Human Cognition - Collective Memory

“Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as collective memory--part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt. But there is collective instruction....What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds.”  ― Susan Sontag

French sociologist, social psychologist, philosopher and the father of sociology, Émile Durkheim, introduced the concept of “collective consciousness” in his 1892 book “The Division of Labor in Society”.  Durkheim's work focused on what he called “social facts”, physical or mental constructs that have a coercive influence on the behavior of the individual.  Such constructs have an independent existence that is greater and more objective than the actions of the individuals who compose a society. 

Durkheim argued that society, in general, and all social institutions, by their nature, are sets of social facts.  The glue that holds a society and its institutions together is collective consciousness. While he conceded that all humans are “self” centered, Durkheim concluded that a society is bound by the norms, beliefs, and values that individuals hold collectively.  This collective thought produces social integration, or culture, as humans become aware of each other as social beings.  Our brains construct many “I’s” that take on the role of “self” at different times depending on how the brain assesses its needs.  The natural progression of “I” construction leads the brain to attempt to create a controller for its “squadron of simpletons”, an overseer of observers.  Durkheim argues that humans become bound to their culture when the emotion of their collective consciousness overrides the “self”.  Stated in terms of self awareness, collective consciousness molds the construction of this overseer “self” that identifies with and garners support from the culture to which it is bound.

Maurice Halbwachs, a student of Durkheim, is the first sociologist to use the term “collective memory” in his 1950 book “La mémoire collective”. Collective memory offers accounts of emotionally salient events and persons in the past who have particular relevance to how a group understands itself and the challenges it faces in the present and future. These accounts are not simply the details about the past.  Instead, they act as moral, political and social lessons.  As such, Halbwachs separates history from collective memory; the former is about facts, specific events and truth, and the later is popular memory as experienced through the eyes and minds of participants in the events and their descendants. There are limits to this distinction, however, as both historical accounts and collective memory are built around plausible explanations and accounts about the past found in a group’s narratives.  Halbwachs also suggests that all individual memory is constructed within social structures and institutions. He claims that individual, autobiographic memory is understood only through a group context; which may include families, organizations, nation-states and religions. 

The emotion of collective consciousness molds the construction of “self”.  Further, decision based, tactical and strategic social interaction is couched in our recall of prior experience which is understood through collective thought. Therefore, what a society chooses to include in collective memory becomes very important.  Given that success of our behavior is measured in how we adapt to change, the survival of mankind is likely a function of what we choose to include in our collective memory. 

Picking the right or best collective memories isn’t easy.  All reality is relative and all experience is subjective.  There are many world views and just as many collective memories.  Even when humans share memories, they may not share cultural identities.  Identity groups are not neatly defined or bound in the same way as citizens of a state or members of a voluntary organization.  There are no rules and requirements for membership or leadership of such groups.  There is often significant diversity among people in large collectives, such as religious or national communities.  Such diversity can produce significant variation in memory content.  People who share the same culture don't necessarily agree on all details. Cultural variation in thought, feeling, and behavior, however, doesn’t preclude understanding.  Emotions and beliefs contained in the memories can to be translated into actions that are for the good of all concerned.  Narratives, ritual enactments, and symbolic landscapes can be used to develop, reinforce and transmit collective memories.  These tools can become a reflection of a group's core assumptions, the dynamics of culture and memory that direct a collective’s expressions and actions. 

Narratives are verbal accounts that articulate stories about the past, attributing motives and meanings to key actors.  They become explanations for events in the form of short, common sense stories that often seem simple.  However, the images they contain, and the judgments they make about the motivations and actions of one's own group and opponents, can be emotionally powerful. Narratives are not always internally consistent. For example, group narratives often alternate between portraying one's own group as especially strong and as especially vulnerable.  The present, the historical past and group memories are used in complex ways as a group selectively focuses on events, individuals, and how they are linked. They are central to understanding “who we are,” what in our past is shared, what dangers we face, and our dream for the future.

Powerful narratives are far more than simple verbal accounts.  Music, drama, and art which are often filled with richly powerful images, metaphors and lessons, enact and reinforce the past and the future.   Repetitive cultural events are a crucial way of creating and solidifying narratives and collective memories. While they are often communicated as timeless rituals, these performances are regularly invented and reinvented to meet the present needs of the group. Examples of this connection abound. Group holidays and rituals that assert relationships between the present and past through sacred objects, holy sites, special foods, and prayers are common across all collectives and cultures.

Physical objects and sites, referred to as symbolic landscape, can be used to convey messages of group inclusivity and /or exclusivity.  A society's symbolic landscape communicates and frames its messages through specific public images, physical objects, and other expressive representations.  It includes public spaces and especially sacred, but not necessarily religious, sites.  The ideas conveyed by landscape reveal how a group views itself and how it represents itself to others.  Exclusion of groups from the symbolic landscape is an explicit form of denial and assertion of power. In contrast, an inclusive symbolic landscape is an expression of nurturing that communicates mutuality and a shared stake in society. It renders the previously unseen visible, gives a voice to those who may have been voiceless, and can offer powerful messages of acceptance to the young. 

Religion is the essence of collective memory.  It is the most fundamental social institution.  Almost all other institutions, at some point in history, were born from it.  However, searching for an absolute origin or the instant where religion first came into being is impossible.  Metaphysically, the origin of religion, like all other social institutions, was born from the collective memories of a group that saw purpose in explaining its past and forecasting its future.   

In his 1912 book, “Elementary Forms of Religious Life”, Émile Durkheim laid out his theory of religion which he based on the concept of “collective effervescence”, a moment in societal life when a group of individuals came together to perform a ritual. During such a moment, the group communicated the same thoughts and participated in the same actions.  Collective “electricity” was created and released, leading participants to a high degree of emotional excitement or delirium.  It lifted them up, outside of themselves, and made them feel as if they were in contact with an extraordinary energy.  As such, the group had a collective religious experience.

According to Durkheim, following this religious experience, the group projects the collective energy it shared onto an external symbol.  The power becomes abstract, is objectified and made sacred.  The sacred object is infused with the power of the community and the group gains a tangible idea, or representation, of itself.  Durkheim uses the words “sacred object” to describe what is traditionally understood as a god.  The same concept can also be applied to other abstractions like the four Buddhist noble truths and the humanist individual. Further, our history is replete with physical objects such as rocks, feathers, totem poles, and crosses which have become infused with the force of the collective. A society’s sacred object is the collective’s projected abstraction; a universal controller of each individual “self” acting as the agent for the collective. The collective, just like its members who empathically imagine what others are thinking, imagines the powers of its sacred object, the mind of god.  In doing so, a society is empowered.

