Conscious thought is for facilitating social and cultural interactions: How mental simulations serve the animal–culture interface.

Abstract

Five empirically based critiques have undermined the standard assumption that conscious thought is primarily for input (obtaining information from the natural environment) or output (the direct control of action). Instead, we propose that conscious thought is for internal processing, to facilitate downstream interaction with the social and cultural environment. Human consciousness enables the construction of meaningful, sequential thought, as in sentences and narratives, logical reasoning, counting and quantification, causal understanding, narratives, and the simulation of events (including nonpresent ones). Conscious thought sequences resemble short films that the brain makes for itself, thereby enabling different parts of brain and mind to share information. The production of conscious thoughts is closely linked to the production of speech because the human mind evolved to facilitate social communication and information sharing, as culture became humankind's biological strategy. The influence of conscious thought on behavior can be vitally helpful but is mostly indirect. Conscious simulation processes are useful for understanding the perspectives of social interaction partners, for exploring options in complex decisions, for replaying past events (both literally and counterfactually) so as to learn, and for facilitating participation in culture in other ways.

Synthetic consciousness: the distributed adaptive control perspective

“…Others have also advanced hypotheses that emphasize the social origins of consciousness [61,[204][205][206]. These proposals have rather emphasized the contribution of consciousness to specific aspects of social interaction such as rational thought, language and/or attention.…”

Deliberate Metaphor Affords Conscious Metaphorical Cognition

“…I have suggested moving the theoretical focus away from metaphor in unconscious thought -CMT's traditional concern -to conscious metaphorical cognition. Framing conscious metaphorical thought in Baumeister and Masicampo's (2010) theory of consciousness, I have argued that conscious metaphor is prompted by available metaphorical structures in thought and language. In general, observable metaphorical thought involves the deliberate use of socially available metaphorical models expressed in language or the deliberate use of linguistically available idea units that can be detected in conceptual propositions.…”

“…Deliberate and conscious metaphorical thought is connected to the general functions of all conscious thought as described by Baumeister and Masicampo (2010). Their theory provides a basis for demonstrating how deliberate and conscious metaphorical cognition facilitate social and cultural interactions, by reconsidering Musolff's (2004) analysis of metaphor in political discourse on European integration.…”

Should Damage to the Machinery of Social Perception Damage Perception?

“…The hypothesis that consciousness is closely related to social ability has been suggested previously in many forms (e.g., Baumeister & Masicampo, 2010;Carruthers, 2009;Frith, 1995;Gazzaniga, 1970;Humphrey, 1983;Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Humans have neuronal machinery that apparently contributes to constructing models of other people's minds (e.g., Brunet, Sarfati, Hardy-Baylé, & Decety, 2000;Ciaramidaro et al, 2007;Gallagher et al, 2000;Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003;Saxe & Wexler, 2005).…”