Speculations on the emergence of self-awareness in big-brained organisms

This paper argues that self-awareness is a learned behavior that emerges in organisms whose brains have a sufficiently integrated, complex ability for associative learning and memory. Continual sensory input of information related to the organism causes the organism’s brain to learn the physical characteristics of the organism, in the sense that neural pathways are produced that are reinforced by, and therefore recognize, various features associated with the organism. More precisely, continual sensory input leads to the formation of a set of associations that may be termed an organismal “selfimage”. The formation of a self-image, combined with an ability for sufficiently complex associative memory and learning, provides a mechanistic basis for the emergence of various behaviors that are typically associated with self-awareness. Self-recognition is the classic example. However, selfawareness in humans includes additional behaviors such as recognition of self-awareness, the concept of “I”, and various existential and religious questions. After providing the basic mechanistic basis for the emergence of an organismal self-image, this paper proceeds to go through a representative list of behaviors associated with self-awareness, and shows how associative memory and learning, combined with an organismal self-image and, in the case of humans, language, leads to the emergence of these various behaviors. This paper also discusses various tautologies that invariably emerge when discussing self-awareness, that ultimately prevent an unambiguous resolution to the various existential issues that arise. We continue with various speculations on manipulating self-awareness, and discuss how concepts from set and logic may provide a highly useful set of tools in computational neuroscience for understanding the emergence of higher cognitive functions in complex organisms. The existence of other types of awareness, and the role of mirror neurons in the emergence of self-awareness, are also briefly discussed.