Eric Hobsbawm suggests that when social change destroys or jeopardizes a collective’s customs and religion, the group will invent new traditions for the purpose of maintaining authority, control and solidarity.  In some cases, they will use the imprint of a nonexistent past, a past that ignores the current situation, to create hope of a better tomorrow.  Social identity is reaffirmed using new rituals and symbols to unite and energize the society in distress.  In effect, the collective memory of the group becomes a construction of those who maintain the power and status to define such memories.  Durkheim remarks that if the societal forces central to religious life are not re-animated, they will be forgotten, leaving individuals with no knowledge of the ties that exist between them. Durkheim believes this is why religious ritual has been necessary for the continued existence of most societies.  Adding to this thought, Pierre Nora reaffirms that religious collective memory is an interpreted past which becomes increasingly detached from the historical past.  Further, Nora claims that religious groups select certain dates and people to commemorate while deliberately eliminating others from representation.  A process he calls “collective amnesia”.  He also suggests that societal elites produce “simulations of natural memory” to support the emergence of humanity in a contrived collective memory which is used to reinforce the imaginings of the collective.

As such, collective memory can be both a tool and an object of power. 

Alph awoke the morning of the first spring ceremonies to the clamor of another clan coming into camp.  By his count, there were now six clans that would be participating this year.  He thought there must be at least 160 people camping along the river, not counting the group that was just coming in.  It would have been more but the people had a rule, no Neanderthals.  There had been a scuffle two years ago when they had tried to join.  Ra had declared, while she was clan Shaman, that they didn’t understand the Mother Goddess and weren’t allowed into the cave.

The excitement was so thick that you could almost see it.  People were in the river bathing. Women were sitting together having their faces and breasts decorated.  Alph walked around counting the number of women that would go up to the cave.  The ceremonial chamber would hold only 20 people at one time.  There would be 40 women this year. That meant four morning ceremonies over four days, with ten women and ten men in each.  Alph was also excited that there were many more young people this year.  Mum would hold sessions in the afternoon for the children, giving instruction in the ways of the Mother Goddess.

As Alph shared the count with her, Mum told him to take the last of the bedding up to the cave.  His feet hardly touched the ground as he climbed the plateau.  Once the torches were lit and the floor had been prepared with furs, he stood at the cave entrance and waved down to her.  Mum raised her hand and 10 men began to beat sticks together, as was always the tradition.   Ten women gathered next to Mum and began to chant.  It was time.

As they climbed the plateau together, Mum explained that the group would make its way to the very back of the cave.  When they reached the entrance, Alph was there to greet the group.  He showed them into the first chamber where they could disrobe.  The women then moved into the second chamber alone where they applied fragrances and sacred oils.  Alph then led them into the back of the cave.

 

The women were immediately overwhelmed by the extensive paintings of lions and their prey that covered the walls.  They giggled. They knew that the men would find the art very stimulating.  The women sat on the fur bedding and began rocking back and forth, chanting, reducing the breathable air supply in the room. The torches began to dim and the chanting grew even louder.  Then, the men entered the room, aroused and ready.  They paired off with the women.  Mum entered the room glowing with oil and sweat.  She made her way to the middle of the chamber and began caressing the rock formation that hung from the ceiling. The rock was Mum’s new alter, painted with an image of the Mother Goddess preparing to be mounted.   She danced around the rock alter singing Her praises as the chanting quickly turned into moans of oxygen deprived passion.  Screams of ecstasy filled the chamber.

Alph sat at the cave entrance feeling the cool spring breeze.  He held the statue that Ra had given him at birth.  He knew that she was watching today’s event at the Mother Goddess’ side.  He smiled and whispered, “Ra”.

Human Cognition – Language

It was mid morning. The men had been out hunting for a while. The women, children and elders were going about the morning routines. Songbirds filled the air with their melodious love songs. Alph whistled with the birds as he and Mum prepared for the first of the season’s ceremonies. It was a beautiful morning until the birds abruptly stopped singing. Instinctively, everyone stopped what they were doing and the watchmen grabbed their spears. Hand gestures became frantic, pointing in one direction. There was something moving in the woods and it was coming closer. Alph’s heart pounded with fear.

Then they heard the whistles, the sounds used by another clan when they approach an unfamiliar camp to announce their arrival, and the fear turned instantly into joyous greetings. They were the members of the old clan, back from their travels after twelve years to join in the spring rituals. Mum screamed with excitement as she saw Zed coming through the trees. It had been so long since she had been with him. Alph had never seen her run so fast. She leaped into his arms.

Finally, the commotion settled and the tears of joy dried. They all sat down near the river, laughing, hugging and catching up on the years of being apart. There had been a disagreement which had caused the clan to split. It had been a lean time for the larger clan and several of the hunters wanted to move to find more food. Fourteen had left but only eight returned; five men, two older women, and a teenage girl named Nona.

The talking was so loud that they didn’t notice the clan’s men returning from the hunt. They had fresh meat for everyone. Laughter filled the air, the children played with their dogs and the men washed off the day’s hunt in the river. It wasn’t long before the campfires were stoked and the women began preparing for dinner. Mum suggested that Alpha and Nona gather berries. They walked out into the field picking fruit and talking about her past. She was in her 16th year. Her mother died in childbirth, and the years had been tough and dangerous. Alph couldn’t take his eyes off of her. People were already eating and one of the new arrivals was playing a flute when they returned to camp.

Late in the evening, after the fires had died down, the camp had paired off for bed. Alph was almost asleep when the tent flap lifted and Nona stepped inside. She was naked and didn’t say anything as she lay down next to the Shaman’s assistant.

Being human is communicative by its very nature. Our ability to symbolically express our thoughts implicitly defines awareness and the self while enriching our collective memories. We are afloat in an atmosphere of gestures, words, music, and song. We are eager to say something to each other, to learn or teach, to show or prove, to agree or reject, to show affection, and so on. From our beginning, humans have been involved in social interaction of different degrees of complexity. While all social animals communicate with each other, only humans have developed a language which is more than a set of prearranged signals. Our speech even differs in a physical way from the communication of other animals. It comes from a cortical speech center which does not respond instinctively, but organizes sound and meaning on a rational basis. This section of the brain is unique to humans.

