Real

True Narratives

Our narrative begins with the Big Bang and the ten billion years before life emerged on Earth.

• Simon Singh, Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe (Harper, 2005).
• Cynthia Stokes Brown, Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present (New Press, 2007).
• Eric J. Chaisson, Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos (Columbia University Press, 2005).
• Armand H. Delsemme, Our Cosmic Origins: From the Big Bang to the Emergence of Life and Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Slices of life, as it is:

• Douglas Rogers, The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe (Harmony, 2009): a travel writer’s account of ordinary life under a dictatorship
• Rachel Kushner, The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 (Scribner, 2021): a gallery of souls

Humanity

This entire work is about humanity. Virtually every narrative here is a narrative about humanity. No narrative can encompass our entire story but among the best efforts are those of Will and Ariel Durant in their superb eleven-volume Story of Civilization (1935-75), and H. G. Wells in his Outline of History (1920).  These works tell our historical story in broad strokes.

• Edward L. Ayers, The Thin Light of Freedom: Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America (W.W. Norton, 2018) “ . . . we are introduced to remarkably common emotions felt by the people of blue and gray states . . . . ground-level history, recounting the lives of ordinary men and women.”

On the basics of consciousness:

• Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance and Empower the Mind (Doubleday, 2014): “Kaku claims the mysteries of the mind will soon be mysteries no more. It’s an audacious assertion backed up, he says, by a flood of new neuroscience technologies.

Technical and Analytical Readings

The foundations of our humanity are encoded in our genes. All the instructions for our thought, emotion, action and sensation are contained there. Our genetic code is not the story of our experience, but it is the story of its foundations. An excellent source of literature is Human Genome Project - A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, and Annotated Research Guide to Internet References by Health Publica Icon Health Publications (ICON Health Publications, 2004). Online resources include the Human Genome Project home and project, its National Institutes of Health site and a genome map.

Before the human genome project was begun, several researchers were at work tracing the geographical path of intra-human genetic evolution. A massive tome by L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Pizza entitled The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton University Press, 1994) tells the story and relates the findings of this work, which traces our genetic path from our origins in Africa into Europe, across Asia and into the Pacific, across the Bering Strait into North America, and then into South America. This genetic pathway further confirms the reality of our evolutionary history.

Still, what makes us uniquely human? No doubt our large brain does, with our highly developed cerebral cortex. Once we understand the genetic history of our species, and have the technological means to track brain activity and correlate it to experience, we can begin to understand the biological origins of ethics, morality, religion and spirituality. In this sense, these disciplines are just beginning to uncover who we are. Less than a generation old, this is an emerging topic in the cognitive neurosciences. The following works are among the most accessible. Strictly speaking, they are not narratives but I know of no better way to tell the story of what makes us human, or provide insight into the nascient field that will provide us with new ways of looking at ourselves.

• V.S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human (W.W. Norton & Company, 2011).
• Walter Glannon, ed., Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science: Essential Readings in Neuroethics (Dana Press, 2007).
• Walter Glannon, Bioethics and the Brain (Oxford University Press, 2006).
• Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald, Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are (FT Press, 2010).
• Kevin S. Seybold, Explorations in Neuroscience, Psychology and Religion (Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007).
• Neil Levy, Neuroethics: Challenges for the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
• Judy Illes, Neuroethics: Defining the Issues in Theory, Practice, and Policy (Oxford University Press, 2005).
• Philip Lieberman, Uniquely Human: The Evolution of Speech, Thought and Selfless Behavior (Harvard University Press, 1991).
• Chip Walter, Thumbs, Toes and Tears: And Other Traits That Make Us Human (Walker & Company, 2006).
• Andrew Brook and Kathleen Akins, eds., Cognition and the Brain: The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
• Peter Carruthers, The Architecture of the Mind (Oxford University Press, 2006).
• Peter Carruthers, The Nature of the Mind: An Introduction (Routledge, 2003).
• Peter Carruthers, Phenomenal Consciousness: A naturalistic theory (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
• Peter Carruthers, Consciousness: Essays from a Higher-Order Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2005).
• Simeon Locke, Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and the Science of Being Human (Praeger, 2007).
• William G. Lycan, Consciousness and Experience (The MIT Press, 1996).
• Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul (Basic Books, 1981).
• Thich Nhat Hanh, Understanding Our Mind (Parallax Press, 2006).
• Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddha Mind, Buddha Body: Walking Toward Enlightenment (Parallax Press, 2007).

Our eyes opened to ourselves tens of thousands of years ago when humans first became self-aware. Now, our eyes are opening more widely, as we begin to gain a fuller awareness of what being human means.

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An ant is an action machine. It has a tiny evolutionary precursor to a brain, no sense of self, no apparent emotional life, and no capacity for what we call thought. It is genetically programmed to perform its tasks, reproduce and die.

A lobster will react to painful stimuli, but whether it experiences sensation as we do is a matter of contention. It has no sense of self, no emotional life that we know of, and no known capacity for thought.

