Image: Holly Lindem (photoillustration); Gene Burkhardt (styling)
In Brief
- Charles Darwin argued that a continuity of mind exists between humans and other animals, a view that subsequent scholars have supported.
- But mounting evidence indicates that, in fact, a large mental gap separates us from our fellow creatures. Recently the author identified four unique aspects of human cognition.
- The origin and evolution of these distinctive mental traits remain largely mysterious, but clues are emerging slowly.
More In This Article
Not too long ago three aliens descended to Earth to evaluate the status of intelligent life. One specialized in engineering, one in chemistry and one in computation. Turning to his colleagues, the engineer reported (translation follows): “All of the creatures here are solid, some segmented, with capacities to move on the ground, through the water or air. All extremely slow. Unimpressive.” The chemist then commented: “All quite similar, derived from different sequences of four chemical ingredients.” Next the computational expert opined: “Limited computing abilities. But one, the hairless biped, is unlike the others. It exchanges information in a manner that is primitive and inefficient but remarkably different from the others. It creates many odd objects, including ones that are consumable, others that produce symbols, and yet others that destroy members of its tribe.”
“But how can this be?” the engineer mused. “Given the similarity in form and chemistry, how can their computing capacity differ?” “I am not certain,” confessed the computational alien. “But they appear to have a system for creating new expressions that is infinitely more powerful than those of all the other living kinds. I propose that we place the hairless biped in a different group from the other animals, with a separate origin, and from a different galaxy.” The other two aliens nodded, and then all three zipped home to present their report.
This article was originally published with the title Origin of the Mind.
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26 Comments
Add CommentMy comment has not so much to do with commonalities of mind but with the more nebulous aspect of heart. While we humans differ in intellectual capacity with other animals, I ask what differs in our hearts (the heart being not of a physical nature but emotive and feeling)? Here is a simple poem by Francis William Bourdillon which expresses my sentiments. I think there are many representations of similar behavior in animals despite their smaller brains. Of course this brings up the question of love:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of a bright world dies
When day is done.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
Darwin's intelligence and writing ability, however, have no equal. He not only looked, he saw...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not envy you. You are slic...I am notslic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA discussion of the mind without mentioning David Hume may be the usual. Hume concluded that the human mind could have no direct connection to reality. It is consoling that abstract reasoning was mentioned since Humes unrequited idea would say that all thought is abstract.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find the title presumptive and the article rather bogged down in reductive left brain logic that focuses mainly on behavioural differences. In contrast the intuitive right brain focuses on holistic structural relationships that are fundamental to any coherent framework of understanding, regardless of context. The right and left hemispheres of the neo-cortex are both fuelled by our ancient emotional Limbic Brain that is primary to memory and recall. There is ample empirical evidence that these three brains are structured to function independently and yet they seek a mutual balance. See the website article Inside Our Three Brains at www.cosmic-mindreach.com.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese three focal points of thought developed progressively throughout the vertebrate lineage and became most prominent in the human brain. We are born most helpless and must consciously learn virtually everything with the aid of left brain language beginning in the crib. We learn to intuitively comprehend language before we can speak. Right brain intuitive insight leads language and behaviour not vice versa. A dog responds to verbal commands but can not speak. In humans the development of sophisticated language allows us to deal with all experience in abstraction and it accentuates the bi-lateral polarization of neo-cortical brain function. We are confronted with the explicit realization of our own transience and we intuitively seek scientific or spiritual frameworks of understanding that universally transcend birth and death. All holistic frameworks do this in some way.
These three focal points are not an accidental evolutionary development in a Darwinian sense. They are fundamental to intelligent social aliens from Alpha Centauri or anywhere. They must have some way to deal with linear phenomenal experience and mutually communicate in abstraction, whether in explicit spoken language, or telepathically with explicit intent. This can allow them to collectively plan. They must also have some implicit equivalent of holistic intuitive insight into how phenomenal experience is universally organized and integrated. This requires some degree of structural insight into the cosmic order. This bi-lateral development between insight and expression must be emotionally fuelled in some way by a long history that emotes patterns of recall, thought and behaviour that can be tailored to suit ongoing circumstance. All learning depends on this. In this universal structural sense there is no evolved origin to mind in space and time.