Language is communication through words or symbols representing words. Words are an association between a sound and meaning. By six years of age, children understand about 13,000 words and by the end of high school, about 60,000 words. Thus, children connect a new sound to a meaning about every 90 waking minutes. Language develops in the following five phases:

Phase 1: 1-4 Months, cooing, vowel sounds.
Phase 2: 5-10 Months, babbling, strings of consonants-vowels.
Phase 3: 10-15 Months, first words, consistent object labels. 
Phase 4: 18-24 Months, two word utterances. 
Phase 5: > 25 months, meaningful speech.

The issue is whether language development is innate or learned. In support of innate development of language, all cultures learn language. Children, in a social environment, who are deprived of any developed language, will invent their own. In support of learned language, young children who have deaf and dumb parents acquire language fully if learning takes place before puberty. If after puberty, this learning becomes more difficult. Further, young children can acquire several languages perfectly. Later in life, it is much more difficult and has telltale signs of accents and grammatical errors. Thus, from the nurture standpoint, there appears to be a critical period for language acquisition. From a neurological standpoint, the developing brain is receptive to learning language for several years.

The origin of language in the humans has been the topic of scholarly discussions for several centuries. In spite of this, there is no consensus on the origin or age of human language due to the lack of direct evidence. Speech may have evolved as long ago as two million years. One of the characteristics of language is that it is lateralized to an area in the left hemisphere called Broca’s area (named after Pierre Broca, the physician, surgeon, anatomist and anthropologist who made this discovery in the mid 1800’s). Language functions such as grammar, vocabulary and literal meaning are typically found in this area, especially in right handed people. Even the skulls of Homo habilis, a distant ancestor who lived about three million years ago, show an enlargement in Broca’s area of the left hemisphere. We will never know for certain the time when our ancestors began to speak. However, the complex nature of early modern humans in southern Europe, some 35,000 years ago, leaves very little doubt that these people enjoyed a rich, vivid language.

The timing of humanity’s first spoken words will never be known. However, the transition from hominid communication to human language can be defined by the evolution of social interactions. As such, hominid communication produced reactive social behavior while human language allowed predictive decision based social behavior. The one unique characteristic which humans have over all other living things is language. It is fitting that its inclusion as the final step in the evolution of cognition moves the specie from hominid to modern human by changing the way we be behave with each other. The processes that produce these behaviors involve all of the components of human cognition which are reviewed below.

The cognitive process that leads to hominid reactive behavior starts at the same place that human decision making starts, external stimuli and sensory memory. Information is reduced to electrochemical signals and is coded. Attention increases as one integrated set of neural signals grows in strength and dwarfs other signals manifesting in an ultra-short-term sensory memory. It lasts for such a short time, typically 200 - 500 milliseconds (1/5 - 1/2 second), that it is often considered part of the process of perception. This ability to selectively direct attention to specific aspects of our external environment is the critical first step to survival.

The brain quickly decides if this increased attention warrants further focus. If so, the coded representation is “loaded” into short term memory, often called working memory. Typically, seven or so representations can be held in this active, readily-available state for a short period of time (10 to 15 seconds). These representations include memories and projections of inner body states (emotions) that are used to create a description, a rendering, of the focused attention. Awareness is this rendering; a simplified, useful description of the focused attention, its dynamics and its consequences. Typically, this awareness includes emotions or “feelings”. Short term memory is reciprocally-linked to long term memory (LTM). Awareness and associated “feelings” can be stored in LTM as patterns of enhanced or impaired transmission between nerve cells. The patterns in LTM may be recalled later in short term memory for further cycles of processing and elaboration.

The obvious need for such a system is to help a specie avoid danger, to fight or take flight. Further, this process evolved to deal with social situations. In other words, most stimuli that warrant attention come from our own specie. How an observer responds to overt behavior must be understood in the context of motivations, dispositions and intentions. The observer’s imagination will guide the response, dependent on reactive or decision based behavior. The evolved human will use the concepts of space and time (displacement) found in language to gage the appropriate behavior.

In his white paper, “Evolution and the cognitive neuroscience of awareness, consciousness and language”, Bruce G. Charlton proposed that there are no recently evolved specialized 'language centers' in the brain. Instead, displacement-language has been made possible by a quantitative expansion of short term memory. Displacement refers to the capacity of language to describe entities and events that are 'displaced' in time or space (not you or me, not here or now). Humans don’t just talk of the here and now, but of remembrances of the past and forecasts of the future. This stands in stark contrast with the social communication system based on facial expressions, gestures, and a range of sounds which was inherited from our hominid ancestors. As such, ancestral communication only deals with the present. It goes without saying, Charlton’s suggestion that there are no language centers in the brain, like the Broca area, is very radical. However, the idea, displacement turns communication into language, can be used as an evolutionary marker because it also increases the value of social intelligence and the complexity of social interactions.

A social communication system based on facial expressions, gestures, and a range of sounds produces a certain set of behaviors that are defined in the present moment. Specie interaction is limited to line of sight. As an example, modern chimpanzees exhibit extremely sophisticated 'here and now' tactical social communication. This communication begets reactive social behavior. Chimpanzees are self aware. They observe each other’s behavior and respond in kind. Imagined motivations, dispositions and intentions are limited to the present. There are no longer term strategies of interaction because there is no concept of the longer term. Therefore, learning is limited. The mother chimp that uses a tool to catch ants does so by repeating the process over and over for her own benefit, not for the benefit of her child. The chimp’s child reacts by mimicking the behavior and learns the process. Without the concept of displacement, learned behaviors aren’t deliberately passed on from generation to generation.

A social system that is based in displacement-language is the system that we currently enjoy. Language is rich with understanding that comes from remembering past interactions with others. Our current experience is couched in our prior experiences. Behavior isn’t reactive, for the most part, but instead is based on analysis. Observing each other’s behavior and imagining motivations, dispositions and intentions becomes both tactical and strategic. The brain reviews a new experience in light of prior associations and feelings, and then assesses the future impact of continuing the experience or attempting to change direction. Language becomes more abstract to explain why something happened in an attempt to assure that it will happen again or avoid its reoccurrence. Learning is organized and deliberate. Planning and the implementation of ideas serve the community. Cause and effect become important and the concept of time is created.

