As a person who lived in a religious environment, a question that kept re-emerging was: where do I get my soul or spirit, which shapes my character, creates a zest for life, and gives energy to my moral existence? I was told that these can’t be done merely with non-conscious molecules and neurons; there must be something “indivisible” and “nonmaterial” in me or with me. Religion offers a short answer to this mystery--soul. When I was very young, I was fascinated by one of the most influential Islamic theologians, Al-Ghazzali, and one of his books, “Incoherence of the Philosophers.” In it he denied any connection between soul and body for a good reason—to refute any causality between them. He believed that our soul is “incorporeal” and “is not the cause of our body.” Al-Ghazzali himself did not believe that his claim can be proved by rational arguments. He thought that the scope of philosophy is limited in the realm of causality, despite the fact that there is no cause in the natural course of events; “it is because God has created them in that fashion.” He believed that the position of philosophers in proving the existence of soul and Supreme Being is untenable because the quiddity of soul and Supreme Being can not be understood by mundane means—those are off the map of creation where no cause is at all. He writes, “[I]f [body] can be eternal, it will have no cause at all.” The problem that I have with this argument is that if the causality of an event were an absurd product of human imagination, then the punishments and rewards that, they believe, are dispensed in the hereafter would be meaningless; because its very premise is based on the notion of causality. Al-Ghazzali’s thoughts seemingly changed the direction of the course of history in the Islamic world because he rejected the notion of causality and reasoning. He promoted the idea of submission and Taqlid (Taqlid is a term used in Islamic theology for the acceptance of religious concepts and rules without evidence). His beliefs were disastrous for a most flourishing period of the Islamic era. Although Ibn Rushd in his book, “the Incoherence of the Incoherence”, tried to confine the damage done by Al-Ghazzali, Al-Ghazzali’s beliefs had prevailed over rational voices such as Ibn Sina and Farabi.

When I came to America in 1998, I had no answer to that legitimate question: where do I get my soul or spirit? To grasp the theological argument about soul in the Christian faith, I read one of Augustine’s books, De Animae Quantitate. In it he explicitly defined the soul as “a special substance, endowed with reason, adapted to rule the body.” In a logical way of thinking about his definition, one may ponder that if we supposed that the proposition of nonmaterial and indivisible entity, as Augustine and even Descartes put it, were right, then we would encounter a logical difficulty of understanding how a wraithlike “substance”, as Augustine called it, has a material locus--the brain. For instance, anyone who has witnessed the significant changes in personality and character of a stroke survivor would admit that the damaged part of the brain has severely disturbed the soul and in some cases caused irreversible harm to it. Therefore, there must be a necessary connection between the cause, brain damage, and the effect, changed character and personality. As David Hume put it, the cause necessitates its effect. From this, one can easily understand that the soul can’t be indivisible or immortal in Augustine’s sense.  Ironically, the doctrine of the immortal soul has recently been ruled out by a Christian theologian, Frederick Buechner, in the light of considerable evidence about how the brain functions. Buechner referred to a part of the Apostles Creed, “resurrection of the body,” concluding “we go to our graves as dead as a doornail and are given our lives back again by God (i.e., resurrected) just as we were given them by God in the first place." The idea is still maddeningly obscure because the notion of the “resurrection of the body” creates a huge desire in some of its followers to die young. William James in one of his essays, “Does Consciousness Exist?”, pointed out a very important historical development of how the meaning of the soul has gradually been changing from “transcendental entity” to  “transcendental ego.” He wrote, “"[the soul] attenuates itself to a thoroughly ghostly condition, being only a name for the fact that the 'content' of experience IS KNOWN."(p. 2).

Drifting inexorably from one school of thought to another, I found out that there must be a mechanism for consciousness from which we can answer that legitimate question of our existence, understand what we are and what we can be, rethink our perceptions of humanity, and ultimately reformulate the whole structure of our civilization based on that new philosophy of human nature. I realized that consciousness is an important key available to us whereby we are able to make sense of “self” and “I.” Consciousness is a vital ingredient of our being--without it we would be in some form of vegetative state, delirium, or mutism. Oddly, this very salient phenomenon in us has remained a mystery, partly because of its subjective nature. So one may ask, “Why is there any problem at all”? I must admit that the mysteriousness of consciousness has to do with experiences that we have of the outside world. Many believe that every individual may have qualitatively different subjective experiences of a particular event or stimulus, which creates two severe puzzles. On the one hand, there are activities in the brain, which we are unconscious of, such as the activities of the spinal, cerebellar and vestibular reflexes; and there are some activities in the brain, which we are conscious of, such as joy and sadness, pleasure and pain. A scientific question arises from this: how does the brain distinguish between our conscious experiences and unconscious activities of the body? How can the brain marshal the body for action? For example, when we reach out for a cup of tea, the brain sends only discriminated data to appropriate organs. Or when the traffic light turns red, we immediately say, “that is a red light.” How can the brain contain those data and their correlates? How is the brain able to coordinate our conscious and unconscious activities?  The philosopher David Chalmers has dubbed this as the “Easy Problem,” because science will eventually unravel this mystery one way or another. On the other hand, we encounter an insurmountable difficulty when Chalmers challenges us to tackle the “Hard Problem.” The Hard Problem seems to me a similar question to that I had been asking myself for years: where do I get my own soul and spirit? What is it that causes me to have my own private sensations and experiences? How can conscious, subjective experiences arise from over a trillion non-conscious neurons? Chalmers himself asks, “Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all?”

