Homo Evolutis: A Jaynesian Perspective On The Minds Future, Part 2

In my last post I talked about our evolving understanding of how consciousness changes over time, and introduced the idea that we are on the verge of another major change in how our minds are organized.  I stated that in part 2 of this essay, I would allude to the changes consciousness has gone through since it appeared in human history, and speculate on what this change in consciousness we are on the verge of might look like.  I have since realized that trying to give a brief outline of how consciousness has developed from the time of its inception during the era covered by OCBBM up until the present in the space of one post would involve summaries that are too brief to really be interesting or useful.  Therefore, I have resolved instead to dedicate my next several posts to breaking down the history of consciousness and exploring its development through a number of historical epochs leading up to the present.   

For this essay I want to speculate on what might the consciousness of this new ‘Home Evolutis’ I discussed in part 1 be like?  Of course, it is impossible to say with any specificity.  The old utopian and dystopian stereotypes of either a completely brilliant and selfless society, or a world where a sinister elite controls everyone’s minds, are not helpful here.  Although, I do think the next era of human consciousness, whatever ‘human consciousness’ may end up meaning at that time, would be disturbing to us in the present if we were given a look at it.  This is simply because what people identify as their values in a future time, where consciousness has changed enough to be considered a new era for humans, will most certainly be different than ours.  And of course looking at any society that has values that differ significantly from one’s own causes us to judge that community as inferior or corrupt.  Imagine for a moment how people from past cultures like The Holy Roman Empire in the time of Charlemagne or the Mongolian warrior clans in the time of Genghis and Kublai Khan would feel about our modern values of the equality of all races, political authority coming from the common people through elections and women having the same rights as men.  However, you do not have to go back in history to see how people from one era judge the values of another.  Just think of the opinions of parents and grandparents regarding the values of their progenies’ generation.  Lamenting the depravity of the younger generation is one of the oldest traditions humans have!  

Of course, it is possible that a human culture in the future will line up perfectly with my values.  However, normally the values we are most comfortable with are the ones shared by those who are the closest to us, most like ourselves and share the same interests.  Given how people are often uncomfortable with the values of anyone in their neighborhood who is perceived to be different, let alone people who live in completely different cultures, it seems unlikely that those who inhabit a different culture in the future, with at least some significant differences in the nuts and bolts of cognition, are going to have values that line up with our own.  A new book is out, The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind by Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban, that addresses how political values are simply a function of self-interest.  In addition to the book, they have created a ‘political calculator’ based on their research.  This calculator lets you select various demographic information and shows the political views that correlate with the selected demographics.  It was fun and interesting for me to select demographic data that correlated to myself or people I know, and see how accurately demographics correlated with the political values of my friends and acquaintances (and myself).  This certainly was a strong demonstration of how a person’s values are a function of their specific circumstances.

One obvious place to start in considering where consciousness is headed would be to think about how our new reality of being constantly plugged in to some form of techno-media may eventually alter at least some of the fundamentals of consciousness.  Naysayers feel that a human population that lives more and more in a virtual reality with everything one wants always at one’s fingertips is going to make us socially inept and self-absorbed.  It is turning out that these critics may be on the right track.  A 2011 meta-analysis by Sara Konrath, et al, has shown that indeed the current generation of young adults are less empathetic and more narcissistic than previous generations were at the same point in their lives. 

So let us speculate for a moment that this trend will only continue and eventually we wind up with humans becoming much more self-centered, with limited social skills, who opt to communicate with others through some kind of technological interface mainly for self-serving purposes.  In this case, we could imagine consciousness has become less a place to introspect on what is authentic, moral and meaningful.  Rather, under these circumstances the point of ‘reflection’ could be simply for preforming utilitarian calculations for the purpose of meeting one’s own needs and preserving the system of social relationships and technical infrastructure that enables the stability of the system.  In a world like this it may be that there is less introspective consciousness as it is less necessary.  It is useful here to remember that Jaynes outlined how consciousness was unnecessary for many forms of higher cognition including reason and thinking.  The narrowly defined reflective consciousness that Jaynes believed emerged only 3000 years ago could begin to fade from human experience as the importance of things like meaning, truth and long term intimacy are less the concern of people and pleasure, consumption and convenience become more of the focus.