Displacement based language is the capstone to the human experience. It sets us apart from the other animals, even those that are self aware. With the inclusion of displacement, humans moved quickly past all other animals to take control of their future. Memory became very important as our prior experiences became the basis of our projections. The building blocks for this success became the basis of collective memory. In turn, collective memory became our most important tool.

Human Cognition – Self Awareness

It had been six months since Ra’s passing and Alph was beginning his 17th year. Mum had taken the role as Shaman; her mother’s wishes accepted by the clan without dispute. Now they spent their days preparing for the spring fertility ceremonies. Costumes were being made and torches were being prepared to light the deep inner parts of the cave. Mum’s ideas for creating a special experience for the clan were coming together nicely. With Alph’s assistance, she was turning the deepest part of the cave into a sexual alter which would convey the strength of the lion and the fertility of the Mother Goddess. The drawings had to be very elaborate, very symbolic. One afternoon, only days away from the first of the ceremonies, the pair was busy at work on the final drawings of the lions when Alph asked, “Mum, how will we draw the spirits of the great lions?”

Mum paused from her work. After pondering the insightful nature of her son’s question, she explained to Alph that they would not draw the spirits of the lions. Instead, she was designing the ceremony to recreate the lions’ spirits in the clan’s men. Alph thought for a moment and then asked, “Can you ever draw a spirit?” And then another question, “Mum, can you draw my spirit?”

Mum laughed and told Alph to place his hand on the cave wall. She then dipped a hollowed reed into the red ochre dish. When the reed was loaded with paint, she placed her thumb over its end and trapped the liquid. She then put the reed to her lips and aimed it at Alph’s hand. She blew out the red over his hand until it was completely covered. When the reed was emptied, she told Alph to remove his hand from the wall and place it, palm down, into the red ochre dish. She then took his hand, placed it on the wall and then removed it quickly.

Alph looked at the two prints on the cave wall. One hand was solid red. The other hand had no color but was outlined with the sprayed red paint. Mum explained, “The solid hand print is your body, Alph. The other print is your spirit.”

Awareness and self awareness evolved in early humans at two different times. The former came gradually, generation after generation, evolving over millions of years. The later appeared quite suddenly between 50,000 and 35,000 years ago in the caves of southern France. Why people started to think symbolically and represent these thoughts on cave walls was the result of a confluence of changes that came together at the same time. Minor changes in the brain’s structure to increase integration and to expand capacity for awareness no doubt played a major role. The improving living environment brought on by the ice age melt allowed life expectancy to increase. More clans became three generations deep. Having more grandparents meant that clan history was older and ritualized collective memory more valuable. The evolution of language, its richness in texture and meaning, increased neuronal synapses and memory associations in more complex and abstract ways. Human experience became more vivid, meaningful and symbolic. As humans became more aware, our brain began to construct abstract expressions of its surroundings. At some point, brain awareness turned inward and constructed an abstraction that was itself. We have never been then same since.

It is fascinating that the construction of awareness by the brain has been a subject that is not easy for the brain to understand. How awareness emerges from the physical brain and how awareness controls the brain are two of life’s greatest mysteries. Our collective memory is replete with many explanations. The most common of these revolve around the idea of “dualism”; that there is a body (a brain) and there is a separate other, a spirit or a soul. This made sense for the earliest humans of southern France 35,000 years ago and it continues to this day in several of world’s major religions which formed around 3,000 years ago. It has only been in the past 500 hundred years that philosophers began to question dualistic collective memory and to postulate alternative explanations. The construction of modern science and the scientific method of inquiry have further challenged these beliefs. It has only been in the past 100 years with the advent of quantum theory, the theory of relativity, computerization, information theory and the prospects of artificial intelligence that this age-old collective memory is being replaced by evidence based alternatives.

Awareness is relative. A human may be partially aware, subconsciously aware, or acutely unaware of an event. At inception, awareness is a form of primary consciousness consisting of the capacity to generate emotions and information about one's surroundings, but not an ability to talk about what one has experienced. It is like a feeling that cannot be labeled or described; a phenomenon that is especially common in pre-verbal human infants. Awareness may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception. Physically, awareness is dependent upon the brain stem, the posterior part of the brain which adjoins and is structurally continuous with the spinal cord. The fact that humans share this brain structure with most vertebrates gives insight to how the ancestors of early humans behaved prior to language and self awareness. It is easy to imagine hominids, steeped in emotion, using facial expressions, undefined sounds and physical actions to communicate much the same way lower animals do today.

The human brain is a highly sophisticated, incredibly complex biological decision making machine honed by evolution to produce the best decisions possible for the survival of the species. It is the ultimate processor of information that makes a difference. While it is awake, the brain takes in external and internal information continuously. It processes that information by running the data through emotional algorithms to determine appropriate actions. It queries prior information from personal experiences and from collective memory to assess what it might glean from history to make more informed decisions. It forecasts what outcomes might be expected, based on current and prior information, and makes a decision. This decision could include crossing an intersection, buying a new dress, trusting your partner, going to the bathroom, or running from a tiger. The brain does all of these things almost instantaneously and continuously by being aware of its surroundings and itself.

At its most sophisticated level, awareness is the abstract expression of the brain itself, self awareness. The more integrated and expansive its capacity to process information, the more awareness becomes self awareness. It was self awareness that turned primitives with primary consciousness into modern human agents of conscious decision making. Self awareness is the brain at its highest form.

As simple as this may sound, self awareness is “we are aware that we are aware.”

Awareness is like watching TV and self awareness is like using a personal computer that is hooked up to internet. Watching TV is passive. You watch the shows and react to them emotionally. You see something that you don’t like and change the channel or turn the TV off. Awareness is a passive experience. We take in information from our surroundings and respond emotionally to the experience. If the sensations become too hard to handle, we close our eyes or run away. Now consider using an internet connected personal computer. We choose the information we want to experience. We click on links that expand our knowledge. We may like certain collective memories and we ignore others. We can be entertained, informed or connected. While the analogy is simple, it does make the point that awareness is the passive collection and processing of external and internal information. On the hand, self awareness is dynamic and active, purposeful and empowering.