In this documentary, I am trying to answer these questions, or to put it more conservatively, to explore some of the answers to those questions that been given to us by neuroscientists. It seems to me, neuroscience, at its very best, tries not to reject the idea of soul, but to refine the concept in mechanical terms, exorcising the ghostly substance in the genuine, subjective feelings that we have, which we don't really know whether it is real or illusion.  But Thomas Nagel and a few other philosophers believe that it is almost impossible for science to address the Hard Problem; he writes, “If we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue how this could be done.” I argue that this is not the case; there must be a way or ways, directly or indirectly, to study this very obvious phenomenon in the human brain; otherwise the ghost in the body remains the only viable answer to the question of consciousness. Eric Kandel, an American neuroscientist and a winner of the Nobel Prize, believes that neuroscientists have made “considerable progress in understanding the neurobiology of perception and memory without having to account for individual experience. For example, cognitive neural scientists have made advances in understanding the neural basis of the perception of the color blue without addressing the question of how each of us responds to the same blue (p., 382).” In this documentary, I am trying to convince my audience to pass beyond that ghostly image and to think of consciousness as a process rather than imagining a “headquarters” inside the brain and a little observer that sits down there and runs the “show.” I believe that because consciousness is a biological phenomenon, there must be a scientific explanation(s) for it.

The three leading principles which have determined the chief movements of expression—Their inheritance—On the part which the will and intention have played in the acquirement of various expressions—The instinctive recognition of expression—The bearing of our subject on the specific unity of the races of man—On the successive acquirement of various expressions by the progenitors of man—The importance of expression—Conclusion.

I HAVE now described, to the best of my ability, the chief expressive actions in man, and in some few of the lower animals. I have also attempted to explain the origin or development of these actions through the three principles given in the first chapter. The first of these principles is, that movements which are serviceable in gratifying some desire, or in relieving some sensation, if often repeated, become so habitual that they are performed, whether or not of any service, whenever the same desire or sensation is felt, even in a very weak degree.

Our second principle is that of antithesis. The habit of voluntarily performing opposite movements under opposite impulses has become firmly established in us by the practice of our whole lives. Hence, if certain actions have been regularly performed, in accordance with our first principle, under a certain frame of mind, there will be a strong and involuntary tendency to the performance of directly opposite actions, whether or not these are of any use, under the excitement of an opposite frame of mind.

Our third principle is the direct action of the excited nervous system on the body, independently of the will, and independently, in large part, of habit. Experience shows that nerve-force is generated and set free whenever the cerebro-spinal system is excited. The direction which this nerve-force follows is necessarily determined by the lines of connection between the nerve-cells, with each other and with various parts of the body. But the direction is likewise much influenced by habit; inasmuch as nerve-force passes readily along accustomed channels.

The frantic and senseless actions of an enraged man may be attributed in part to the undirected flow of nerve-force, and in part to the effects of habit, for these actions often vaguely represent the act of striking. They thus pass into gestures included under our first principle; as when an indignant man unconsciously throws himself into a fitting attitude for attacking his opponent, though without any intention of making an actual attack. We see also the influence of habit in all the emotions and sensations which are called exciting; for they have assumed this character from having habitually led to energetic action; and action affects, in an indirect manner, the respiratory and circulatory system; and the latter reacts on the brain. Whenever these emotions or sensations are even slightly felt by us, though they may not at the time lead to any exertion, our whole system is nevertheless disturbed through the force of habit and association. Other emotions and sensations are called depressing, because they have not habitually led to energetic action, excepting just at first, as in the case of extreme pain, fear, and grief, and they have ultimately caused complete exhaustion; they are consequently expressed chiefly by negative signs and by prostration. Again, there are other emotions, such as that of affection, which do not commonly lead to action of any kind, and consequently are not exhibited by any strongly marked outward signs. Affection indeed, in as far as it is a pleasurable sensation, excites the ordinary signs of pleasure.

On the other hand, many of the effects due to the excitement of the nervous system seem to be quite independent of the flow of nerve-force along the channels which have been rendered habitual by former exertions of the will. Such effects, which often reveal the state of mind of the person thus affected, cannot at present be explained; for instance, the change of colour in the hair from extreme terror or grief,-- the cold sweat and the trembling of the muscles from fear,-- the modified secretions of the intestinal canal,--and the failure of certain glands to act.

Notwithstanding that much remains unintelligible in our present subject, so many expressive movements and actions can be explained to a certain extent through the above three principles, that we may hope hereafter to see all explained by these or by closely analogous principles.

Actions of all kinds, if regularly accompanying any state of the mind, are at once recognized as expressive. These may consist of movements of any part of the body, as the wagging of a dog’s tail, the shrugging of a man’s shoulders, the erection of the hair, the exudation of perspiration, the state of the capillary circulation, laboured breathing, and the use of the vocal or other sound-producing instruments. Even insects express anger, terror, jealousy, and love by their stridulation. With man the respiratory organs are of especial importance in expression, not only in a direct, but in a still higher degree in an indirect manner.

Few points are more interesting in our present subject than the extraordinarily complex chain of events which lead to certain expressive movements. Take, for instance, the oblique eyebrows of a man suffering from grief or anxiety. When infants scream loudly from hunger or pain, the circulation is affected, and the eyes tend to become gorged with blood: consequently the muscles surrounding the eyes are strongly contracted as a protection: this action, in the course of many generations, has become firmly fixed and inherited: but when, with advancing years and culture, the habit of screaming is partially repressed, the muscles round the eyes still tend to contract, whenever even slight distress is felt: of these muscles, the pyramidals of the nose are less under the control of the will than are the others and their contraction can be checked only by that of the central fasciae of the frontal muscle: these latter fasciae draw up the inner ends of the eyebrows, and wrinkle the forehead in a peculiar manner, which we instantly recognize as the expression of grief or anxiety. Slight movements, such as these just described, or the scarcely perceptible drawing down of the corners of the mouth, are the last remnants or rudiments of strongly marked and intelligible movements. They are as full of significance to us in regard to expression, as are ordinary rudiments to the naturalist in the classification and genealogy of organic beings.