In humans this wealth of collective memory has been provided by 400 million years of vertebrate ancestry anchored to a quadruped limb structure that implicitly requires a degree of self-similarity in behaviour. We pick up the behavioural intentions of a family pet or an animal in the wild. We can empathize with them. We can creep up like a cat or charge like a bull. They can understand our emotive intensions and limitations and respond according to their abilities and intensions. We can not empathize with the invertebrates in the same way. Many motor-sensory formats were explored with the invertebrates before they became relatively fixed in the skeletal arrangement of the vertebrates
Where is the mind that makes reality of abstraction and behavior the cultural identification of a personality?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is nothing linear about the epigenetic mental gap of herd instinct and the certainty of belief with the objective cognate functions of the new brain that associates data without the delusions and the comfort communal belief.
I think our cognitive ability/the human mind is a direct result of and is continuously enhanced by our sociological way of life. Perhaps the human mind developed through our wide communication with each other, our groupings, along with the fact that we stand upright, walk on two legs, and have a moveable thumb. Believing you can find the answer in a test tube seems hilarious to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShouldn't we begin at the beginning? How can we have an article, and then a discussion, on the difference between the human mind and the mind of animals without any attempt at a definition of what mind is? (What's with this pervasive attempt to elevate man beyond the confines of what he is, a very sophisticated animal?) Everything, every tool, that man creates is modeled on the mechanism that is man himself, so let's use our most sophisticated tool, the computer, as our model. Mind is the software of deoxyribonucleic acid. The human mind is the software of human DNA. The firmware of DNA either evolved within, or was written in, the DNA, jury's still out on that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImagine two tiny crystals that if dropped together into a certain solution, combine to form a rudimentary mechanism that, when exposed to the appropriate environment, is capable of selecting and acquiring elements of that environment that allow it to increase its complexity according to its integrated firmware. Eventually, it becomes a fully fledged computer, which during its developmental process has been acquiring more and more complex programs from near and far, and integrating itself more and more into the global network of computers.
If this sounds far-fetched, it's not very different from what all plant and animal species do, to a greater or lesser extent. Everything we do and say as individuals or as a species is the result of that initial program which evolved in our human DNA, indeed in all DNA. The human mind is, to the best of our knowledge, simply the most elaborate and complex of these naturally occurring programs on planet earth. As to how different we are from the animals. Hell, I was just discussing how different an aristocrat is from a commoner, an equally amusing discussion. Ah, the vanity of man. Structurally, we're not very different from the animals. Genome mapping has proved that.
Functionally, my old Commodore 64 was no different from today's supercomputers, but there is no comparison to be made of their computational capabilities. The comparison seems even more ridiculous when we compare the computer to the ancient Chinese abacus, yet they are basically all intelligence amplifiers, designed to imitate and enhance specific functions of our minds, only better. So too do we do only what the animals do: reproduce, survive, integrate ... only we do it better. That it seems so much more complex and sophisticated is simply because we examine ourselves in so much more intimate detail.
Computational view of human cognition and consciousness has its serious limitations as revealed by many neurological studies. The capacity of brain neural system to transcend automatic structures like in the brain stem circuitry,or the hippocampal limbic systems associated with past images and memory,and meta reason through cortical region developments connected with cognitive and meta cognitive functions is responsible for the consciousness that differs from animal mind in human beings. The human self systems are also different in that there is a metaphysical self awareness,and an expanded conscious self though influenced by the unconscious self. The dream state thought and wakeful cognition are found to be unitary in nature despite the hallucinatory and imaginative content and nature of the former,which suggests the potential for creative thinking that surpasses any that the animal kingdom may possess.The almost virtual nature of the disparate self system in man has evolved from a more extended self concept,as a result of learning,where as in animals this is more impulse driven or automatic in nature,though driven by intelligence. This means that discriminative logic and wisdom is what differentiates man from animals.Animals also possess mental faculties like ego [seat of emotions] and intellect to a limited extent,but not the faculty of discrimination and wisdom.There is space in human mind for this faculty which influences the structure and geometry as well as complexity of the neural circuitry and brain architecture in man.The ancient Indian philosophers seemed to have understood it as part of their metaphysical deliberations ,since they call this space in mind as the faculty of chit-seat of discriminative logic and spiritual or philosophical and metaphysical thinking-that only man possesses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSURESHKUMAR.S,SCIENTIST AND ADVISER,NIIST,TRIVANDRUM,CSIR,INDIA
