A lot of 20th century philosophy relates the emergence of consciousness with language (there can't be an "I" unless you can have a language to say "I" with) so, in that sense, consciousness has a social component.

On the other hand, it is difficult to separate social/cultural from biological, as our brain kept evolving after groups of people started getting together and created societies. So, language is certainly a social development, but has changed the organization of the brain (there is a very nice book on this: "the symbolic species", by Terrence Deacon).

So, in a sense, consciousness is both: it ahs a social origin, but evolution has "wired" in our brain the predisposition to be conscious beings.

True, biological and social domains are interlinked together but certainly society has its predominant role in the evolution of consciousness. "I" evolves biologically but "we" comes socially.

Most of the time consciousness evolves socially depending upon our surrounding.

For example:

If we are spent most of our time in a close room then our prediction about the weather will be less accurate than those who spent more time outside their room.

The sense of conscious of farmers about weather is more specific than common people because their life depends on weather condition required for particular crop and thus they have evolved in such a way that they can predict atmospheric condition as accurately as they can and choose crop for plantation depending on their prediction.

And thus it also plays a vital role in survival of species too.

I believe that the answer to this question is socially.

I believe that the human species represents a very interesting space in the patchwork-quilt of life on this planet. Or rather – it doesn’t!

Specialized species seem to form a tightly interlocking patchwork that covers the available survival space. Or, so would be the case if chance and circumstance and earthquakes and tectonic plates didn’t keep moving the goalposts and occasionally giving the edge to non-specialized species – the scavengers and opportunists. However, evolution had a dilemma and it would seem that a great strategy for survival was dead in the water before it had had the chance to get going!

This is the problem:

If opportunism is to be exploited as a strategy then pre-programming the brain to ‘see the world’ or ‘behave’ in a particular way would seem to be a fundamental hindrance to fully exploiting the strategy. But then, if the brain needs to be un-pre-programmed how is the species survive to adolescence – too adulthood – by its bootstraps?

The answer that evolution found was an educational childhood, and social structures. Societies are the depositaries of our cultural evolution and shape our minds as we mature. Humanity is the ultimate opportunist and our bodies testify to the fact that we are not specialists. However, there is no tool available to an engineer or his imagination that could exhibit greater utility and potential than a human being.

As far as possible,,biology has left our minds to grow with our brains as culture has created a wealth of structure for our minds to feast upon. And as for our psychology – it has lain within the lap of the gods and whatever heavens and hells that we have, over time, called ‘home’ – or ‘normal.’

The lightening speed in which we achieved this shocking dominion over the world suggests that some tipping point was reached when our minds, unshackled by a tedious pre-requisite of evolutionary specialization, discovered ‘feedback’ and every generation created a greater nursery for our fledgling species.

Some might argue that this is mere poetry and that evolutionary theory does not support such a vision. However, there is a sea change going on and it seems, that perhaps, what really drives evolution is the environment.

The ‘Fractal Catalytic Model’ of living processes suggest that we each make explicit the implicit structures of our bodies and our environments. It seems that, as far as a human beings are concerned, society IS the environment.

Davia, C.J (June 2006), "Life, Catalysis and Excitable Media: A Dynamic Systems Approach to Metabolism and Cognition", in Tuszynski, J.A,The Emerging Physics of Consciousness (The Frontiers Collection), Springer, pp. 255–292, ISBN 978-3540238904

"Consciousness is irreducible" : is it? Both cerebral hemispheres have their own conscious existence which becomes apparent in cases of split brains ( corpus callosum severed ) . Their individual conscious experiences still occur in an intact brain, but are overshadowed by the über-consciousness that their sum total produces. So from the perspective of the higher consciousness, they appear to be unconscious, but from their own perspective, they are not. Each hemisphere consists of a myriad of parallel processing circuits which have their own lower level consciousness- and so on. At what level is consciousness- or at least basic sentience- extinguished? Maybe it is almost infinitely divisible, becoming a very weak, but fundamental, property of ordinary matter .

