Human evolution: self awareness (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, April 29, 2021, 22:54 (1302 days ago) @ David Turell

A new book describing its importance in making us human:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6541/470?utm_campaign=toc_sci-mag_2021-04-29...

"Given our long-standing interest in selfawareness, it is surprising how little science has traditionally had to say about it. What features of our brains enable us to think about ourselves? What are our strengths and weaknesses in this respect and how do they influence how we decide, learn, and interact? Can we train self-awareness, and how does this improve our performance? In the past three decades, however, research addressing such questions has been picking up speed. In Know Thyself, cognitive neuroscientist Stephen Fleming synthesizes this multifaceted research into an admirably coherent narrative and outlines how the resulting knowledge may be applied to solve societal problems.

"Writing about self-awareness is challenging because concepts such as “self” and “awareness”—let alone the combination thereof—are hard to define. The book does not get lost in this epistemological Bermuda triangle but rather conceptualizes self-awareness as the set of mental and brain processes that keep track of our percepts, thoughts, and actions.

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"In the end, the book makes a convincing case that self-awareness is a key feature of human existence and that our growing knowledge about it will be important for addressing many of our societal problems. One may quibble that the book somewhat understates this point, because it focuses on metacognition and does not cover our ability to monitor our emotions, another key aspect of self-awareness that has major implications for health and well-being. However, the literature on this topic is so diverse that doing it justice would likely require several additional volumes. As it stands, Fleming's book finally heaves metacognition into a long-deserved place in the scientific spotlight."

Comment: the book doesn't tell us anything new. It makes the usual point. We are exceptional and like nothing else.