This is a 2000 lecture that i gave to students of San Jose's CADRE.

1. A History of Me
piero scaruffi

2. Origins
• I was born billions of years ago...

3. The Computer Age
• A digital world
• We fear machines
• Each generation has been afraid of the new
tools available to their offspring
• We fear the way machines will change daily
life

4. The Computer Age
• We are a tool-making species.
• And tools have always shaped the mind.
• We are not the only tool-making species,
and we are not the only species whose
"cognitive life" is shaped by tools.
• Even a spider, that has built a spider-web,
will have a "mental" life that revolves
around the spider-web.

5. The Computer Age
• Each new tool, whether it's fire or
television, has shaped the mind of the
humans who used it.
• Tools have "created" the mind as it is now.
• That includes our "artistic" expressions

6. Mind
• Where does the mind come from?
• Why do we think?

7. The Origin of Thinking
• Darwinian paradigm:
– It must have evolved from something
primordial and it must have evolved because it
had a useful function for survival.
– The most primordial mind one can think of is a
mind that has very basic emotions, possibly
only pain and pleasure.

8. The Origins of Thinking
• The evolution of emotions
– Emotions evolved, as much as any other organ.
– Emotions had an evolutionary value, as they
helped bodies survive
– It is unlikely that humans are the only species
with emotions…
– ...but it is likely that humans are the species in
which emotions evolved in the most spectacular
way.

9. The Origins of Thinking
• The evolution of tools
– Tools relieved us from many daily chores.
– Our emotions had been invented to help cope
with those chores, but tools made them less and
less necessary
– Our mind was nonetheless still producing
emotions, just like the immune system is
producing antibodies all the time
– Those emotions flowing through our mind
eventually got organized, and yielded thought.

10. The Origins of Thinking
• The evolution of thought
– Thought eventually yielded a continuous flow
of emotions and a concept of the self:
consciousness was born.
– Consciousness was born because our mind had
nothing to do most of the day, and that
happened because we invented tools

11. The Origins of Thinking
• The evolution of thought
– Co-evolution of tools and emotions
– At the same time there was evolution of the
body
– And several scientists would add evolution of
language and evolution of memes
– They all evolved together (co-evolved).
– It was evolution on several parallel tracks.

12. The Origins of Culture
• As tools became more and more
sophisticated, we also started using them for
thinking. For example, language. For
example, writing. For example, music. For
example, painting, cinema and comics.

13. The Take-over of the Mind
• We started identifying with our mind.
• We are no longer bodies with some organs
that helped the body survive (including a
mind) but minds that have a body
• If we transplant Helen’s brain to Jim, is Jim
getting Helen’s brain or Helen getting Jim’s
body?

14. The Mystery of the Mind
• So we started wondering where our mind
comes from, not just where our body comes
from.
• Little by little we have been able to
rediscover our past, and understand how our
mind was created, how "I" was created.

15. The Mystery of the Mind
• Unpleasant discoveries
– The more we realize that we are mere accidents
of evolution.
– We are not what we think we are: we do not
think, we are thought
– We only see and hear and ultimately think what
makes sense in our ecological niche.
– We are driven by the environment in what we
do and what we think

16. The Mystery of the Mind
• Unpleasant discoveries
– Our mind is recreated all the time, whether we
want it or not.
– The amount of control over our mental life is
extremely low
– The brain works all the time, and most of the
time we don’t know what it is doing
– Most of the cells of the body (including
neurons) and most of the connections between
the neurons change in one year

17. Creativity
• Creativity is something we do because we
have to do it.
• Our mind is continuously reshaped by the
tools we invent, and continuously explores
them.
• We are always creative or we are never
creative: there is no difference between the
two processes.

18. Creativity
• Our mind has no choice but to create
meaning all the time out of the flow of
emotions using the tools it has invented.
• We are both the creators and the products of
our technology.

19. Bibliography
Damasio Antonio: DESCARTES' ERROR (1995)
Donald Merlin: ORIGINS OF THE MODERN MIND (1991)
Edelman Gerald: NEURAL DARWINISM (1987)
Gibson James Jerome: THE SENSES CONSIDERED AS
PERCEPTUAL SYSTEMS (1966)
Jaynes Julian: THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE
BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND (1977)
Kauffman Stuart: THE ORIGINS OF ORDER (1993)
Macphail Euan: THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS (1998)
Maturana Humberto: AUTOPOIESIS AND COGNITION (1980)
Neisser Ulric: COGNITION AND REALITY (1975)
Ornstein Robert: EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS (1991)

20. Bibliography
Penrose Roger: THE EMPEROR'S NEW MIND (1989)
Pinker Steven: HOW THE MIND WORKS (1997)
Searle John: THE REDISCOVERY OF THE MIND (1992)
Stapp Henry: MIND, MATTER AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
(1993)
Unger Peter: IDENTITY, CONSCIOUSNESS AND VALUE (1991)

21. Bibliography