That the chief expressive actions, exhibited by man and by the lower animals, are now innate or inherited,--that is, have not been learnt by the individual,--is admitted by every one. So little has learning or imitation to do with several of them that they are from the earliest days and throughout life quite beyond our control; for instance, the relaxation of the arteries of the skin in blushing, and the increased action of the heart in anger. We may see children, only two or three years old, and even those born blind, blushing from shame; and the naked scalp of a very young infant reddens from passion. Infants scream from pain directly after birth, and all their features then assume the same form as during subsequent years. These facts alone suffice to show that many of our most important expressions have not been learnt; but it is remarkable that some, which are certainly innate, require practice in the individual, before they are performed in a full and perfect manner; for instance, weeping and laughing. The inheritance of most of our expressive actions explains the fact that those born blind display them, as I hear from the Rev. R. H. Blair, equally well with those gifted with eyesight. We can thus also understand the fact that the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.

We are so familiar with the fact of young and old animals displaying their feelings in the same manner, that we hardly perceive how remarkable it is that a young puppy should wag its tail when pleased, depress its ears and uncover its canine teeth when pretending to be savage, just like an old dog; or that a kitten should arch its little back and erect its hair when frightened and angry, like an old cat. When, however, we turn to less common gestures in ourselves, which we are accustomed to look at as artificial or conventional,-- such as shrugging the shoulders, as a sign of impotence, or the raising the arms with open hands and extended fingers, as a sign of wonder,-- we feel perhaps too much surprise at finding that they are innate. That these and some other gestures are inherited, we may infer from their being performed by very young children, by those born blind, and by the most widely distinct races of man. We should also bear in mind that new and highly peculiar tricks, in association with certain states of the mind, are known to have arisen in certain individuals, and to have been afterwards transmitted to their offspring, in some cases, for more than one generation.

Certain other gestures, which seem to us so natural that we might easily imagine that they were innate, apparently have been learnt like the words of a language. This seems to be the case with the joining of the uplifted hands, and the turning up of the eyes, in prayer. So it is with kissing as a mark of affection; but this is innate, in so far as it depends on the pleasure derived from contact with a beloved person. The evidence with respect to the inheritance of nodding and shaking the head, as signs of affirmation and negation, is doubtful; for they are not universal, yet seem too general to have been independently acquired by all the individuals of so many races.

We will now consider how far the will and consciousness have come into play in the development of the various movements of expression. As far as we can judge, only a few expressive movements, such as those just referred to, are learnt by each individual; that is, were consciously and voluntarily performed during the early years of life for some definite object, or in imitation of others, and then became habitual. The far greater number of the movements of expression, and all the more important ones, are, as we have seen, innate or inherited; and such cannot be said to depend on the will of the individual. Nevertheless, all those included under our first principle were at first voluntarily performed for a definite object,--namely, to escape some danger, to relieve some distress, or to gratify some desire. For instance, there can hardly be a doubt that the animals which fight with their teeth, have acquired the habit of drawing back their ears closely to their heads, when feeling savage, from their progenitors having voluntarily acted in this manner in order to protect their ears from being torn by their antagonists; for those animals which do not fight with their teeth do not thus express a savage state of mind. We may infer as highly probable that we ourselves have acquired the habit of contracting the muscles round the eyes, whilst crying gently, that is, without the utterance of any loud sound, from our progenitors, especially during infancy, having experienced, during the act of screaming, an uncomfortable sensation in their eyeballs. Again, some highly expressive movements result from the endeavour to cheek or prevent other expressive movements; thus the obliquity of the eyebrows and the drawing down of the corners of the mouth follow from the endeavour to prevent a screaming-fit from coming on, or to cheek it after it has come on. Here it is obvious that the consciousness and will must at first have come into play; not that we are conscious in these or in other such cases what muscles are brought into action, any more than when we perform the most ordinary voluntary movements.

With respect to the expressive movements due to the principle of antithesis, it is clear that the will has intervened, though in a remote and indirect manner. So again with the movements coming under our third principle; these, in as far as they are influenced by nerve-force readily passing along habitual channels, have been determined by former and repeated exertions of the will. The effects indirectly due to this latter agency are often combined in a complex manner, through the force of habit and association, with those directly resulting from the excitement of the cerebro-spinal system. This seems to be the case with the increased action of the heart under the influence of any strong emotion. When an animal erects its hair, assumes a threatening attitude, and utters fierce sounds, in order to terrify an enemy, we see a curious combination of movements which were originally voluntary with those that are involuntary. It is, however, possible that even strictly involuntary actions, such as the erection of the hair, may have been affected by the mysterious power of the will.

Some expressive movements may have arisen spontaneously, in association with certain states of the mind, like the tricks lately referred to, and afterwards been inherited. But I know of no evidence rendering this view probable.

The power of communication between the members of the same tribe by means of language has been of paramount importance in the development of man; and the force of language is much aided by the expressive movements of the face and body. We perceive this at once when we converse on an important subject with any person whose face is concealed. Nevertheless there are no grounds, as far as I can discover, for believing that any muscle has been developed or even modified exclusively for the sake of expression. The vocal and other sound-producing organs, by which various expressive noises are produced, seem to form a partial exception; but I have elsewhere attempted to show that these organs were first developed for sexual purposes, in order that one sex might call or charm the other. Nor can I discover grounds for believing that any inherited movement, which now serves as a means of expression, was at first voluntarily and consciously performed for this special purpose,--like some of the gestures and the finger-language used by the deaf and dumb. On the contrary, every true or inherited movement of expression seems to have had some natural and independent origin. But when once acquired, such movements may be voluntarily and consciously employed as a means of communication. Even infants, if carefully attended to, find out at a very early age that their screaming brings relief, and they soon voluntarily practise it. We may frequently see a person voluntarily raising his eyebrows to express surprise, or smiling to express pretended satisfaction and acquiescence. A man often wishes to make certain gestures conspicuous or demonstrative, and will raise his extended arms with widely opened fingers above his head, to show astonishment, or lift his shoulders to his ears, to show that he cannot or will not do something. The tendency to such movements will be strengthened or increased by their being thus voluntarily and repeatedly performed; and the effects may be inherited.