Atul,

Unless each tiny consciousness 'condenses' to form a higher state of consciousness. Like a BEC!

When the individual atoms condense in a BEC their own identity is lost to the greater unity. When the BEC collapses the individual atoms may be recovered but that does not mean that their 'substance' contributed to the macroscopic unity like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle - their identity was indistinguishable from the greater whole.

I am not sure that I have expressed this very well.

Also, I am not sure that consciousness can become 'weak' of 'faint'. When the song bird sings his song in the brightness of the morning and thrills the air with joy, is not his flame of being hot and bright? Is not the consciousness of the flea that lives upon him a tiny but brilliant spark of greedy feeding? I think consciousness can be more simple.but, whatever form it takes or however small - it shines.

Gabriele is quite correct and must be a relative of German philosopher Max Scheler, who also loved to draw such distinctions.

When we speak of evolution and survival of species, we use Darwinian biological language. When we talk of the development of consciousness, we should instead employ the language of historians. The two forms of maturation differ, in that evolution belongs to natural science, whereas consciousness-raising pertains to human science, a fine distinction substantiated by Wilhelm Dilthey.

Dear All,

IMHO, Consciousness evolves biologically at first and then socially, if at all we can call it so. I would like to present a ancient Yogic perspective here which might quite differ from mainstream opinion. Consciousness is the Unified field, very much like the theory of 'Everything'. It manifests everywhere and is the essence of everything. It animates matter and is the cause of the phenomenon we call 'Life'. In 'scientific' circles and jargon, people shy in using the word 'God' and instead use the word Consciousness, preferring instead to indulge in debating over Consciousness as 'It'.

It is the unknown variable 'x' in all equations where the cause is attributed to something unknown, and our ego doesn't accept to ascribe to a higher power.

In Yoga, the Background Consciousness is the essence and substrate of everything. It is the drawing board/blackboard upon which everything happens, and which is not affected by the changes happening. Upon this background, consciousness evolves from the matter state to the Spirit state.

1. In the mineral kingdom, Consciousness is said to be in the sleeping state. Matter is conscious, but the degree of consciousness is low.

2. In the Plant kingdom, the degree of conscious 'awareness' is higher than that of plants.

3. In the animal kingdom, consciousness has more degrees of awareness than the plant. Animals perceive everything in the world and have similar emotions like ourselves, but they are not aware that they 'exist'. They are led by nature through 'instincts' and follow nature's rhythms and patterns-Eating, sleeping, mating only in fixed times and periods.

4. In the human kingdom, we still retain the attributes of animals, from whom we evolved. Accordingly humans are all equal by rights but they are not equal in the degree of Conscious awareness. The humans who have just enetered the human kingdom from the animal, are again sense bound and intent on 'me-first' consumption pattern. They perceive the world as 'what can I get out of it for me' attitude. They use strength and intelligence to grab 'things'. When others are faster, they become unhappy and cause conflict. Everything is 'Action-Reaction'. Slowly nature teaches them the lessons of life. In the second stage of the human kingdom, for the first time, the animal man notices that like himself, others have pain too. Others too have hunger. For the first time, he begins to share. This sharing is limited to those he likes and identifies with. In the third stage, he evolves higher and hepls/shares with everyone irrespective of who they are.

5. There are three stages of evolution higher than man, totaling seven stages in the evolution of consciousness.The final stage of Consciousness is the merger of the limited, 'localized' packet of Consciousness, 'me', the soul, with the super soul(God?), background consciousness, known in various cultures as Liberation/Freedom/Immortality/ Salvation/Nirvana/Moksha, to become One, without any further distinction of 'me' and 'that'.

In Yoga, the tiniest atom, with its miniature structure of nucleus-electron-proton...is a future solar system in waiting. The time scales are huge and our current state of knowledge is insufficient to fathom these large time scales.

Thus, in brief, I have tried to explain the evolution of consciousness according to Yoga. Please note that these time scales have been consistently corroborated by 'modern science'. Current concepts and models of the universe are close replicas of ancient Yogic models.

Comments invited.

Regards