We are not alone when it comes to self awareness. While it is difficult to measure in other animals due to the limitations of language and ethics of animal testing, self awareness presents itself in a limited number of other animals in varying degrees. The “mirror test” has been used successfully to make these assessments. The test involves putting an animal to sleep. A red dot is then placed on the animal’s forehead so that it can only be seen by the animal when it awakes and looks into a mirror. If the animal acknowledges the red dot, it is deemed to be self aware. Chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas have passed this test; as have elephants, pigs, dolphins and magpies. Without the context of language, however, we should assume that self aware animals have cognitive experiences which are very different and significantly less complex than humans.

The physical nature of self awareness, where this process is constructed in the brain, is still in question. One of the most intriguing ideas about how self awareness physically manifests involves “mirror neurons”. A mirror neuron fires when an animal acts. It can also fire when an animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer was acting. While controversial, a mirror neuron could be called an “empathy neuron”. As such, when an observer recognizes or imagines feelings in another person or thing, the observer imagines the same feelings. If a person is crying, for example, the mirror neurons of person who sees the crying would fire off and produce a feeling that might cause the observer to cry too. V.S. Ramachandran has speculated that mirror neurons may provide the neurological basis of human self awareness. In an essay written in 2009, Ramachandran gave the following explanation of his theory: "... I also speculated that these neurons can not only help simulate other people's behavior but can be turned 'inward'—as it were—to create second-order representations or meta-representations of your own earlier brain processes. This could be the neural basis of introspection, and of the reciprocity of self awareness and other awareness.”

There has been a lot of hype surrounding mirror neurons and their social implications. Certainly the use of mirror neurons to create the abstract construct of “self” is a hypothesis that requires additional study. The topic, however, does beg the question of what the construction of self awareness does to the brain. Further, why does the brain construct feelings that it imagines to be in other people, animals and deities?

World powers and large corporations have significantly increased funding in the past ten years for research of algorithmic decision making processes of the brain in hopes of creating artificial intelligence and, possibly, consciousness. This research frames the body/mind issue in a different way; not as a question of how the body and mind work together, but how the brain constructs information to make better decisions. By changing the definition of awareness from a “state of mind” to “constructed information”, emergence and control become less of an issue.

Michael Graziano, a professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University, conducts scientific research on awareness. He has proposed the "attention schema" theory, an explanation of how, and for what adaptive advantage, brains attribute the property of awareness to themselves. This theory, which he presents in his 2013 book “Consciousness and the Social Brain”, proposes that the brain is a collector of information and “attention” is an enhanced data-handling method that is produced by the brain. Acting as a biological expert system; attention increases when one integrated set of neural signals grow in strength and dwarf other signals. There is nothing supernatural about this process. The brain uses its resources of memory and language to create a description, a rendering, of attention. Awareness is this rendering, a simplified useful description of attention, its dynamics and its consequences. 

Using the constructs of attention and awareness, Graziano builds a more useful explanation for self awareness. He changes the historical definition, “the brain being aware that it is aware”, to “self awareness is a schematized model of one's own attention”. He also suggests that this process was first introduced by the brain in an attempt to understand other people’s feelings or thoughts, to predict their behavior and monitor their attentional state. Once a brain imagines what another brain is thinking, it is much easier for a brain to describe itself being aware. 

When the brain constructs a description of being self aware, it takes a first step at describing the control and ownership of its volition or will. A sense of agency is created. A pre-reflective description is created that it is “I” who is executing bodily functions and movements or thinking thoughts. Tightly integrated with this construction is a sense of ownership, that “I” own my thoughts and actions. It is fascinating that the construction of “self” ownership and control are descriptive illusions. Studies have shown that when asked to verbally make a choice between a green or red ball, the brain will light up milliseconds before the decision is announced. The “self” is the last to know the brain’s choice.

The brain is truly an inventive organ. Once it starts describing “I”, it constructs a new one for most every occasion. Most brains have many “I’s” (pardon the gender): the son, the father, the student, the manager, the lover, the athlete, the submissive, etc. Each plays the agent role at different times depending on how the brain assesses its needs. It is thought that taking a further iterative step of constructing an “I” that is describing “I’s” (an observer who’s role is to oversee observers), the brain attempts to create a controller for this “squadron of simpletons” of “I’s” referenced by Robert Ornstein. Being in control of the “self” that is attending implies conscious selection. This second iterative process is used when the brain constructs a description of a deity, an ultimate controller. The same parts of the brain that create “I’s” and “other people’s feelings” are used. The same imagination that thinks of itself as “I”, imagines thoughts in someone else’s brain, and imagines the minds of gods. All three imaginations are heavily influenced by personal experiences and abstract, ritualized collective memory.

Human Cognition - Experience

All of reality is relative. 

In his book “Three Roads to Quantum Gravity”, Lee Smolin introduces a simple maxim: there is nothing outside the universe. Such a statement can only be made if the definition of “universe” includes all things that exist. As simple as this statement is, it has astounding implications. If there is nothing outside the universe, then everything in it can only be defined in terms of the other objects in the universe.

Assume there is only one object in the universe, the smallest of all particles. There is nothing else, no person to see the particle. There is no measurement scale by which it can be said "the particle is five feet long", or "is blue", or that it even "exists". According to Niels Bohr, the father of quantum theory, "Isolated material particles are abstractions; their properties are definable and observable only through their interactions with other systems". Therefore, the only way to describe something is to say “it is like something else”.

Assume that you measure the particle with a ruler and get a reading of “one foot”. Now assume that you and the ruler shrink by 50% and that the particle, for reasons that are not important, does not shrink. What is the length of the particle? If you answered “two feet”, then you are correct. Its length, which should be innate and unvarying, has been modified. In fact, objects do not have built-in, unvarying properties at all. It is only through interaction with the rest of the universe that their properties get "tied-down" to final values. It is as though objects are initially multi-valued, and their final values are selected by the universe. This is called “superpositioning” in quantum theory.

What is most fascinating about the relative nature of reality is the common denominator in both assumptions, the observer. If there isn't an observer, then objects don't have properties, just possible properties and values. The act of conscious observation actually changes the nature of space-time geometry and causes waves of energy to collapse or reduce into particles. In effect, the brain’s experience with reality changes the nature of reality. The dual-slit experiment (see the video in the comments section) proves that this is the case.