It is perhaps worth consideration whether movements at first used only by one or a few individuals to express a certain state of mind may not sometimes have spread to others, and ultimately have become universal, through the power of conscious and unconscious imitation. That there exists in man a strong tendency to imitation, independently of the conscious will, is certain. This is exhibited in the most extraordinary manner in certain brain diseases, especially at the commencement of inflammatory softening of the brain, and has been called the "echo sign." Patients thus affected imitate, without understanding every absurd gesture which is made, and every word which is uttered near them, even in a foreign language.[1] In the case of animals, the jackal and wolf have learnt under confinement to imitate the barking of the dog. How the barking of the dog, which serves to express various emotions and desires, and which is so remarkable from having been acquired since the animal was domesticated, and from being inherited in different degrees by different breeds, was first learnt we do not know; but may we not suspect that imitation has had something to do with its acquisition, owing to dogs having long lived in strict association with so loquacious an animal as man?

[1] See the interesting facts given by Dr. Bateman on ‘Aphasia,’ 1870, p. 110.

In the course of the foregoing remarks and throughout this volume, I have often felt much difficulty about the proper application of the terms, will, consciousness, and intention. Actions, which were at first voluntary, soon became habitual, and at last hereditary, and may then be performed even in opposition to the will. Although they often reveal the state of the mind, this result was not at first either intended or expected. Even such words as that "certain movements serve as a means of expression" are apt to mislead, as they imply that this was their primary purpose or object. This, however, seems rarely or never to have been the case; the movements having been at first either of some direct use, or the indirect effect of the excited state of the sensorium. An infant may scream either intentionally or instinctively to show that it wants food; but it has no wish or intention to draw its features into the peculiar form which so plainly indicates misery; yet some of the most characteristic expressions exhibited by man are derived from the act of screaming, as has been explained.

Although most of our expressive actions are innate or instinctive, as is admitted by everyone, it is a different question whether we have any instinctive power of recognizing them. This has generally been assumed to be the case; but the assumption has been strongly controverted by M. Lemoine.[2] Monkeys soon learn to distinguish, not only the tones of voice of their masters, but the expression of their faces, as is asserted by a careful observer.[3] Dogs well know the difference between caressing and threatening gestures or tones; and they seem to recognize a compassionate tone. But as far as I can make out, after repeated trials, they do not understand any movement confined to the features, excepting a smile or laugh; and this they appear, at least in some cases, to recognize. This limited amount of knowledge has probably been gained, both by monkeys and dogs, through their associating harsh or kind treatment with our actions; and the knowledge certainly is not instinctive. Children, no doubt, would soon learn the movements of expression in their elders in the same manner as animals learn those of man. Moreover, when a child cries or laughs, he knows in a general manner what he is doing and what he feels; so that a very small exertion of reason would tell him what crying or laughing meant in others. But the question is, do our children acquire their knowledge of expression solely by experience through the power of association and reason?

As most of the movements of expression must have been gradually acquired, afterwards becoming instinctive, there seems to be some degree of a priori probability that their recognition would likewise have become instinctive. There is, at least, no greater difficulty in believing this than in admitting that, when a female quadruped first bears young, she knows the cry of distress of her offspring, or than in admitting that many animals instinctively recognize and fear their enemies; and of both these statements there can be no reasonable doubt. It is however extremely difficult to prove that our children instinctively recognize any expression. I attended to this point in my first-born infant, who could not have learnt anything by associating with other children, and I was convinced that he understood a smile and received pleasure from seeing one, answering it by another, at much too early an age to have learnt anything by experience. When this child was about four months old, I made in his presence many odd noises and strange grimaces, and tried to look savage; but the noises, if not too loud, as well as the grimaces, were all taken as good jokes; and I attributed this at the time to their being preceded or accompanied by smiles. When five months old, he seemed to understand a compassionate, expression and tone of voice. When a few days over six months old, his nurse pretended to cry, and I saw that his face instantly assumed a melancholy expression, with the corners of the mouth strongly depressed; now this child could rarely have seen any other child crying, and never a grown-up person crying, and I should doubt whether at so early an age he could have reasoned on the subject. Therefore it seems to me that an innate feeling must have told him that the pretended crying of his nurse expressed grief; and this through the instinct of sympathy excited grief in him.

[2] ‘La Physionomie et la Parole,’ 1865, pp. 103, 118.

[3] Rengger, ‘Naturgeschichte der Saugethiere von Paraguay,’ 1830, s. 55.

M. Lemoine argues that, if man possessed an innate knowledge of expression, authors and artists would not have found it so difficult, as is notoriously the case, to describe and depict the characteristic signs of each particular state of mind. But this does not seem to me a valid argument.

We may actually behold the expression changing in an unmistakable manner in a man or animal, and yet be quite unable, as I know from experience, to analyse the nature of the change. In the two photographs given by Duchenne of the same old man (Plate III. figs. 5 and 6), almost every one recognized that the one represented a true, and the other a false smile; but I have found it very difficult to decide in what the whole amount of difference consists. It has often struck me as a curious fact that so many shades of expression are instantly recognized without any conscious process of analysis on our part. No one, I believe, can clearly describe a sullen or sly expression; yet many observers are unanimous that these expressions can be recognized in the various races of man. Almost everyone to whom I showed Duchenne’s photograph of the young man with oblique eyebrows (Plate II. fig. 2) at once declared that it expressed grief or some such feeling; yet probably not one of these persons, or one out of a thousand persons, could beforehand have told anything precise about the obliquity of the eyebrows with their inner ends puckered, or about the rectangular furrows on the forehead. So it is with many other expressions, of which I have had practical experience in the trouble requisite in instructing others what points to observe. If, then, great ignorance of details does not prevent our recognizing with certainty and promptitude various expressions, I do not see how this ignorance can be advanced as an argument that our knowledge, though vague and general, is not innate.