When considering the evolution of the mind it is important to consider that there are two creations in the earth; the one of God and the other of Lucifer, a former Archangel who retained some of his creative powers when first cast into the Four Planes of Matter (etheric, mental, emotional and physical) that compose the "earth".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEverything in creation is composed of God's Light, Energy and Consciousness and has Innate Intelligence. In preparation for the creation of His Christs, the sons and daughters of God, God created Cosmic Beings, Elohim, Archangels, Angels and the elemental builders of form of the four kingdoms of fire (etheric, the salamanders), air (mental, mind, the sylphs), water (emotional, the undines), and earth (physical, the gnomes). The Divine Plan for the Christs of God was for them to have dominion over all of the creation therefore their evolution is a bit more complex and demanding. Their souls are formed in Spirit (Father) in the image and likeness of God, of God's own Fire (our God is a consuming fire) and spend eons evolving in spirit. They then continue to evolve in the Matter (Mother) planes which are like an appendage or "womb" of the Spirit Planes. There they are to "put on" the fullness of their Christ Potential by learning to make "right choices" in the use of God's energy. The Matter Cosmos contains planetary "schoolrooms" or "laboratories" for their experiments in Free Will. The laws of karma (cyclic return of energy) and reincarnation are the means by which souls learn the effects of their correct or incorrect uses of God's energy. These are teaching tools not punishments. The soul is housed in interpenetrating vessels or bodies for the development of "identity" and as vehicles of expression in a framework composed of "time and space". The etheric (fire) body has organs just as the physical (earth) body does. They are energy vortices (wheels, chakras) that act like step-down transformers to receive and distribute spiritual energy (nourishment) from the Father to the organs and cells of the physical body (Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone). Within the physical heart there is a chakra that contains a Triune Unfed Flame that is our contact point and Portal to the Kingdom of Heaven and to our Higher Mind, our Christ Mind that we are to "put on". Having accomplished that and with at least 51% of our karma balanced we can then Ascend back to God in the fullness and power of our Christ Self.
None of the above applies to the godless, soulless creation of Lucifer (tares).
My wife's chiropractor would say that the spine is a fourth branch of the brain. The spine not only constantly reminds the brain that it is rooted in a messy and often uncomfortable world, the spine is claimed by some to play an integral role in the sense of well-being of the mind and in the mind's critical sense of self-awareness which derives from our continuous perception of ourselves as a singular organism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn this view the spine is much more than the main link in the life support system for the mind, it is an integral part of that mind, even to the point that a composer or a research scientist may really only need a spinal adjustment in order to unblock the jammed circuits of their brain and allow a burst of mental creative epiphanies.
Lucifer refused to bend the knee and to serve God's Christs. He allowed his pride and ego to declare his superiority and position as being above the sons and daughters of God. He declared his enmity (anger and hatred) against the Christs of God. He and his bands of angels were instantly cast into the "earth" planes (densified). They were cut off from God's energy and were given a certain allotment of "time and space" to reconsider their decision. Some of the angels have repented and are in a band called "the restored angels" and are again in service to God and His Christs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLucifer, Satan and others of his chief angels never repented and have gone, or will go, through what is known as "The Second Death". All of their energy and consciousness is cancelled out as it passes through the intense Sacred Fire of God and is recycled as un-manifest energy. This is the same intense Sacred Fire of God that permanently "fuses" the soul, that has put on her Christ identity, to God as a Permanent Atom in theBody of God in the ritual of the Ascension. That is why the soul must balance at least 51% of her karma (the soul is feminine in both male and female, while the spirit is masculine, a polarity). There must be an identity that is a least 51% in Christ. If the soul does not accomplish this in the alloted time it too can perish in the Second Death.
When first cast into "the earth", Lucifer still had great powers of creation. To attack the children of God in "the earth", he created a counterfeit race of godless, souless beings, without total free will and subservient to him and his angels; Jesus called them "the tares among the wheat". They are not of spirit, do not have an Unfed Flame, have no conscience and no remorse. They have never known God and therefore cannot identify with Him. They are pre-programmed to "war against" the children of God. They continually seek positions of power and control (in church and state) to dominate God's children. They have a "carnal mind" and computer like brains.
The brain is not the mind but an instrument of the mind.
