In the light of evolution VII: The human mental machinery.
In his Notebook C, Darwin gave us one of his first insights into human nature. There, referring to the human being, Darwin wrote: “He is Mammalian—his origin has not been indefinite—he is not a deity, his end under present form will come, (or how dreadfully we are deceived) then he is no exception.—he possesses some of the same general instincts, & moral feelings as animals.—they on the other hand cannot reason—but Man has reasoning powers in excess. Instead of definite instincts—this is a replacement in mental machinery—so analogous to what we see in bodily, that it does not stagger me.” (1)
As Darwin noted, our mental machinery makes us different. For instance, it allows us to ask about ourselves, about what a human is. It enables us to question what we are and the ways in which we reached our current nature. One thing we have discovered is that humans possess certain unique mental traits. Self-reflection, as well as ethic and aesthetic values, is among them, constituting an essential part of what we call the human condition. The human mental machinery led our species to have self-awareness but, at the same time, a sense of justice, willing to punish unfair actions even if the consequences of such outrages harm our own interests. Also, we appreciate searching for novelties, listening to music, viewing beautiful pictures, or living in well-designed houses.
However, why is this so? What is the meaning of our tendency, among other particularities, to defend and share values, to evaluate the rectitude of our actions and the beauty of our surroundings? The human mental machinery obviously refers to the brain, so the answer to the preceding questions must come from neural considerations. What brain mechanisms correlate with the human capacity to maintain inner speech, or to carry out judgments of value? To what extent are they different from other primates’ comparable behaviors?
This collection of colloquium papers aims to survey what has been learned about the human “mental machinery” since Darwin's insights. The colloquium brought together leading scientists who have worked on brain and mental traits. Their 16 contributions focus the objective of better understanding human brain processes, their evolution, and their eventual shared mechanisms with other animals. The articles are grouped into three primary sections: current study of the mind/brain relationships; the primate evolutionary continuity; and the human difference: from ethics to aesthetics.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Jun 18;110 Suppl 2:10339-42. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1307207110. Epub 2013 Jun 10.