I have endeavoured to show in considerable detail that all the chief expressions exhibited by man are the same throughout the world. This fact is interesting, as it affords a new argument in favour of the several races being descended from a single parent-stock, which must have been almost completely human in structure, and to a large extent in mind, before the period at which the races diverged from each other. No doubt similar structures, adapted for the same purpose, have often been independently acquired through variation and natural selection by distinct species; but this view will not explain close similarity between distinct species in a multitude of unimportant details. Now if we bear in mind the numerous points of structure having no relation to expression, in which all the races of man closely agree, and then add to them the numerous points, some of the highest importance and many of the most trifling value, on which the movements of expression directly or indirectly depend, it seems to me improbable in the highest degree that so much similarity, or rather identity of structure, could have been acquired by independent means. Yet this must have been the case if the races of man are descended from several aboriginally distinct species. It is far more probable that the many points of close similarity in the various races are due to inheritance from a single parent-form, which had already assumed a human character.

It is a curious, though perhaps an idle speculation, how early in the long line of our progenitors the various expressive movements, now exhibited by man, were successively acquired. The following remarks will at least serve to recall some of the chief points discussed in this volume. We may confidently believe that laughter, as a sign of pleasure or enjoyment, was practised by our progenitors long before they deserved to be called human; for very many kinds of monkeys, when pleased, utter a reiterated sound, clearly analogous to our laughter, often accompanied by vibratory movements of their jaws or lips, with the corners of the mouth drawn backwards and upwards, by the wrinkling of the cheeks, and even by the brightening of the eyes.

We may likewise infer that fear was expressed from an extremely remote period, in almost the same manner as it now is by man; namely, by trembling, the erection of the hair, cold perspiration, pallor, widely opened eyes, the relaxation of most of the muscles, and by the whole body cowering downwards or held motionless.

Suffering, if great, will from the first have caused screams or groans to be uttered, the body to be contorted, and the teeth to be ground together. But our progenitors will not have exhibited those highly expressive movements of the features which accompany screaming and crying until their circulatory and respiratory organs, and the muscles surrounding the eyes, had acquired their present structure. The shedding of tears appears to have originated through reflex action from the spasmodic contraction of the eyelids, together perhaps with the eyeballs becoming gorged with blood during the act of screaming. Therefore weeping probably came on rather late in the line of our descent; and this conclusion agrees with the fact that our nearest allies, the anthropomorphous apes, do not weep. But we must here exercise some caution, for as certain monkeys, which are not closely related to man, weep, this habit might have been developed long ago in a sub-branch of the group from which man is derived. Our early progenitors, when suffering from grief or anxiety, would not have made their eyebrows oblique, or have drawn down the corners of their mouth, until they had acquired the habit of endeavouring to restrain their screams. The expression, therefore, of grief and anxiety is eminently human.

Rage will have been expressed at a very early period by threatening or frantic gestures, by the reddening of the skin, and by glaring eyes, but not by frowning. For the habit of frowning seems to have been acquired chiefly from the corrugators being the first muscles to contract round the eyes, whenever during infancy pain, anger, or distress is felt, and there consequently is a near approach to screaming; and partly from a frown serving as a shade in difficult and intent vision. It seems probable that this shading action would not have become habitual until man had assumed a completely upright position, for monkeys do not frown when exposed to a glaring light. Our early progenitors, when enraged, would probably have exposed their teeth more freely than does man, even when giving full vent to his rage, as with the insane. We may, also, feel almost certain that they would have protruded their lips, when sulky or disappointed, in a greater degree than is the case with our own children, or even with the children of existing savage races.

Our early progenitors, when indignant or moderately angry, would not have held their heads erect, opened their chests, squared their shoulders, and clenched their fists, until they had acquired the ordinary carriage and upright attitude of man, and had learnt to fight with their fists or clubs. Until this period had arrived the antithetical gesture of shrugging the shoulders, as a sign of impotence or of patience, would not have been developed. From the same reason astonishment would not then have been expressed by raising the arms with open hands and extended fingers. Nor, judging from the actions of monkeys, would astonishment have been exhibited by a widely opened mouth; but the eyes would have been opened and the eyebrows arched. Disgust would have been shown at a very early period by movements round the mouth, like those of vomiting,--that is, if the view which I have suggested respecting the source of the expression is correct, namely, that our progenitors had the power, and used it, of voluntarily and quickly rejecting any food from their stomachs which they disliked. But the more refined manner of showing contempt or disdain, by lowering the eyelids, or turning away the eyes and face, as if the despised person were not worth looking at, would not probably have been acquired until a much later period.

Of all expressions, blushing seems to be the most strictly human; yet it is common to all or nearly all the races of man, whether or not any change of colour is visible in their skin. The relaxation of the small arteries of the surface, on which blushing depends, seems to have primarily resulted from earnest attention directed to the appearance of our own persons, especially of our faces, aided by habit, inheritance, and the ready flow of nerve-force along accustomed channels; and afterwards to have been extended by the power of association to self-attention directed to moral conduct. It can hardly be doubted that many animals are capable of appreciating beautiful colours and even forms, as is shown by the pains which the individuals of one sex take in displaying their beauty before those of the opposite sex. But it does not seem possible that any animal, until its mental powers had been developed to an equal or nearly equal degree with those of man, would have closely considered and been sensitive about its own personal appearance. Therefore we may conclude that blushing originated at a very late period in the long line of our descent.

