Self Comes to Mind

because they have acquired the ability to transmit signals electrochemically, dispatch those signals to a variety of places in an organism, and constitute circuits and systems of enormous complexity. They are body cells, exquisitely dependent on nutrients as all body cells are, differing mostly in their ability to play tricks that other body cells cannot play, and firmly set on their attitude to live long, if possible as long as their owners. The body-brain separation has been somewhat exaggerated since the neurons that make up the brain are body cells, something that does have a bearing on the body-mind problem.
    Once neurons are in place inside organisms capable of movement, life changes in a way that nature denied to plants. A relentless progression of functional complexity begins, from ever more elaborate behaviors to mind processes and eventually to consciousness. One secret behind this complexification is now clear. It has to do both with the sheer number of neurons available in a given organism and, just as important, with the patterns in which they are organized as circuits of gradually larger and larger scales, all the way up into macroscopic brain regions that form systems with intricate functional articulations. The combined significance of neuron numbers and organization pattern is the reason why it is not possible to approach the problems of behavior and mind by relying exclusively on the investigation of individual neurons, or of the molecules that act on them, or of the genes involved in the running of their life. Studying individual neurons, microcircuits, molecules, and genes is indispensable in order to understand the problem comprehensively. But the mind and behavior of apes and humans are so different because of the number of brain elements and the pattern of organization of those elements.
    Nervous systems developed as managers of life and curators of biological value, assisted at first by unbrained dispositions but eventually by images, that is, minds. The emergence of mind produced spectacular improvements in life regulation for numerous species, even when images lacked fine detail and lasted only during the perceptual moment, entirely vanishing thereafter. The brains of social insects are an example of those achievements, amazingly sophisticated and yet somewhat inflexible, vulnerable to interruptions of their behavioral sequences, and not yet capable of holding representations in a temporary working memory space. Minded behavior became very complex in numerous nonhuman species, but it is arguable that the flexibility and creativity that hallmark human performance could not have emerged from a generic mind alone. The mind had to be protagonized, had to be enriched by a self process arising in its midst.
    Once self comes to mind, the game of life changes, albeit timidly at first. Images of the internal and external worlds can be organized in a cohesive way around the protoself and become oriented by the homeostatic requirements of the organism. Then the devices of reward and punishment and drives and motivations, which had been shaping the life process in earlier stages of evolution, help with the development of complex emotions. Then social intelligence begins to be flexible. The eventual presence of the core self is followed by an expansion of mental processing space, of conventional memory and recall, of working memory, and of reasoning. Life regulation focuses on a gradually more well-defined individual. Eventually the autobiographical self emerges, and with its arrival the regulation of life changes radically.
    If nature can be regarded as indifferent, careless, and unconscionable, then human consciousness creates the possibility of questioning nature’s ways. The emergence of human consciousness is associated with evolutionary developments in brain, behavior, and mind that ultimately lead to the creation of culture, a radical novelty in the sweep of natural history. The appearance of neurons, with its attending diversification of behavior and paving of the way into minds, constitutes a momentous event in the grand trajectory. But the appearance of conscious brains eventually capable of flexible self-reflection is the next momentous event. It is the opening of the way into a rebellious, albeit imperfect response to the dictates of a careless nature.
    How did the independent and rebellious mind develop? One can only speculate, and the pages ahead are a mere sketch of an immensely complex