Originally they were in separate tribes hence the intense wars in the Old Testament as God's children tried to remove them from the earth. In disobedience to God, the children of God intermarried with them thus mixing the genes of Christ with them. For thousands of years now we have had this "warring in our members" wherby we must "cleave asunder the real from the unreal" and choose "to be or not to be" the Christ and fulfill the Divine Plan.
The article THE MIND by Houser is thought provoking. I always thought that Darwin was right in saying that the difference between human and nonhuman minds is "one of degree and not of kind." Houser presents some evidence that this is not the case. What he does not discuss is how natural selection could have developed this difference. What is the advantage of a paleolithic person to have a brain capable of developing quantum mechanics, orchestras, Sistine chapel and Lascaux murals?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLuciano Ronca
Trieste Italy
I'm very impressed with what I've read here. Unfortunately, we do not use a perfect language for communicating. I've concluded that we live in a reality of verbs and "Mind" should be replaced by "Thinking" whenever possible. I have enjoyed the miracle of living for over 62 years and have finally accepted the idea that 'thinking' can be thought of as analogous to the music heard (and enjoyed) from an orchestra within a opera.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust as there are a variety of instuments and voices creating musical sounds, brains have areas dedicated to sensory processing, associative retrevial from memory, controlling behavior, and achieving instinctive goals. What I find intriguing is the self-examination of thinking can be accomplished to some degree. This would be a song of a song of a song.. or thought observing thought. Keep up the good work!
+I think our minds do wonders when ascertaining the proper criteria in knowing whitch options to take to select the right juxipotioning of the status quo to determine the validity of the interlocking contigences to arrive at a valid amalgan of the whole.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I'm looking for here is people with the mental fortitude and resistance to programming to start thinking about CHANGING human mind structure from its collection of outmoded adaptations to a NEW collection of adaptations to the current and future niches we will live in. What's the use of knowing about evolution and compartmented algorithmic thinking if we can't successfully adapt before we kill ourselves. Some more. Comments?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe whole idea of complicating the comments column with thesis like texts is human cognition - completely ego driven, thus giving no room for true human consciousness...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe whole idea of complicating the comments column with thesis like texts is human cognition - completely ego driven, thus giving no room for true human consciousness...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...and hence no room for human evolution!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...and hence no room for human evolution!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisaccording to this newly published paper, "dipole neurology" the origins of the human brains Gaba and Glutamate receptors trace back 500,000 years. Basically the cortex has a dipole structure based on the gating of sodium and chlorine and this has remained conserved throughout evolution. I'm not sure i understand this theory. Didnt the limbic system arrived pre cortical evolution ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.neuroquantology.com/repository/index.php?option=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=sobi2Details&sobi2Id=318&Item
Our social relationships, whilst not unique, are by far the most complex amongst animals, and survival would have been enhanced by increased ability in this area. i.e. we survived by cooperating well. The intuition and empathy this required drove our brain development. Our cooperation was enhanced by sharing information, so our communication skills drove our brain development. Our discovery of tools drove our brain development. Its not rocket science, and the explanation of why is quite easy. Of course, the resulting brain is a very complex and hard-to-understand thing, but why it is like that seems to me simple. And I explained my views in words that I am sure everybody understood. Unlike many of you commentators!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDarwin himself argued on minds of humans and animals, but the philosophical question remains same. Who is relative to whom...?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe origin of a life on the planet Earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEnglish:
This new scientific theory may explain very easy the origin of a life on the planet Earth. It has not yet been published. Despite the understanding of a methods spreading of a life in the universe, there is still no understanding of the very first place of the birth of a life in the universe. No less interesting is a discovery & scientific justification of intermediates forms (transitional forms) in line of a evolution theory of Charles Darwin. These intermediates forms have been found, but information about this has not been published. This theory is most corresponded to modern scientific knowledge in many fields (branches) of science and it concludes from many studies. Also this new scientific theory can be used in order to scientifically to substantiate the ancient texts of many religions.
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Seems your god is not omniscient, omnipresent, nor most importantly, omnipotent in that it did not forsee the future, or more importantly, did not shape a better future. But of course, then, make believe stories, such as you presented here, those examples of human mind creativity, about the existence of such a deity would be neither necessary nor, then, created.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course this doesn't apply to the godless, soulless creations of Lucifer (tares).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt also doesn't apply to anyone in the real world.