From the various facts just alluded to, and given in the course of this volume, it follows that, if the structure of our organs of respiration and circulation had differed in only a slight degree from the state in which they now exist, most of our expressions would have been wonderfully different. A very slight change in the course of the arteries and veins which run to the head, would probably have prevented the blood from accumulating in our eyeballs during violent expiration; for this occurs in extremely few quadrupeds. In this case we should not have displayed some of our most characteristic expressions. If man had breathed water by the aid of external branchiae (though the idea is hardly conceivable), instead of air through his mouth and nostrils, his features would not have expressed his feelings much more efficiently than now do his hands or limbs. Rage and disgust, however, would still have been shown by movements about the lips and mouth, and the eyes would have become brighter or duller according to the state of the circulation. If our ears had remained movable, their movements would have been highly expressive, as is the case with all the animals which fight with their teeth; and we may infer that our early progenitors thus fought, as we still uncover the canine tooth on one side when we sneer at or defy any one, and we uncover all our teeth when furiously enraged.

The movements of expression in the face and body, whatever their origin may have been, are in themselves of much importance for our welfare. They serve as the first means of communication between the mother and her infant; she smiles approval, and thus encourages her child on the right path, or frowns disapproval. We readily perceive sympathy in others by their expression; our sufferings are thus mitigated and our pleasures increased; and mutual good feeling is thus strengthened. The movements of expression give vividness and energy to our spoken words. They reveal the thoughts and intentions of others more truly than do words, which may be falsified. Whatever amount of truth the so-called science of physiognomy may contain, appears to depend, as Haller long ago remarked,[4] on different persons bringing into frequent use different facial muscles, according to their dispositions; the development of these muscles being perhaps thus increased, and the lines or furrows on the face, due to their habitual contraction, being thus rendered deeper and more conspicuous. The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it. On the other hand, the repression, as far as this is possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions.[5] He who gives way to violent gestures will increase his rage; he who does not control the signs of fear will experience fear in a greater degree; and he who remains passive when overwhelmed with grief loses his best chance of recovering elasticity of mind. These results follow partly from the intimate relation which exists between almost all the emotions and their outward manifestations; and partly from the direct influence of exertion on the heart, and consequently on the brain. Even the simulation of an emotion tends to arouse it in our minds. Shakespeare, who from his wonderful knowledge of the human mind ought to be an excellent judge, says:--

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit,

That, from her working, all his visage wann’d;

Tears in his eyes, distraction in ‘s aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2.

[4] Quoted by Moreau, in his edition of Lavater, 1820, tom. iv. p. 211.

We have seen that the study of the theory of expression confirms to a certain limited extent the conclusion that man is derived from some lower animal form, and supports the belief of the specific or sub-specific unity of the several races; but as far as my judgment serves, such confirmation was hardly needed. We have also seen that expression in itself, or the language of the emotions, as it has sometimes been called, is certainly of importance for the welfare of mankind. To understand, as far as possible, the source or origin of the various expressions which may be hourly seen on the faces of the men around us, not to mention our domesticated animals, ought to possess much interest for us. From these several causes, we may conclude that the philosophy of our subject has well deserved the attention which it has already received from several excellent observers, and that it deserves still further attention, especially from any able physiologist.

·      Why does consciousness matter?

·      The trick of wily exploiters such as credit card companies?

·      Replicating modes and fashion?

·      Manipulated human beings by culture, memes, and themselves?

·      Happenings vs. doings ?

Abstract

·      Does consciousness is material or immaterial?

·      If it is material, where is it?

·      How does conscious form and evolve?

·      Who is a conscious mind?

·      What would it be the benefits of a conscious mind and side effects of it

Etymology & History

·      Conscientia=moral conscience

·      Rene Descartes coined the word, consciousness

·      John Locke in one of his essays, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, used the term, too.

·      Psychologists such as Jung, Fraud, and many others used the term as personal identity.

1. The question of whether consciousness is material or not begins with whether qualia exist or not.

·      What is quale?

·      Why is it important for the theorists of mind to deal with qualia?

o    by accepting the idea of quale, a theorist of mind doesn’t see any physical basis in the brain for consciousness. In other words, the quality of consciousness is defined by rejecting or accepting qualia.

o      Introducing the idea of “quale”

§        

ú       Do colors exist in the world? Some believe, “color as such does not exist in the world; it exit only in the eye and brain of beholder. Objects reflect many different wavelengths of light, but these light waves themselves have no color.” (Ornstein and Thompson, 1984, p. 55)

ú       What is red?

ú       This ancient philosophical conundrum was discussed by John Locke. He suggests that properties such as colors, aromas, taste, and sounds are secondary qualities. The primary qualities are size, shape, motion, number, and solidity, which provoke certain things in the minds of normal observers.

ú       Wilfrid Sellars distinguishes the dispositional properties (Locke’s secondary qualities) from what he called “occurrent properties.”

ú       Is occurrent pink a property of something in the brain or something “in the external world”?

ú       Thomas Hegel suggests, “The subjective features of conscious mental processes—as opposed to their physical causes and effects--cannot captured by the purified form of thought suitable for dealing with the physical world that underlies the appearances.” (1986, p. 15)

ú       When some one says, “I know the ring isn’t really pink, but it sure seems pink.” The first clause expresses a judgment about something in the world, and second clause expresses a second-order judgment about a discriminative state about something in the world. Denial Dennett believes, “We compare the colors of things in the world by putting them side by side and looking at them, to see what judgment we reach, but we can also compare the colors of things by just recalling or imagining them in our minds.” To prove his assertion, he suggests an experiment called CADBLIND Mark I Vorsetzer

ú       Jonathan Bennett draws our attention to a case that makes the same point, more persuasively, in another sensory modality. The substance phenol-thio-urea, he tells us, tastes bitter to one-quarter of the human population and is utterly tasteless to the rest.

ú       Denial Dennett believes, “Evolution softens the blow of the subjectivism or relativism implied by the fact that secondary qualities are lovely qualities. It shows that the absence of “simple” or fundamental commonalities in things that are all the same color is not an earmark of total illusion, but rather, a sign of a widespread tolerance for “false positive” detections of the ecological properties that really matter.” (p. 381) he believes that evolution explains “why secondary qualities turn out to be so “effable,” so resistant to definition.