This sounds like an Orwellian world to us.  However, to those who occupy this imagined future it could make perfect sense as the logical outcome of a society founded on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  It might seem that people who are less reflective and more limited in their ability to empathize would wind up in a never ending selfish battles with others for resources and commodities (even more than we are at present).  As you may recall from part 1 of this post though, we are getting smarter with each generation.  It very well may be that in the future our ability to reason will continue to improve even if our ability to reflect and empathize declines.  And it is certainly reasonable that if you want a comfortable virtual world with no disruptions to your ability to consume and escape into your pleasures, it will be quite reasonable to make sure the system is set up so everyone else is content with their piece of the pie chart and therefore have no incentive to disrupt the system.  Research on sociopaths has shown that often times they are quite good at understanding what other people want and need even though they lack empathy.  And if fact, therapy with these people often entails, since their own self-interest is all they care about, helping them to understand that committing to prosocial behavior is actually in their interest. This helps us understand how it is perfectly plausible that people in the future we are imagining here could understand what others want and could use that information to create a stable society even if they had little capacity to actually care how others feel. 

I certainly am not claiming that the brief sketch of the future I have created above is the probable direction we are headed, and I am actually rather skeptical regarding the pronouncements we regularly hear that Facebook and texting is ruining our youth.  My point rather is to help us think about where we are headed in way that is less driven by science fiction versions of the future, and more based on where we are in the present.  I also want us to realize that such speculations are not about some distant future.  In light of the insights we have gotten from Julian Jaynes about how quickly culture and environment change our cognitive/conscious faculties, it appears the consciousness of the future will be upon us much sooner than we realize.  

Homo Evolutis: A Jaynesian Perspective On The Minds Future, Part 1

The question of what the human mind will be like in the future is a hot topic.  Interestingly, the opinions of many of today’s best thinkers on the subject are aligning with Julian Jaynes’ vision of how the mind changes.

Modern main stream science has always believed the development of consciousness is circumscribed by the glacial pace of evolution.  The assumption by scholars in the not very distant past was that consciousness came on the scene gradually as the physical characteristics of the human brain changed just like the rest of the body via rare adaptive mutations.  However, recent research has indicated that genetic change may be happening faster than we thought.  The paleontologist Peter Ward, in an article for Scientific American, cites a number of studies that show a lot more change in the human genome than we originally speculated since the agricultural revolution 10,000 year ago.  In fact, he cited researchers estimates that “over the past 10,000 years humans have evolved as much as 100 times faster than at any other time since the split of the earliest hominid from the ancestors of modern chimpanzees. The team attributed the quickening pace to the vari­ety of environments humans moved into and the changes in living conditions brought about by agriculture and cities.”

However, even though a large increase in the pace of the brain’s evolution has some bearing on the question of where the human mind is headed, more and more researchers are starting to think that other factors are going to be more important to where our mind is going than classical adaptive genetic evolution. 

Jaynes’ proposed in OCBBM that consciousness emerged not just as a product of changes in the physical brain.  A basic axiom of his entire theory is that the genesis of introspective consciousness came from a reorganization of how the brain functioned that was driven by historical and cultural factors--especially the development of written language.  The implication being there was not just one way the various physical components of the brain could connect to each other and be organized.  Jaynes’ radical proposition was based on the idea that society and the environment had a large hand in determining the way the brains hardware would function, and therefore cognitive processes could transform much more rapidly than if genetic adaptation was the sole agent of change.  This was just too hard to swallow for the many critics of Jaynes’ both 40 years ago and today. 

Even if Jaynes has not yet been completely vindicated, the most recent generation of neuroscientists has had to change their understanding of the basics of brain physiology based on recent discoveries.  As opposed to the understanding of brain physiology they grew up with, that brain cells do not regenerate and the brain does not change after a person reaches physical maturity, we now know that throughout the entire life cycle the brain is ‘plastic’ and is in a constant process of change, and neurogenesis (the creation of new brain cells) happens continually.  When you consider the apparent hyper-increase in genetic evolution I referred to above, and combine that with our recent discoveries that brain organization is much more plastic than we used to believe, Jaynes’ proposition of how consciousness could emerge so quickly starts to appear much less far fetched.  

