Up from Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence is a 2002 book on human evolution, the human brain, and the origins of human cognition by John Skoyles and Dorion Sagan. The book considers how the brain and genes evolved into their present condition over the course of thousands and millions of years. It was published by McGraw Hill.
The book argues that the earlier ape brain had evolved “mindmakers” and that the human mind arose when these were “rewired” by symbols. This new “mindware” was created by the prefrontal cortex in combination with neural plasticity. This “Symbolic capacity is the ‘missing link’ that changed the ape brain into a human and made mindware possible, allowing symbols to structure the brain”. p. 277 Mindware itself has been evolving for the last 120,000 years and as a result kept reshaping human consciousness, thought and culture. Its last chapter speculates upon the future of human cognition.
The title relates to Carl Sagan (co-author Dorion Sagan's father) and his 1977 book The Dragons of EdenSagan C. (1978) Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, Ballantine Books, New York for which this book provides a 25th-anniversary reappraisal.
Chapters Cosmic Mirror: The questions of who and what humans are explored in terms of the history of the universe, life and humankind as when looking in a mirror. Up from Dragons: Modern human genes arose when humans evolved as hunter-gatherers. But in the last 120,000 years humans have changed from hunter-gatherers to hi-tech citizens. The book seeks to answer why and how. Neurons Unlimited: The brain is neurally plastic (NP) – evolution left open the function of human neurons. The capacity of its neurons to engage in imagination extends its potential to think and feel. Superbrain: The prefrontal cortex (PC) is the brain's "conductor". It directs using inner representations as prompts which organize the brain's "orchestra" of neural “talents”. Mind-Engine: Cognition depends upon brain waves that bind through synchronization of diverse brain areas into mental unity. The prefrontal cortex controls this unification of the brain. Neural Revolution: The large sized human brain has extensive "blank" cortex available for processing nonevolved skills. But acquiring such skills requires that the brain’s neural networks get “trained”—which the prefrontal cortex does by acting as a “cortical catalyst”. Machiavellian Neurons: Humans like other apes live in social groups that split and reform. Humans are novel in their ability to decouple these social and personal bonds from direct sensory contact. The human brain does this by carrying around its social group as an "inner troop within our heads". The Troop within Our Heads: Humans think they are free—but this troop within their heads rules human thoughts, feelings and actions. Due to it humans feel guilt, shame, pride and self-consciousness. Our Living Concern: Underlying human experience are mindmakers. One such mindmaker is the anterior cingulate as it creates attention to what is done. It underlies not only social consciousness, but pain, and a sense of reality. Doing the Right Thing: Our sense of right and wrong arises from our origins as social apes. Morality is a byproduct of the troop within our heads that is created by the orbitofrontal cortex mindmaker. This limits human freedom by preventing psychopathic-like actions. Where Memories are Made: The human sense of identity arises from the need of the brain to experience a past linked to the present. Here, the mindmaker is the hippocampus. It underlies memory and the sense of continuity of self, other and place. What Are We?: Mindmakers are not consciousness but they make it possible. They become the consciousness of "I" and "will" by embodiment. The human brain embodies not only its body extension, but its “troop within its head” and the inner orchestration done by its prefrontal cortex. Of Human Bonding: The change that turned apes into humans was the ability to decouple social and personal bonds from everyday contact. This allowed new kinds of bonds such as those of marriage, in-law kin, culture and religion. The Symbolic Brain: Symbols enabled this decoupling of bonds. Symbols are cognitive stand-ins—a wedding ring stands in for a marriage bond. The prefrontal cortex generates symbols. This enabled hunter-gatherer genes to develop new forms of social life including that of modern people. Lucy and Kanzi: The symbol making potential of the prefrontal cortex arose to enable extended family bonds across the African savannah. “Gifted environments” also arose created by adults so young brains could be helped to learn and enrich their minds with symbols. The Runaway Species: Homo brains expanded to be good parents. Successful brains selected partners with brains with which they could best raise children. A runaway selection resulted between brain size, mate selection and skilled parenting. The Billion-Hour Journey: That modern people are not hunter-gatherers is due to mindware – the mind expanding systems of symbols – that evolved in the last 120,000 years. The process started slow, but then “bootstrapped” itself and accelerated. It now underlies the thoughts and feelings of modern humans. Third Millennium Brain: The rewriting of the brain's potentials that started in the past still continues. “Braintech” is arising and will enhance humans even more. It is suggested that humans knowing that their origins lie in their brains, rather than ancient myth, will gain Brain Rights and enter a new Era—that of the Brain.