How conscious observation of reality alters the nature of reality can only be explained at the quantum level. Albert Einstein struggled with the notion that observation changes waves of energy into particles. His Theory of General Relativity concluded that space and time were relative, but the physical universe was objective. He argued that quantum theory did not capture the true nature of everything with his famous question, “Is the Moon there when nobody looks at it?” Yet when confronted with the results of the dual-slit experiment he conceded, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Einstein spent the last twenty years of his life at Princeton struggling with a way to unify quantum theory and general relativity. He was unsuccessful. The “Theory of Everything”, as it is called, still eludes us. (We will explore current thinking in the area later when we discuss The Quantum Mind.)

All of experience is subjective.

David Chalmers opened his famous paper, “The Puzzle of Conscious Experience” with the following:

“Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious. There is nothing we know about more directly than consciousness, but it is extraordinarily hard to reconcile it with everything else we know. Why does it exist? What does it do? How could it possibly arise from neural processes in the brain? These questions are among the most intriguing in all of science.

From an objective viewpoint, the brain is relatively comprehensible. When you look at this page, there is a whir of processing: photons strike your retina, electrical signals are passed up your optic nerve and between different areas of your brain, and eventually you might respond with a smile, a perplexed frown or a remark. But there is also a subjective aspect. When you look at the page, you are conscious of it, directly experiencing the images and words as part of your private, mental life. You have vivid impressions of colored flowers and vibrant sky. At the same time, you may be feeling some emotions and forming some thoughts. Together such experiences make up consciousness: the subjective, inner life of the mind.”

In "What is it Like to Be a Bat?”, Thomas Nagel argues that consciousness has a subjective character, a “what it is like” aspect. He states that "an organism has a conscious mental state if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism." As an example, bats are apparently conscious mammals with a way of perceiving their environment entirely different from that of humans. It is, therefore, possible to speak of "what is it like to be a bat for the bat". All conscious species have a unique point of view from which no other organism can gather experience.

This subjectivity of perception implies that perception of all of the things, concepts, and "truths" in the universe differ between individuals. Taking this thought process a step further, Nagel thinks that humans, owing to their capacity to reason, instinctively seeks a unified world view. However, if this aspiration leads one to believe that there is only one way to understand our intellectual commitments, whether about the external world, knowledge, or what our practical and moral reasons ought to be, they are in error. For contingent, limited and finite creatures, no such unified world view is possible. We all live in our own different universes. We may share common experiences, but our physical make ups are slightly different. We all have unique DNA, prior experiences, and collective memories. Our skin, eyes, ears, tongues and noses are uniquely our own. While we may have empathy for another person’s feelings, beliefs or desires; we will never know for certain how that person really feels, believes, or truly desires. There is a subjective nature in all experience.

In the fall of his 16th year, Alph’s grandmother, Ra, died. She had been sick all summer. She knew she was dying. During her finals days, she spent a lot of time sharing her thoughts and beliefs with Alph and her other grandchildren. She talked about the joy of being the clan’s Shaman and what it was like to see the emotion rise up from the clan in the fertility ceremonies. These events pleased the Mother Goddess. She talked about the relationship between the animals and the clan. All animals had an equal right to survive. The clan was part of nature, both hunters and hunted. She talked at length about her own life, and that her daughters’ children were the future of the tribe. She was not afraid of death. She believed that she would take her place next to the Mother Goddess.

Ra passed in her sleep. Even though it had been expected, there was an anguish that swept the camp. The cries of loss filled the air. The women huddled together and chanted. The men that didn’t go out to hunt that day sat and talked of her greatness and how they had been blessed by her love. The children cried. Alph cried too. He had loved his grandmother more than anything else. She had been his mentor, his strength. He was at a loss for what to do.

Late in the morning, the women began preparing Ra for her transformation. They bathed her and placed her favorite necklace around her neck. They crushed leaves of clove and basil and sprinkled her with the fragrance. The men prepared the ground for Ra’s resting place. They laid her naked body in the earth.

It was a quiet ceremony. As they chanted and cried, Mum took the red ochre and mixed it with water. She dipped her fingers in the color and whispered her love for her mother as she painted the old Shaman’s face and arms. Flowers were spread around her body. Alph laid a special one next to her heart. Ra was ready to be received.

That night, Alph dreamed of spirits. When he awoke the next morning, he immediately told Mum that he had heard the Mother Goddess tell him that Ra was home. Mum smiled and held Alph in her arms. She told him how proud she was of him. As they hugged, she whispered that Ra had named her the new clan Shaman before she had passed on. She had also asked that Alph be Mum's assistant. A sense of quiet peace filled their tent as they hugged even tighter

Human Cognition - Emotion

It was cold and damp that morning when the clan’s men loaded up their spears and packed hazelnuts in their pouches. The plan was to walk down river and then step off into the woods. Once through the woods, they would hunt in a clearing where they had seen evidence of reindeer the day before. There was a sense of excitement that the migrations were starting and the hunt would produce food and material for the clan. As they left camp, however, a seriousness came over the group. They were going into the killing fields.

The walk down river was quiet except for the morning birds and the water rushing along. As the camp disappeared around the bend, a misty fog engulfed the hunting party. It slowed them and they moved into single file staying in sight of each other. When they came to the rapids, they turned into the woods. Moving through the thick underbrush in the fog slowed them even more. What had been a beautiful morning now felt dark and confined. Each step further into the woods raised the awareness of danger. They could hear something moving off to their left. They stopped. Unable to see more than a few steps into the fog, all sound became acute. It sounded like a deer, but they knew it was a tiger imitating the sounds of prey. Fear gripped them as tightly as they gripped their spears. They were being hunted.

Emotions are complex. They are the product of many millenniums of evolutionary development which have inured to our survival. They gave our ancestors their world of friends and foes, their hunger for food and its fatal alternatives. Emotions are discrete and consistent responses to internal or external information which has a particular significance. For example, the realization of danger and the subsequent arousal of the nervous system are integral to the experience of fear. Rapid heartbeat and breathing, sweating and muscle tension are the built-in reactions to stimuli that are interpreted as dangerous. Emotions are brief in duration and consist of a coordinated set of responses which may include verbal, physiological, behavioral, and neural mechanisms. To paraphrase Elizabeth Gilbert, our emotions are the slaves of our experiences, and we are the slaves of our emotions.

