Consciousness Begins

Consciousness Begins

Copyright © 2019, 2020 by Brett A Hayward

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-1035-3 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-1034-6 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-1036-0 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Brain

In the Beginning

Brains Evolve

1. Sensory Input

2. Inside the Brain

3. Aspects of Cognition

Brain Function

Neurohormonal System

Logic and Emotions

Thoughts Affect Evolution

New Connections

Vacuums Already Filled

Chapter 2 Examples of Animal Behaviour

Chapter 3 Ancient Minds

Ancient Thinking

War

Two Types of Migration

Two Types of Migrants?

More Food

Increased Brain Power

Synapses

Penetration of Expression

Alternate States of Mind

Gene Protection/Prevention

The Mind Expands

Being Human

Food Contributes

Big Trouble

Temperature Could be a Factor

Culling

Inbreeding

Social Evolution

Artifacts

The Time-Tech Principle

Intelligences

Conceptualization

Conclusion: Levels of Conceptualization

Implications of These Stories

Chapter 4 Neandertal

Neandertal Editorial

Sapiens, the Current King

Neandertal was Strong!

More Details on Skulls

Versatility

Neandertal Speaks

Neandertal Inhibited Sapiens Expansion?

Neandertal Peters Out

Interbreeding

Chapter 5 Spirituality

The Fourth Survival Factor

Mental Health

Fear

Origins of Spirituality

Trances and Visions

Shapes, Travel, and Animal Spirits

Shapes

The Physics of Entoptic Visions

Travel

Animal Spirits

More on Altered States of Consciousness and Art

Today’s Caves

Sum of Spirituality

Today

Unravelling a Process Doesn’t Arrive at the Beginning

Tangible and Intangible

Chapter 6 Language

Start of Language

Comparing Processes

Love and Language

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Music and Language

Chapter 7 Bacteria Rule the World

Chapter 8 The Animals

Dogs and Hormones

Dogs and Sapiens

Domestication of Plants and Animals

Agriculture

Extinction of all the Large Mammals

Infection

A Theory of Vegetation

More on Climate

People per Square Mile, 10,000 Years Ago

Animals in Old North America

Combine People and Animals

Chapter 9 Tuatha de Danaan

The Start

Spirals

Origins of the Boyne Builders

The Journey

The Cousin to New Grange

Where did the Makers Go?

Missing Village

There are Other Examples

Conclusions

Bibliography

About the Author

Introduction

Scientists, whether they know it or not, are seekers. Some scientists focus on one riddle, and it can become their life’s work. All the answers to all the questions come together as one body of knowledge that seeks to unravel the mysteries of the universe. From molecules and galaxies to life and now to us, thinking: How did things get to be what they are today? How do things work?

There are three major turning points of existence for which we cannot fully explain their apparent de novo arising. These three are: the start of the universe, the start of life, and the start of consciousness. The first is called the Big Bang, I referred to the second (in my first book) as the Little Bang, and the third we might label the Clever Explosion. —Clever Bang doesn’t sound right.

After these three events, everything followed transitions between states. After the Big Bang, hydrogen fused in that blast furnace to make helium and then the stars made all the other elements and the planets. With life, we see the chemical variability in DNA working with environmental pressures to create new species. With cognizance, we can see the increasing complexity of life, whereby some species attained more behaviours in their survival suites, as a result of increasing neurological abilities, and sometimes as the cause of them. A definite and profound change occurred at each of the three turning points. Each change might have been just one more tiny, crucial step, but we cannot discount an as-yet-unknown trigger point.

We observe that many of the guiding processes of the universe are simple, elegant and very consistent, and so if our theories get too convoluted, we might be on the wrong track. So it is with biology and the study of life. The final aim of life is to pass on DNA, preserved in the cells of organisms; and so life pushes for maximum varieties of species with the largest numbers of individuals possible. Yet within that seemingly random battlefield, the guiding processes still have to be simple and elegant. Just like with theories in physics.