Farther along the evolutionary chain, a mouse experiences pain and pleasure. Its emotional life is comparatively simple, and it has only a rudimentary capacity for thought. By contrast, elephants appear to mourn the death of herd and family members, and can be trained to perform tasks that require skills far beyond those of a mouse.

Dolphins, whales and chimpanzees are among the most intelligent non-humans. They have rich emotional lives and fine intellects compared to all other species except one.

The human being is a remarkable creature. In fact, it is probably the only creature capable of assessing itself to be remarkable. (Cats only seem arrogant.) We have a wealth of technical literature on human being.

The cognitive neurosciences are among the most promising and rapidly expanding fields in science. The psychology of a century ago was largely a collection of observations and essays. Today, scientific research in cellular and molecular biology, brain imaging and other fields has moved the disciplines of human understanding into the realm of hard science. The Society for Neuroscience, which has approximately 36,000 members worldwide, is approximately forty years old. For the first time, we are uncovering the biochemical foundations of thought and behavior at a rapid pace. This will make possible new treatments for diseases and disorders of the brain and mind.

Perhaps the most comprehensive single treatise in this field is Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Cognitive Neurosciences: The Biology of the Mind (The MIT Press, 2009). The text cites numerous references in the field, and many more have emerged since the publication date. (See, for example, The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, The European Journal of Neuroscience, The Journal of Consciousness Studies and Consciousness and Cognition.) A few of us will spend a lifetime in this important discipline. For the rest of us, the story of how we came to understand ourselves will become an increasingly important part of our human narrative. Below are some of the leading books in the field:

• Terry E. Goldberg and Daniel R. Weinberger, eds., The Genetics of Cognitive Neuroscience (The MIT Press, 2009).
• John H. Byrne and James L. Roberts, eds., From Molecules to Networks: An Introduction to Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience (Academic Press, 2009).
• Olaf Sporns, Networks of the Brain (The MIT Press, 2010).
• Roberto Cabeza and Alan Kingstone, eds., Handbook of Functional Neuroimaging of Cognition (The MIT Press, 2006).
• György Buszáki, Rhythms of the Brain (Oxford University Press, 2006).
• Dan H. Sanes, Thomas A. Reh and William A Harris, Development of the Nervous System (Academic Press, 2005).
• Gerald M. Edelman and Guilio Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination (Basic Books, 2000).
• Gerald M. Edelman, Wider Than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness (Yale University Press, 2004).
• Michael Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind (The MIT Press, 1995).
• Rocco J. Gennaro, eds., Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: An Anthology (John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2004).
• Uriah Kriegel and Kenneth Williford, eds., Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness (The MIT Press, 2006).
• Christopher S. Hill, Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
• Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Little, Brown & Co., 1991).
• Daniel C. Dennett, Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness (Basic Books, 1997).
• Chrisof Koch, The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach (Roberts & Company Publishers, 2004).
• Zoltan Torey, The Crucible of Consciousness: An Integrated Theory of Mind and Brain (MIT Press, 2009).
• Michael Tye, Consciousness, Color, and Content (MIT Press, 2000).
• Michael Tye, Consciousness Revisited: Materialism Without Phenomenal Concepts (MIT Press, 2009).
• Max Velmans, Understanding Consciousness (Routledge, 2nd Edition, 2009).
• Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men(University of Washington Press, 1966).
• Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (Scribner Book Company, 1994).
• Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (Oxford University Press, 1994).
• Nicholas Humphrey, Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness (Princeton University Press, 2011).
• Eric Schwitzgebel, Perplexities of Consciousness (MIT Press, 2011): “The philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, in ‘Perplexities of Consciousness,’ contends that our minds, rather than being open-access, are largely hidden territory.”
• Adrian Owen, Into the Gray Zone: A Neuroscientist Explores the Border Between Life and Death (Scribner, 2017): “But when Jeff was put into a scanner — an fMRI machine (for functional magnetic resonance imaging) — and shown a short Alfred Hitchcock film, ‘Bang! You’re Dead, parts of his brain lit up. ‘In response to sounds, Jeff’s auditory cortex sprung to life,’ Owen recounts. ‘When the camera angle changed or the young boy ran across the screen, Jeff’s visual cortex activated.’”

Human worth as the inter-subjective underpinning of ethics:

• Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life (Doubleday, 2022): “. . . all four women believed that morality had some kind of reality outside of individual feelings and choices and that this reality existed somewhere beyond, behind or beneath the observable facts of the physical universe. This conviction put them at odds with the prevailing trend of philosophy at Oxford, a trend pioneered by A. J. Ayer, a logical positivist who insisted that statements that cannot be verified by logic or measurement are statements of value and therefore essentially meaningless — or 'nonsense!' . . .”

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

• The Human Experience
• The Ascent of Man (videos)
• Consciousness: The Final Frontier
• The Neuroscience of Consciousness