Concepts The book introduces and argues for novel ideas in human evolution, neuroscience, social neuroscience and the humanities.
Human evolution
Gifted environments These are the learning environments humans create.Up from Dragons, pp. 77, 217-223 Components of a gifted environment include “a rich variety of representations”,Up from Dragons, p. 217 a “stimulating learning environment”,Up from Dragons, p. 219 and “’empowering environments’—ones which foster specific paths of development, an opportunity sometimes limited to brief windows of developmental time”Greenberg N. (2003) Up from dragons: Book Review. Human Nature Review, 3, 142-148 It is proposed that such gifted environments are created by adult prefrontal cortex. The potential to create gifted environments predates humans and exists in chimpanzees. But they are limited because as adults chimpanzees lack time, cooperate only weakly and are under constant stress. It was the highly cooperative sociability of humans that allowed gifted environments to arise that could fully support cognitive development.Up from Dragons, p. 220
Human change bootstrapping problem Bootstrapping concerns the paradox that the best way for something to occur is for it to already to be established. This problem has been identified in computer and cognitive science as an important obstacle: computers need to load programs to start but this is best done when they have already loaded the program for doing this; reading is easier to acquire once a person can already read. Cognitive development can be interpreted as the process by which cognitive systems sidestep and work around bootstrapping problems that would otherwise obstruct cognitive growth. The bootstrapping problem is proposed to explain why human cultural and technological developments often take so long to historically develop and then accelerate: the best circumstances for such innovations to flourish often arise only when they already exist.Up from Dragons, pp. 258-265
Human ticket All animal species except humans live in much the same biological manner in which they evolved. Humans in contrast have journeyed away from being simple hunter-gatherers to becoming citizens of hi-tech nation states. Biologically this is odd since modern people still basically have the same genes as their early hunter-gatherers ancestors. This raises the question of what had evolved, the ticket, in those early humans that gave them to the potential to change later on so radically.Up from Dragons, pp. 23-24, 70
NP + PC Formula The evolution of human intelligence is expressed in a Neural Plasticity + Prefrontal Cortex formula that is progressively elaborated: NP + PC + ape mind = human mindUp from Dragons, p. 79 NP + PC + fission-fusion ape social skills = human social symbolsUp from Dragons, p. 203 NP + PC + ape sensory and motor skills = human nonsocial symbols NP + PC + FF ape skills + symbols + 109 hours = contemporary mindUp from Dragons, p. 265 NP + PC + mindware + braintech = future mindUp from Dragons, p. 279
Neuroscience
Cognitive stand-ins Symbols adapt already evolved functions to create novel ones by replacing their evolved inputs and outputs with nonevolved representations. Reading and writing are such new functions that rewire the functions of visual, speech and other cortical areas by letters and logogram stand-ins.Up from Dragons, pp. 191-206, 247-249
Cortical catalyst Chemical catalysts work by creating chemical bonds by bringing existing substances into reaction using intermediaries, and by temporal and spatial conjunction. The prefrontal cortex works similarly upon information processing happening elsewhere in the brain through creating working memory space. This space allows novel intermediary forms of association to be created and held together between different information processing systems in the brain. This process is essential to the formation of symbols and symbol based cognition.Up from Dragons, pp. 73-77, 200-203, 265
Free cortex Due to brain enlargement in humans, most of the human cerebral cortex lacks tightly evolved functions and so is open to acquire nonevolved skills. Even highly evolved cortical areas such as the primary visual and auditory cortices can to a surprising degree take on new functions. Semantics can develop in the visual cortex of those born blind, and vision can develop in the auditory cortex in experimental animals when retinal input is redirected into it. The association areas of the cerebral cortex lack the input constraints of primary areas. As a result, they are even more open to acquire novel cognitive capabilities.Up from Dragons, p. 77
Memory headers John Morton has proposed that memories are organized by headed records. The function of the hippocampus is suggested to be providing such headers for memory. They also underlie the human capacity to experience in spite of superficial changes the continuity of self, other and place.Up from Dragons, pp. 143-153
Pain as benevolent dictator Pain is argued to be a protective attentive envelope (see below) that temporary acts to protect injured or easily injured parts of the body from actions controlled by the brain.Up from Dragons, p. 115
Protective attentive envelopes Aircraft have flight envelope protection systems that stop pilots acting in a manner that might harm the aircraft but which allow them to make quick but safe actions. The anterior cingulate cortex is argued to act as a “hidden observer” over what we do “attention-to-action” and it provides a similar function for humans. These envelopes underlie the experience of self-consciousness, anxiety and pain.Up from Dragons, pp. 110-115
Social neuroscience
Limbic symbolons