·      Proponents’ Arguments

o    What is it like to be bat? Hegel’s argument, saying that consciousness has essentially subjective characters

o    Inverted spectrum: John Locke’s argument, imagining a morning when we wake up and see that all colors are inverted. He suggests that by doing this we actually have changed the properties of things without physical basis. What john Locke, in essence, wants to tell us is that the quality of conceivability proves possibility; if something is conceivable, then it is possible, which is very absurd. The zombie argument is the like.

o    Explanatory Gap (epiphenomenal): the standard of philosophical meaning of epiphenomenal: “x is epiphenomenal” means “x is an effect but itself has no effects in the physical world whatever.” introduced by Frank Jackson. He give a good thought experiment with Mary who is a brilliant scientist and has never seen colors. Mary’s way to learn about colors is not usual because she reconstructs the information in different way.

o      Chinese room was a thought experiment by John Searle. His analogy tries to prove that mind is not and can not be like computer. Here are his conclusions: 1- syntax is not sufficient for semantic; 2- brains cause minds 3- minds have semantic contents.

·      Opponents’ Arguments

o    Intuition pump: Daniel Dennett is one of many opponents of quale. he brings qualia into the world of neurosurgery, clinical psychology, and psychological experimentation. His argument attempts to show that, once the concept of qualia is so imported, it turns out that we can either make no use of it in the situation in question, or that the questions posed by the introduction of qualia are unanswerable precisely because of the special properties defined for qualia. About the Mary case, he argues that she already knew everything about colors before entering in the color room. Therefore the color room has nothing to teach her. He also identifies four properties for qualia, effable, intrinsic, private, and it also must immediately appear or comprehend in consciousness. Dennett also brings up some flaws in the Chinese Room experiment. Daniel Dennett writes, “the most influential thought experiments in recent philosophy of mind have all involved inviting the audience to imagine some specially contrived or stipulated state of affairs, and then—without properly checking to see if this feat of imagination has actually been accomplished—inviting the audience to notice various consequences in the fantasy. These “intuition pumps,” as I call them, are often fiendishly clever devices. They deserves their fame if only for their seductiveness.

2. If it is, in fact, material, Where is it?

·      Descartes proposed a role for it; in order for a person to be conscious of something, traffic from senses had to arrive at this station, where it thereupon caused a special—indeed, magical—transaction to occur between the person’s material brain and immaterial mind.

o      If so, what about reflexes? Dualists, including Descartes, postulated that they were accomplished by entirely mechanical short circuits of sorts that bypassed the pineal station altogether, and hence were accomplished unconsciously

o       

o      If the Descartes’ idea is not the convincing one, what do Dennett and other materialists think about consciousness?

o      Dennett calls his idea Cartesian materialism, which many candidate for such a Cartesian Theater, such as the pineal gland, the anterior cingulated, the reticular formation, and various places in the frontal lobes. The Cartesian Theater is a metaphorical picture of how conscious experience must sit in the brain.

3. If consciousness is considered to be material, what are its ingredients?

·      Gene

·      Evolution

·      Language

·      Culture

·      Memes

·      Time and space

4. How can these ingredients shape our consciousness?

To answer this question, we need a method of conducting some tests

·      First Person Plural: introspectionism

·      The Third-Person Perspective: extospectionism

·      The method of Heterophenomenology: scientific method with anthropological bent combined with subjective personal report. Dennett coined the term and explains, “"The total set of details of heterophenomenology, plus all the data we can gather about concurrent events in the brains of subjects and in the surrounding environment, comprise the total data set for a theory of human consciousness. It leaves out no objective phenomena and no subjective phenomena of consciousness."

·      Introspectism vs Behaviorism

o    Dennett’s objection to introspectionism: the cozy complicity of the resulting first-person-plural perspective is a treacherous incubator of errors.

§      Phil Roberts, Jr. has argued that difficulties encountered with the use of introspection have less to do with the study of human minds than with the study of human beings:

§      Invalidity of the introspective method of investigation

o    Exploring some ideas of Behaviorism: only facts garnered “from the outside” count as data

§      Mental events don’t exist, period. (barefoot behaviorism)

§      Mental events exist, but they have no effects whatever, so science can’t study them.

§      Mental events exist, and have effects, but those effects can’t be studied by science, which will have to content itself with theories of the “peripheral” or lower effects and processes in the brain. (this idea is common among neuroscientists)

·      Evolution

o    The birth of Boundaries and Reasons

§       Very beginning

ú       No reason

ú       No purpose

ú       No function

ú       No interest

ú       Only cause

§       After millennia

ú       No interest but self-replication

§       Replicators arrive on the scene capable of behavior that stave off, however primitively, its own dissolution and decomposition, it brings with it into the world its “good.” It creates a point of view from which the world events can be roughly partitioned into

ú       The Favorable

ú       The Unfavorable

ú       The Neutral

§       The most important factor of creation of reason is interest.

§       The first problem-facers was to learn how to recognize and act on the reasons that their very existence brought into existence.

§       As soon as something gets into the business of self-preservation, boundaries become important

ú       Primordial form of selfishness

ú       “me against the world”

·      there are reasons to recognize

·      where there are reasons, there are points of view from which to recognize or evaluate them.

·      Any agent must distinguish ‘here inside’ from ‘the external world.’

·      All recognition must ultimately be accomplished by myriad ‘blind, mechanical’ routines.

·      Inside the defended boundary, there need not always be a Higher executive or General Headquarters

·      In nature, handsome is as handsome does; origins don’t matter

·      In nature, elements often play multiple functions within the economy of a single organism

o      New and better ways of producing future

§       The fundamental purpose of brains is to produce future

§       Hope for the best

§       The problem of “now what do I do?

