, probably about 100,000 years ago, which allowed rapid cultural evolution and the march of history. The acquisition of language is probably the major leap forward that humans made. It allows us to describe what happens to others, to plan more consciously and most importantly to pass on our knowledge to our children.
Psychologists are also working out how we can learn from our experience and lead happier and more fulfilled lives, based on a more realistic understanding of how our minds work.
Science is
developing explanations of how our brains evolved, as humans became conscious,
tool making, singing, talking hunter gatherers, called “homo sapiens sapiens”:
● How the brain stem functions to stimulate arousal, waking
and sleeping;
● How the limbic system functions to provide memories and
emotions, recording and recalling our world views and life’s narratives;
● How olfactory, visual and aural pathways developed to give
us our senses of smell, stereoscopic colour vision and hearing;
● How humans developed singing and music;
● How humans developed art and culture;
● How humans developed language and self consciousness;
● How our basic sexuality developed, including insights into
the similarities and differences between
sexes, sexism and ageism.
● How humans developed their unique ways of cooperation and
competition, altruism, family units, xenophobia and racism, our need to belong
and our sense of what is fair, just, right and wrong;
● How parietotemporal regions evolved to provide a sense of
self and the location of the self, providing insight into mystical feelings of
oneness with the universe, sensing others we can’t see, outer body experiences,
near-death and fear-of-death experiences.