Human social structures are based on the cognitive abilities of the human brain. The salient aspect of cognition that gives rise to social structure is the ability within the brain to form contextual frameworks that allow the individual to project through metaphorical processes an internal understanding of the sensori-motor experience to the external world at large; then, based on this metaphorical understanding, to reflect upon and act upon the external world based on processes internal to the individual. It seems to us that mirror neuron systems, with integration of emotion, provide the basis of consciousness through which this metaphorical basis of action through interaction is achieved.

Just as we showed earlier how computer constructs elaborated in the context of object-oriented programming are parallel to mirror neuron systems, we can understand, with the example of either watching an ice cream being eaten or eating it ourselves, how a computer effects consciousness. For this, we’ll consider the sentence “I don’t remember eating the ice cream; I did it unconsciously.” Here, we clearly associate memory with consciousness. Similarly, we all have had the experience of driving unconsciously, where we can’t remember how we went through a long stretch of a familiar road. In order for this to work, the brain must have circuitry that can detail and store the many steps of a process. What this circuitry does is look at the whole process as well as its constituting parts. Some time just the whole process is remembered, and sometime the constituting parts are remembered as well, creating the conscious part of the process that we’ve discussed in the examples above. For a computer, that property is called reflexivity. When we described earlier how an object that contains generic instructions on how to read and understand a file, reflexivity allows the computer to inquire the object as to how it sequences those instructions. Whether the computer then records a process in memory or both the process and its sequence of instructions is up to higher evaluations, just as it is for humans. Certainly emotion represents a higher evaluation system of this kind in humans. Why should we remember things we’re not interested in?

Mirror neuron systems establish contextual envelopes for an individual’s sensori-motor experience. They encompass the formation of emotional responses to this sensori-motor experience and they reflect the actions that can or may be taken in response. When the sensori-motor experience is observed in others, that is in the external world, then the mirror neuron systems may formulate sympathetic emotional responses within the observed context. However, they will not have access to the actions encompassed by the mirror neuron context because this observed context is beyond the individual’s motor system. One individual’s mind cannot control another individual’s actions directly through the mirror neuron complex. This, it would seem, recognition and contemplation, but without a direct ability for action, is a reasonable definition of consciousness. In that perspective, consciousness is the capability to relate to oneself as one relates to others.

Through relatively recent evolutionary development, the human species has evolved this ability for metaphorical projection. Further, in concert with this mechanism for consciousness, the species has developed the means of communication that can represent this complex, metaphorical projection. Specifically, the species evolved the means of language, which in its spoken and written form, allow the individual the indirect means to effect actions on the part of others based on our internal sensori-motor experience. This, it would seem, forms the foundation of social ecosystems. We will explore this in much more detail in the next chapter.

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