In evolutionary biology we see that the creation of plant life was an essential stepping stone that paved the way for animal life. This is an example of little steps that amount to extraordinary differences. Mitochondria might have been free-living organisms before existing cells enveloped them and they became organelles within all cells. This would have been a major step forward in the handling of energy within cells; rather than cells just digesting the mitochondria, the cells would have worked with the mitochondria. It might also have been one of those crucial steps that turbocharged simpler cells, enabling them to attain the complexity of eukaryotes. These turbocharged cells then might have gobbled up chloroplasts, photosynthetic organisms (converting sunshine and air into carbon matter), to act as specialist organelles in new cells that would soon create plant life. This was the merging of cell, mitochondria and chloroplast, synthesized into a new creation. So, what might, at a glance, look like a leap of progress could have been the result of a number of smaller steps, with one crucial step creating the new way of being.

Science would inquire as to how this came about, while we might ponder why life bothered when everything had been working just fine as it was. For instance, Homo sapiens (Sapiens) reached a level of consciousness that their ancestors (Erectus and others), cousin (Neandertal), other primates, and other species did not. What was that step? How and why did it happen?

Cognition is defined as the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thoughts, experience and the senses. This definition is limited, as it does not address the results of cognition, without which there is no proof or evidence of cognition. Also, we talk about thoughts, and we all know what we are talking about, but the scientific world does not really know what a thought is.

In his Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? book, Frans de Waal modifies the definition of cognition to

the mental transformation of sensory input into knowledge about the environment and the flexible application of this knowledge.

This is closer to a working definition, one that speaks of intelligence that attains goals, regardless of the number of neurons a species in question has at its disposal.

Consciousness is one step further in the cognitive process and that much harder to elucidate. It is an expanded level of cognition that includes awareness of environment but also of self—or in a broader sense—of an awakening of the awareness of existence. And that is what this book is about—the Clever Explosion. This attainment of consciousness has given rise to so much that it appears to have been a paradigm leap responsible for exponential growth in technological abilities.

There are many abilities in the animal kingdom that Sapiens do not have, but consciousness, with its start probably just before we left Africa about 60,000 years ago, is an aspect of the mind that has carried us to technological highs and destructive lows. Although we dominate in this realm, we do not own consciousness, and just as sure as science is finding out how many species have cognitive abilities and to what degree, so we will see that animals have varying levels and types of consciousness.

To be clear, conscience is not part of this book as conscience deals with internal moral judgment, social pressures, guilt, and all the facets of right versus wrong.

In discussing cognition and consciousness we will need to draw upon a broad list of disciplines. Our old friends, Neandertal, get their own chapter. Sapiens walked this Earth with the Neandertal, and even though they are no longer with us, they could impart important knowledge to us about cognition.

Here and there a comparison between Europe and New Guinea pops up. This arose from the initial question by Yali, a New Guinea man, that spurred Jarod Diamond to write his book Guns, Germs and Steel (GGS). Yali asked Diamond, Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own? and GGS attempts to answer this question. As the New Guinea people, until fairly recently, had not had contact with the outside world and were found living with a Stone Age technology, it seems appropriate to extend that conversation, whenever it fits with the discussion.

So, I humbly submit this book of ideas to you.

Chapter 1

The Brain

In the Beginning

As far as we know, the universe is moving to more chaos, more randomness, with molecules moving apart, and the galaxies accelerating away from a starting epicentre. We all know the theory of the beginning of the universe, where super hot matter and energy blasted apart, condensing into stars and their planets, in huge swirling galaxies. This was the formation of the physical universe, and one of the handiest reminders of it is the surface of the moon, pock-marked with asteroid impacts. The far side is worse, as it took the brunt of incoming space junk. Lucky for us, over billions of years most of these leftover chunks of matter have found an orbit or crashed into a planet or star. That formative time was organizational. Although molecules still obey the law of entropy, which means that given the chance they would spin off into maximum randomness, gravity brings them together into planets and their suns.

About a billion years after Earth formed, seemingly against the universal urge to randomness, a biological cell came into being. It was a lot different inside than outside the cell. Inside, thousands of biochemical functions were operating to maintain the living cell’s unique integrity. As an encore, this highly organized tiny being exactly reproduced itself. You have to wonder what the driving force was for life to arise at all, and then for it to have the organizational ability to replicate. A billion years later, the first cells with a nucleus arose, the eukaryotes. Within each eukaryote’s nucleus was DNA, now one more step protected from both the chaos of the world and the busyness inside the cell. Single-cell life, at a level not visible to the naked eye, was progressing, although two billion years is a long time to go from no life to eukaryotic life.

