Chapter
Eleven
The function of consciousness
Another set of theories also gives consciousness its own survival value, but for
social rather than individual reasons.
SOCIAL FUNCTION
Once upon a time there were animals ancestral to man who were not
conscious. That is not to say that these animals lacked brains. They
were no doubt percipient, intelligent, complexly motivated creatures,
whose internal control mechanisms were in many respects the equals
of our own. But it is to say that they had no way of looking in upon the
mechanism. They had clever brains, but blank minds. [They] . . . went
about their lives, deeply ignorant of an inner explanation for their own
behaviour.(Humphrey, 1983, pp. 48–49)So begins Humphrey’s ‘Just-So Story’ of the evolution of consciousness: a story to
explain how and why we humans became conscious.
Humphrey describes his own surprise and pleasure at coming across Wittgenstein
and behaviourism, and discovering the ‘naughty idea’ that human consciousness
might be useless. ‘But it is a naughty idea which has, I think, had a good run, and
now should be dismissed’ (1987, p. 378). Consciousness must make a difference,
he concludes, or else it would not have evolved.
Developing his theory in the 1980s, he treated consciousness as an ‘emergent
property’. Emergent properties are those, like wetness, hardness, or the weather,
which are properties of a combination of things, but not of those things alone.
So, for example, the wetness of water is not a property of either hydrogen or oxy-
gen but emerges when the two form molecules of H 2 O. Humphrey also describes
consciousness as a ‘surface feature’, an emergent property that arises out of the
combined action of the brain’s parts, and on which natural selection can act. For
example, the insulating properties of fur on an animal’s body are a surface fea-
ture of hairy skin, and they are visible to natural selection, and have evolved for
obvious reasons: the warmth is what matters to the animal’s survival. So why did
consciousness evolve?
Humphrey’s answer is that the function of consciousness is social. Like our close
relatives the chimpanzees, we live in highly complex social groups, and like them,
our ancestors must have made friends and enemies, formed and broken alliances,
judged who was trustworthy or not, and so needed the skills of understanding,
predicting, and manipulating the behaviour of others in their group. In other
words, they became ‘natural psychologists’.
Rather than just watching others and noting the consequences, as a behaviourist
might, imagine what would happen if one of these ancestral creatures could
watch itself. Imagine that early hominid Suzy notices that ferocious Mick has a
large piece of food and that her friend Sally is close by, obviously hoping to get
some. Should Suzy join in and help Sally snatch it? Should she distract Mick by
grooming him so that Sally can get it? If she does, will Sally share the food with
her afterwards? By asking, ‘What would I do in the circumstances?’, Suzy the natu-
ral psychologist can make a better decision.