The brain is a biological computer designed by evolution to process information that makes a difference. According to Leda Cosmides and John Tooby in “Handbook of Emotions”, the mind is a collection of information-processing procedures (cognitive programs) that are physically embodied in the neural circuitry of the brain. The brain and mind are terms, therefore, that refer to the same system. Other parts of the body evolved for lifting loads, grinding food, chemically extracting nutrients. The brain was designed by evolution to use information derived from the environment and the body to functionally regulate behavior and the body. The mind is, therefore, an evolved set of domain-specific programs for solving different adaptive problems such as face recognition, foraging, mate choice, heart rate regulation, sleep management, or predator vigilance. Each program is activated by a different set of cues from the environment.

There are many cognitive programs which, if not regulated, could all be activated at the same time resulting in delivered outputs that could conflict with one another. For example, sleep and flight from a predator require mutually inconsistent actions and physiological states. It is not an accident that it is difficult to sleep when your heart and mind are racing with fear. The consequences of falling asleep while being chased by a tiger would be devastating. Therefore, the brain has developed cognitive programs to deal with this issue, “commander programs”. They override some programs while other programs are activated. In our example, the commander program overrides the sleep program when predator evasion routines are activated. Further, many adaptive issues are best resolved by the activation of several subroutines at the same time while shutting off ineffective programs. Adaptive survival has been based on the evolutionary development of commander programs to load the right subroutine configurations at the right time based on information received. Emotions are commander programs.

One of the most interesting aspects of emotions is empathy. Empathy is the capacity to understand what another person is experiencing from within the other person's frame of reference. In effect, empathy is the ability to supposedly feel what someone else is feeling. The way empathic emotions are characterized plays a large role in what we feel when we are being empathic. If, for example, emotions are centrally characterized by bodily feelings, then grasping the bodily feelings of another will be central to empathy. On the other hand, if emotions are more characterized by a combination of beliefs and desires, then grasping these beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy. The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process. However, the basic capacity to recognize emotions is probably innate and may be achieved unconsciously. We will consider empathy more closely when we discuss self awareness, collective memory, and spirituality.

The classification of emotions has been researched from two fundamental viewpoints: each emotion is a discrete and fundamentally different construct; or emotions can be characterized on a dimensional basis in groupings. In Discrete Emotion Theory, all humans are thought to have an innate set of basic emotions that are cross-culturally recognizable. These basic emotions are described as “discrete” because they are believed to be distinguishable by an individual’s facial expression and biological processes. A popular example is Paul Ekman’s study of 1972 in which he concluded that the six basic emotions are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Accordingly, there are particular characteristics attached to each of these emotions expressed in varying degrees.

A good example of how emotions can be characterized on a dimensional basis is the Lövheim Cube of Emotion proposed by Hugo Lövheim in 2012 (shown in the chart in comments). In the model, the three monoamine neurotransmitters, serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline, form the axes of a coordinate system, and the eight basic emotions are placed in the eight corners. The eight corners of the cube correspond to the eight possible combinations of low or high levels of the three monoamines (shown in the table in comments). The model proposes a direct relation between specific combinations of the levels of the signal substances and certain basic emotions, and merges a categorical and a dimensional view of emotions.

They stood still in the forest for what seemed like forever. Hearts pounding, ears and eyes strained to identify the danger that was lurking in the grey mist. There was no talking. Just hand signals and gestures. Finally, a cool breeze came up from the direction where they heard the tiger. They were down wind and the tension left them. The breeze blew away the rest of the morning fog and they were on the move again. The hunting party’s pace quickened to a jog. They were out of the trees and into the open field.

Moving from the last of the trees into the high grass, the hunting party spotted their target. A herd of twenty reindeer were grazing in the opening. The clan's men had played out this hunt many times. Their tactics were simple. They started to circle the herd from two directions. It took only a few steps before the herd became startled and began moving away from the hunters. As it did, one of the reindeer naturally separated from the rest and the hunters moved to keep it separated. Then the race was on. There was no sprinting, just a continuous jog. The reindeer would sprint away from them only to stop and catch its breath. The process was repeated seven times. Each time, the hunters came closer. Each time, the reindeer would sprint away and then stop. Each time, the hunters were drawing closer. On the seventh sprint, the reindeer stumbled from exhaustion and the clan’s men moved in for the kill.

The walk back to the camp that afternoon was quick. The clan’s men talked loudly, joking about the tiger in the foggy trees and boasting over the kill. When they got back to camp, the party was greeted with excitement. It had been a successful hunt. A reindeer had been killed and there had been no injuries or deaths. That evening, the hunters gathered around the fire and told stories of their hunt and of the past. The camp women watched and laughed. It had been a grand day and the sexual tension was high. It would be an even grander night.

Human Cognition - Memory

Every morning before dawn Alph could hear them rustling around outside Mum’s tent as the clan’s men prepared for the day’s hunt. The clan needed fresh food daily. So without fail, rain or shine, the men would leave to forge and hunt. They traveled many miles returning home, sometimes late in the evening, with the day’s bounty. No matter how strong, no matter how adept at hunting and killing these men might have been; the clan’s ability to survive depended on their ability to identify landmarks and spatial relations. Alph’s life depended on the clan’s men having a sense of direction and spatial awareness of their surroundings, and the capability to recall this information. Without good memory storage and recall, all of humanity would have never survived.

Memory is the sum total of what is remembered. It is the brain’s ability to encode, store, retain and subsequently recall information and past experiences. It is the process of recalling previously learned facts, experiences, impressions, skills and habits. Memory is, at its simplest, a set of encoded neural connections in the brain. It is the re-creation or reconstruction of past experiences by the synchronous firing of neurons that were involved in the original experience. It can be thought of as the use of past experience to affect or influence future behavior. Without individual memory, there would be no way to transmit knowledge from generation to generation. There would be no collective memory to bind us together, to adapt and survive. Without it, we would be hopelessly lost in the forest of experiences without a clue as to the way home.

Encoding is the crucial first step to creating a new memory. Perceived sensations are decoded in the various sensory areas of the cortex, and then combined in the brain’s hippocampus into one single experience where new sensations are compared and associated with previously recorded ones. The more personally meaningful the associations, the more effective the encoding and consolidation, the more elaborate the processing which tends to improve recall. 

