On the origin of consciousness

What is today conceptualized as consciousness has changed from earlier conceptions. For example, Jaynes’ concept of bicameralism is 20th century though he employs the metaphors of Cartesian faculty psychology. Since the 17th century, the idea has grown that the mind is composed of distinct faculties that take care of different categories of mental activities: a faculty of memory, imagination, understanding, reasoning, will, etc.

One of the most ancient forms of dualism: the distinction between appearance and reality has pre-Socratic origins, but again it is Descartes who is the modern culprit of the dualism many still labor under. Dualism is currently suffering from critiques of post-modernism, as well as, non-Western philosophies: Daoism and Buddhism.

While persons may have been self aware since Paleolithic times, what they thought (how they represented) the self was has changed over time as well. For some, the idea of a permanent self is itself an illusion.

The evolution of consciousness is different from the mental activities that are exclusively human, such as the use of metaphor, symbol and other language-based forms of representation.

“Only creatures capable of surveying their own representations (and recognizing these representations as theirs), only creatures capable of taking up the intentional stance toward themselves, deserve to be described as thinking” (page 160, John Heil, Philosophy of Mind: a contemporary introduction, 2nd edition, Routledge Publishers, New York, USA, 2006).

Yes . . Allan

And

Cartesian Psychology dualism is also a form of the “subject object split” but using the terms mental substance as different from material substance.

In Freud’s model, “pre-consciousness” is the area where all the faculties, that you mentioned, occur with the exception of memory which he places in the unconscious in two chambered memory as previously stated.

Yes, Taoism and Buddhism responds to the subject object split very differently than the West due to the awareness of Qi and learning to work with it to join harmoniously the subject with the forms outside himself and with himself as form.

While I did not complete my reading of Descartes, I read something about a particular form of mind training he did with himself. So, I tried it on for size . . . it is brilliant! I wrote a poem about the exercise and will share it if I come across it.

To that which you quoted I say . . .Yes! I have given everything I see and think all the meaning that is has for me!