The first cells had a metabolic way of doing things that did not need oxygen; later, cells evolved that produced oxygen. You hear of nutritionists telling us about needing anti-oxidants, or to consume ingredients that go against oxygenation, and we know that oxidized iron is rust, a bad thing. In the same way this new abundance of oxygen was toxic to the first living residents. There had been little oxygen in the atmosphere, but over time, these tiny oxygen-producing beings created an atmosphere with lots of it. Now, almost all life on Earth depends on oxygen to survive, and phytoplankton in the oceans produce most of it. It makes you realize that the biosphere is really a complex, interconnected entity, and that the oceans could use better care.

Fast-forward a few more billion years and mammals show up, about 200 million years ago. Then Sapiens became distinct from their cousins about 200 thousand years ago. Over 100,000 years ago, we made attempts to leave Africa. We got to China, Morocco and Israel, but did not successfully colonize. Then, about 60,000 years ago there was another exodus of about 150 people; these people became the ancestors to all humans on Earth outside of sub-Saharan Africa. Within Africa, the original home of our species, remains the greatest genetic diversity of humans.

Brains Evolve

One step in the universe became the platform for the next to build on: from nothing to something, then gas to rock, mud puddle to life, simple life to complex life, primate to hominin, and ultimately to us. How did we mentally leave the animal world and become human? What exactly makes us human? The attainment of consciousness is likely part of it.

At some point in all the natural, free-flowing progression/evolution of hominins, somebody, somewhere became aware of existence, of life and death, and in that process, the conceptualization of a non-material/spiritual realm. It is doubtful it happened to any appreciable degree in dinosaurs over their 150-million-year reign, as we do not have cathedrals and silicon chips as evidence, but consciousness is seen in glimpses throughout the animal world today, through the behaviour of many species. Sapiens’ brains are functioning in increasingly complex ways, while, based on artifacts so far, the brains of Erectus and Neandertal stayed fairly consistent over enormous time periods. What is different about Sapiens’ brains and minds that set us on this trajectory of increasingly complex thoughts and therefore more complex technology?

To get started, we need to look briefly at:

1.the input of data into the mind,

2.how the brain works, and

3.some aspects of cognition.

1. Sensory Input

We know of our senses—sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. There are also other means of gathering data from the local environment, such as echolocation (bats, dolphins), infrared vision (butterflies), infrasound (whales, elephants), night vision (cats), super-sight (raptor birds), super-smell (dogs), and super-taste (snakes and reptiles). And when we see swirling masses of starlings in flight or huge schools of fish moving in unison, integrations of super-touch (air or water currents; electricity) are likely involved. So, humans have some sensory abilities, but few that are stellar in the animal world.

To transpose input from the senses into usable data about the environment, the brain must translate all input into neurological activity. What this means is that every sensory organ has to be attached to a nerve that can carry information to the brain:

•Eyes—visible electromagnetic radiation stimulates the eyes’ specialized nerve endings, called retinal rods and cones.

•Ears—sound waves vibrate the eardrum, and nerves attached to the eardrum carry the information to the brain.

•Skin—there are several specialized nerve endings for touch, such as pain, heat/cold, itch, and stimulated directly by force, such as pressure, cutting, or radiation.

•Mouth and Nose—chemicals stimulate nerve endings for taste and smell (flavour).

The purpose of the senses is to get our needs met by being able to seek out and detect nutrients and oxygen, avoid toxins and predators, and—for most animals, plants, and insects—to find a sex partner, as passing on DNA is the whole point of the exercise. The first primitive, free-living, eyeless and earless animal likely used touch as its dominant sense, as vibration through water amounts to hearing, and chemicals could be pleasant or noxious, but transcribed as feeling.

2. Inside the Brain

While we can all agree the brain is the organ that does our thinking and is definitely the spokesperson for the rest of the body, it would be good to leave room