 

In fact, clear acknowledgements are being made as to how changing technology, social structure, and experience is driving changes in consciousness.  Peter Ward, in the article I referred to above, considers the proposition that the traditional conception of “human evolution has essentially ceased…evolution may now be memetic [i.e., socially driven]—involving ideas—rather than genetics.”

This is especially true given the emerging nature of human experience in the face of the break neck speed of technological change.  Juan Enriquez, founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, made the point in a TED talk stating, "...we're trying to take in as much data in a day as people used to take in in a lifetime."  He goes on to say:

"I think we're transitioning into Homo Evolutis...a hominid that's beginning to directly and deliberately control the evolution of its own species...And I think that's such an order of magnitude change that your grandkids or your great-grandkids may be a species very different from you."

The previous quote may sound like science fiction. However, one example that illustrates the point is IQ and how IQ scores have changed over multiple generations.  However, before discussing how IQ relates to the issues we are focused on, IQ measurement has been such a contentious subject I feel I must clear the air regarding the reticence to believe the concept of IQ is legitimate. 

There have been claims that IQ is an artificial construct reflecting the values of those who devise IQ tests.  These criticisms may contain some truth.  That is, ‘intelligence’ is indeed a construction of various skills and abilities that reflect the values of the main stream culture.  In another time and place, say a tribal group 50,000 years ago whose recent ancestors had emigrated from the savannahs of east Africa to what is now Europe, different skills and abilities related to foraging and dealing with the native Neanderthal population may be more important than the qualities we are testing for through IQ tests. 

However, we live in an age where success is driven by flexible and sophisticated cognitive skills involving the ability to manipulate systems of abstract symbols like writing and math--the capabilities IQ tests measure.  So yes, IQ measures what this culture defines as some of the most important traits for humans.  You therefore are within your rights to dismiss the qualities IQ measures as in some sense arbitrary.  That is, as long as you do not see any point in being able to get along and succeed in a modern technological culture based on greco-judeo-christian philosophy and enlightenment liberalism!  And perhaps more to the point, it turns out that IQ scores correlate positively with many of what we consider, in this modern culture, very important quality of life outcomes:  physical and mental health, career success, incarceration, poverty, and, contrary to popular myth, social skills and emotional intelligence.

So enough about the question of IQ’s validity, and back to our point about how IQ can tell us about how the mind changes.  Even though IQ has been shown to be a highly heritable trait, IQ scores have been rapidly increasing across the entire globe for as far back as we have data.  The way IQ scores work is that, by definition, the median score is always 100 for the population.  What has been discovered is something now known as the Flynn Effect:  With each generation IQ tests have had to be changed and scores have had to be revised downward to keep the median at 100.  In other words, each new generation is scoring higher than the last, and this is true across the globe.  In the United States, median IQ test scores have constantly increased about 3 points every 10 years.  That means in the USA a person with average intelligence 100 years ago would now be considered mentally retarded!  (Mental retardation is defined as having an IQ below 70.) 

How can a trait that is shown to be so strongly heritable change so fast?  For those of you interested in a detailed explanation, see Flynn and Dickens article, Heritability Estimates Versus Large Environmental Effects: The IQ Paradox Resolved.  To boil their explanation down, the reason is because human culture has become hyper focused on selecting and encouraging the traits related to high IQ. 

The abilities related to IQ scores may not predict by themselves a whole sale change in human consciousness and the inevitability of “Home Evolutis”.   However, the demonstration of how such a heritable trait that is so fundamental to cognition, consciousness and what is means to be a human being can change so quickly lends much credence and plausibility to Jaynes’ willingness to propose that human consciousness can change due to environmental factors related to society and technology.

In part 2 of this post, which I will publish soon, I plan to look from a Jaynesian perspective more specifically at how human consciousness has progressed in the last three millennia and consider what the implications are for the future regarding what consciousness in ‘Homo Evolutis’ might be like.