Chapter 22 - The serpent’s gift: evolutionary psychology and consciousness

Summary

This chapter focuses on the role of consciousness in determining particular human adaptations. It examines the role of consciousness from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. The chapter first introduces the basic concepts of evolutionary psychology. Next, it provides a brief description of human brain evolution, along with speculations as to how human consciousness emerged. The chapter moves on to examine evidence for higher order cognition in chimpanzees, which serve as imperfect models for what the common ancestor of apes and human beings may have been like. It discusses the impact that consciousness made on human evolution. The chapter proposes that consciousness endowed human beings with information sui generis in the form of mental states, and that once consciousness became standardized in human cognition, a new suite of adaptive behaviors evolved to satisfy its unique demands.