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Darwin’s Theory: Darwin thought human evolution was just a continuation of animal evolution. He didn’t fully grasp how different human consciousness is from animal awareness.Synthetic Theory: This theory recognizes that human culture is important, but it doesn’t explain how culture emerged from biology. It treats culture as a separate process, not an integral part of human evolution.Sociobiology: This theory tries to explain everything through genes, including human behaviour and culture. It reduces human complexity to biological determinism.
Consciousness is Acquired: We aren’t born conscious. We learn to be conscious through social interaction.Speech is Assertive Communication: When we speak, we communicate our experience with an awareness of ourselves as communicators. Self-awareness is the foundation of consciousness.Speech Creates a Shared World: Through speech, we share our conscious experiences with others, creating a common understanding of reality.
Speech as a New Form of Reproduction: Speech transmits the ability to experience consciously. It’s a new way of inheriting traits, not through genes but through social learning.Cultural Evolution: Human culture is the environment where consciousness is nurtured and developed. It’s a dynamic process that shapes and is shaped by individual consciousness.Self-Selection: Human evolution is driven by the need to adapt not just to the physical world, but to the social world of shared consciousness. We evolve by selecting traits that help us thrive as conscious selves.
Understanding Human History: Dewart’s theory can help us understand the course of human history as the evolution of consciousness through cultural change.Addressing Social Problems: By understanding the origins of consciousness, we can gain insights into the causes of social problems and how to address them.Appreciating Human Uniqueness: The theory highlights the unique nature of human consciousness and its profound impact on our evolution and our world.
Chapter IV: The Generation of Consciousness by Speech
Dewart presents a novel theory of human evolution, arguing that consciousness is not genetically inherited but is generated and transmitted through speech. He states that a more adequate understanding of the nature of speech is the key to understanding how consciousness evolved aboriginally and criticizes existing biological theories for reductionism and an inability to account for the unique aspects of human consciousness and culture. Dewart outlines how speech acts as a new form of heredity, enabling the reproduction of consciousness from one generation to the next, and discusses the implications of this theory for understanding human history and behaviour.
Problems with Existing Theories
Existing theories assume that human characteristics are governed by the same laws of inheritance as animals and overlook key differences between human consciousness and animal communication. The synthetic theory, while acknowledging the irreducibility of socio-cultural processes, fails to explain how cultural evolution emerged from organic evolution and how it contributes to the evolution of human nature. He also criticizes sociobiology for its reductionist view that all human behaviour is ultimately determined by genes.
How Speech Creates Consciousness
Human consciousness is not an innate, genetically inherited trait, but rather a skill acquired through the social interaction of speech. Speech acts as a new form of heredity, transmitting the ability to experience consciously from one generation to the next. This is in contrast to biological theories that view consciousness as reducible to organic functions and transmitted genetically.
The Evolution of Consciousness
The assertive nature of human communication, where individuals are aware that they are communicating, leads to a form of self-communication. This self-communication, in turn, makes experience present to itself, generating consciousness. Despite the experiential basis, in animal communication there is no awareness of the act of communication.
Speech, or the act of speaking, communicates not information but rather the ability to experience consciously. The communication of functional information acts as a new form of heredity, generating qualities of experience that were not genetically present in the recipient. This, in turn, establishes a new evolutionary mechanism, termed “self-selection”. Self-selection operates at the level of consciousness and is driven by the need for self-identity and self-definition.
Implications of the Theory
His theory provides a framework for understanding human history as a continuation of the evolution of consciousness through cultural means. It offers a way to interpret cultural changes, discern patterns in history, and understand the emergence of both positive and negative aspects of human behaviour.
Dewart suggests that there is a link between the evolution of consciousness and the emergence of psychological disorders. Moreover, self-selection, while driven by consciousness, does not necessarily imply conscious control over human evolution and proposes that much of human evolution through self-selection occurs non-consciously.
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