Consolidation is the process of stabilizing a memory trace after the initial acquisition. It consists of two specific processes, synaptic consolidation (which occurs within the first few hours after learning or encoding) and system consolidation (where hippocampus-dependent memories become independent of the hippocampus over a period of weeks to years). 

Storage is a passive process of retaining information in the brain. Memories are not stored in our brains like books on shelves, but must be actively reconstructed from elements scattered throughout various areas of the brain by the encoding process. Memories may be encoded redundantly, several times, in various parts of the cortex, so if one engram (memory trace) is wiped out, there are duplicates or alternative pathways elsewhere through which the memory may still be retrieved. Memory storage is therefore an ongoing process of reclassification resulting from continuous changes in our neural pathways, and parallel processing of information in our brains. 

Recall or retrieval of memory (remembering) refers to the subsequent re-accessing of events or information from the past, which have been previously encoded and stored in the brain. During recall, the brain "replays" a pattern of neural activity that was originally generated in response to a particular event, echoing the brain's perception of the real event. Initial perception of the real event can be viewed as the first rendering and the replaying of the memory of initial perception is, therefore, a rendering of the rendering. There is no real solid distinction between the act of remembering and the act of thinking. Replays are not identical to the original, but are mixed with an awareness of the current situation which sets up the reflective rendering process all over again. Memories are not frozen in time. New information and suggestions become incorporated into old memories. Thus, remembering can be thought of as an act of creative re-imagination; something that we talk about in detail when we discuss self awareness, collective memory and spirituality.

Sensory memory is the shortest-term element of memory. It is the ability to retain an impression of sensory information after an original stimulus has ended. It acts as a buffer for stimuli received through the senses which are retained accurately, but very briefly. The ability to look at something and remember what it looked like after just a second of observation is an example of sensory memory. Sensory memory is ultra-short-term and decays or degrades very quickly, typically 200 - 500 milliseconds (1/5 - 1/2 second) after perception, although echoic memory is now thought to last a little longer, up to three or four seconds. It lasts for such a short time that it is often considered part of the process of perception. It represents an essential step for storing information in short-term memory.

Short-term memory acts as a kind of “scratch-pad” for temporary recall of the information which is being processed at any point in time, "the brain's Post-it note". It can be thought of as the ability to remember and process information at the same time. Small amounts of information (typically around 7 items or less) can be held in consciousness in an active, readily-available state for a short period of time (typically from 10 to 15 seconds, or sometimes up to a minute). For example, in order to understand this sentence, the beginning of the sentence needs to be held in mind while the rest is read, a task which is carried out by the short-term memory. What are actually held in short-term memory, though, are not complete concepts, but rather links or pointers which the brain derives from long term memory. These associations quickly disappear, however, unless a conscious effort is made to retain them. Such a conscious effort might be considered an act of "free will”. The retention of these associations creates and/or modifies long term memory. 

Long-term memory is intended for storage of information over a long period of time. The establishment of long-term memory involves a process of physical changes in the structure of neurons in the brain. This process known as long-term potentiation is an area of neuroscience which is still open for debate. It has been assumed that long term memory is attributed to strengthened synaptic connections among neurons (brain cells). However, neuronal synaptic components are transient, whereas memories endure. In recent years, Penrose and Hameroff have hypothecated that long term memory is encoded into microtubules, the major structural components of the neuron cytoskeleton which are composed of tubulin proteins. The creation of new microtubule chains within the neuron (which encodes the memory) and the electrochemical transfer of neurotransmitters across synapse gaps to receptors (which creates the association with other memories) builds long term memory which is based on both meaning and association. 

Long-term memory can be divided into two main types: explicit (or declarative) memory and implicit (or procedural) memory. Declarative memory (“knowing what”) is memory of facts and events, and refers to those memories that can be consciously recalled (or "declared"). Procedural memory (“knowing how”) is the unconscious memory of skills and how to do things, particularly the use of objects or movements of the body, such as tying a shoelace, playing a guitar or riding a bike. These memories are typically acquired through repetition and practice, and are composed of automatic sensor motor behaviors that are so deeply embedded, we are no longer aware of them.

Declarative memory can be sub-divided into episodic memory and semantic memory. Episodic memory represents our memory of experiences and specific events in time in a serial form, from which we can reconstruct the actual events that took place at any given point in our lives. It is the memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions and other contextual knowledge) that can be explicitly stated. Semantic memory, on the other hand, is a more structured record of meanings, concepts and knowledge about the external world that we have learned from others. It refers to general knowledge, shared with and by others, and is independent of personal experience. Much of semantic memory is abstract, relational and symbolic. Declarative semantic memory is called collective memory.

When Alph turned six, Mum made good on her promise and took her son to the place in the earth where the clan came to gather and rituals were performed, where Ra held services and the young were taught the ways of the clan and Mother Goddess. Mum took him to Chauvet cave.

They walked and then climbed for a good bit in silence that morning. The cave entrance was high above the river on the side of the plateau. Once there, Alph turned and looked down to see the camp below and felt the breeze you feel when it blows across a rock cliff. The tree leaves swirled reflecting the sun's rays. His excitement was overwhelming. He stepped into the darkness reaching out for Mum. He smelled the cave; he felt the moist clay floor and heard the rush of the breeze from outside. His eyes dilated as he moved forward. Mum lit fires and the cave exploded in light. Alph screamed! 

There on the cave walls in front and above him were all the animals of his world; horses, deer, bear, lions, mammoth, rhinoceros and some that didn't have names. He screamed again and grabbed at Mum. Mum calmly told Alph to be quiet and to listen to her. She sat down on the floor and laid out her drawing tools. 

Time seemed to past quickly as Mum talked and drew a picture of a bison on the cave ceiling. Alph held a torch for her. She told him of the history of the clan. There had been many more people when she was young but that there had been a split, with some people leaving. She was very proud that her mother was the clan Shaman and that the Mother Goddess was proud of him. She talked about the bison. She told him to always remember that each animal and plant had a spirit and that his spirit was strong.

Then it was time to go. As they walked back to camp, his mind raced with what he had felt and heard. Although Mum had told him there would be many more climbs up the cliff wall, Alph knew that he would never forget his first day in the cave.