ú       To solve this problem

·      You need a nervous system, to control your activities in time and space

o      The juvenile sea squirt

§       She needs first a rudimentary nervous system

§       After she found the spot and took root, she doesn’t need brain anymore, it eats it (Rodolfo Llinas)

·      This fact is the basis, as we shall see, for some of the most terrible and delicious (literally) features of consciousness. In the beginning, all “signals” caused by things in the environment meant either “scram!” or “go for!” (Humphery, forthcoming). The detective system of nervous system was far rudimentary, for no nervous system at that early time, had anyway to use a more dispassionate or objective message that merely informed it, neutrally, of some condition. They were capable of only what we may call proximal anticipation. (sow bug)

·      We oraganism try:

o      To get something for free

o      To find the law of nature

o      Wired in: we can notice between things looming and things hitting us. The duck response to looming is hard-wired in human beings. Alaram should be “friend, foe, or food.”

o      Regular vigilance gradually turned into regular exploration

o      The evolutionary development was fostered by a division of labor, two specialized areas:

§       Dorsal: online piloting responsibilities for keeping the vessel out of harm

§       Ventral : this left the ventral brain with a little free time to concentrate on the identification of the various objects in the world; it could afford to zoom in manner. An this also evolved into two hemispheres of right and left.

§       Plasticity of nervous system. Some of the complexities of human consciousness are the result of this development.

o      Evolution in Brains, and the Baldwin effect

§       The process of changing is chaotic

§       The role of pleasurable and painful stimuli—the carrot and the stick—in shaping behavior is undeniable

§       The plastic brain is capable of reorganizing itself adaptively in response to particular novelties encountered in the organism’s environment, and the process strongly analogous to natural selection. This is the first new medium of evolution: postnatal design-fixing in individual brains.

§       Those animals whose brains start out closer to the target will have a survival advantage over those who start far away

§       The Baldwin effect, also known as Baldwinian evolution or ontogenic evolution, is an early evolutionary theory proposed by American psychologist James Mark Baldwin which proposes a mechanism for specific selection for general learning ability. Selected offspring would tend to have an increased capacity for learning new skills rather than being confined to genetically coded, relatively fixed abilities. In effect, it places emphasis on the fact that the sustained behavior of a species or group can shape the evolution of that species.

ú       As an example, suppose a species is threatened by a new predator and there is a behavior that makes it more difficult for the predator to kill individuals of the species. Individuals who learn the behavior more quickly will obviously be at an advantage. As time goes on the ability to learn the behavior will improve (by genetic selection), and at some point it will seem to be an instinct.

o      Plasticity in Human Brain: Setting the Stage

§       Capable of stereotype anticipation

§       Adjusting to trends

§       Changing the question from “what do I do now?” to “what do I think about next?”

§       All hands on deck!

§       How can a particular state or event in the brain represent one feature of the world rather than another?

o      The Invention of Good and Bad Habits of Autostimulation

§       Invention of language

§       Language has survival value

§       Talking aloud, drawing pictures to yourself are act of self-manipulation

o      The Third Evolution Process: Memes and Cultural Evolution

§       the techniques of mutual and self-stimulation are deeply embedded in our culture and training.

§       The culture has become a repository and transmission medium

§       To get itself adjusted to the local conditions that matter the most

§       Evolution occurs whenever the following conditions exist:

ú       Variation

ú       Heredity and replication

ú       Differential fitness

§       Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes, fashions, and so on

§       Who is in charge? Me or my memes?

§       A suicidal meme can spread, as when a dramatic and well-publicized martyrdom inspires others to die for a deeply loved cause, and this in turn inspires others to die, and so on. (dawkin)

§       Pernicious memes

§       We would not survive unless we had a better-than-chance habit of choosing the memes that help us.

§       The memes for normative concepts—for ought and good and truth and beauty—are among the most entrenched denizens of our minds, and that among the memes that constitute us, they play a central role.

§       We as thinkers are not independent of these memes

o      The memes of consciousness: the virtual machine to be installed

§       Infestation: 2. live as parasite on: to live as a parasite on or in something

§       Human consciousness is itself a huge complex of memes(or more exactly, meme-effects in brains) that can best be understood as the operation of a “von Neumannesque” virtual machine implemented in the parallel architecture of a brain that was not designed for any such activities

§       We know we have conscious minds “by introspection and the minds we thereby discover are at least this much like von Neumann machines

·      How Words Do Things With Us

o      Bureaucracy vs. Pandemonium

§       no one has had anything very substantial to say about system of language production

§       human speech is purposive activity; there are means and ends

o      Conceptualizer: is a reification in need of further explanation

o      A discovery of self-interpretation

o      In content and consciousness, there had to be a functionally salient line (which I called the awareness line) separating the preconscious fixation of communicative intentions from their subsequent execution

o      How does a thing become preconscious? Through becoming connected with the word-presentations corresponding to it.” Freud (the ego and the id, English, edition, 1962, p. 10)

o      Whether a patient with aphasia feels anxiety about his or her situation.

o      Confabulation: to give fictitious accounts of past events, believing they are true, in order to cover a gap in the memory caused by a medical condition such as dementia or Korsakoff's syndrome.

o      Even normal people may often confabulate about details of their experience, since they are prone to guess without realizing it, and mistake theorizing for observing.

o      Another anomalous linguistic phenomenon is the familiar sympyom of schizophrenia: “hearing voices.” It is now quite firmly established that the voice the schizophrenic “hears” is his own; he is talking to himself silently without realizing it

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§       Why we can seemingly, sometimes , remember, even vividly, experiences that never occurred?

§       Difference between appearance and reality

§       The risk of interfering from “this is what I remember” to “this is what really happened,” hence we resist –with good reason—any diabolical “operationalism” that tries to convince us that what we remember (or what history records in the archives) just is what really happened.

§       Operationalism: if you can’t find a difference, there is not a difference.

§       Orwellian experiments

§       Perceptual revision vs. memory revision

§       What is the stream of consciousness

§       What does Dennett want to accomplish by offering the multiple draft model and Cartesian Theater

§       When a person is conscious of something?