Conrad Montell
function to supply the brain with accurate informa-
tion for survival. Our external senses act as hunters,
perceiving as well as sensing the environment for
accurate information (Gibson 1966). At that stage of
human evolution “when our early ancestors first no-
ticed the images in a pool of water, or the shadows
of things, and especially when they began to make
pictures, we may fairly assume that they became puz-
zled about the problem of appearance and reality”
(Gibson 1966, p310). If we look at a field and “see” a
fish moving across it, our control center, in effect,
signals our eyes to look again; perhaps the field is a
lake or pond. Or, if it remains a field, perhaps the fish
is a rodent or some other land animal. (A similar
example could be given for what our ears might
hear.) I suggest that our internal senses developed to
act as hunters of a different kind: rather than for
accurate information, they hunt for that which is
acceptable, and “meaningful”. If they report a
“senseless” presence or voice, an embellished mem-
ory, such a report might well be acceptable and even
welcomed. Although “senseless”, it might “make
sense”. It would be particularly welcomed if such a
presence had been sought. But since our external
and internal senses function simultaneously, it is not
always clear what kind of information and experi-
ences they (we!) are hunting for. Staddon and Za-
nutto refer to examples “of organs evolving (often
not very efficiently) from one function into organs
that serve a very different one” (1998, p241). In the
case of the brain with its sensors, one can consider
the organ to have retained its original function while
taking on the added function of imagination. How
might such conflicting functions of the human
brain have evolved?
The Prehistoric Background
Although there is little clear evidence for how
“Homo religious and Its Brain” evolved, (Holmes
1996, p441), we do know quite a bit about how pre-
religious brains evolved, how new structures grew
around older ones, and how animals housing larger
brains grew smarter in processing information from
their environment. But such informational smart-
ness, nuts-and-bolts-survival smartness, need not
lead to, and certainly does not explain, the develop-
ment of human imagination and such things as
spiritual experiences; they are different kinds of
things. Humans, together with the evolution of big-
ger and smarter brains, obviously useful in the
struggle for survival, evolved with an addition to
that system: a companion device whose usefulness
is not obvious (Donald 1991; Mithen 1996). It is a
device that gained awareness of itself and its fate,
and then developed structures and processes: con-
ceptual thought and symbolic language, to bear the
weight of that awareness, to make sense of the
world, to discover “meaning” in it, and hence, to
make fragile, finite existence more bearable (Langer
1982). Humans use them to ascribe “purpose” to a
seemingly indifferent environment, to ameliorate
frightening sensory information, to countermand
unacceptable empirical evidence, and to create an
altered image of the world which is then stored as
mental images of what is not actually present, of
what has not been actually experienced (Lorenz
1977; Langs 1996).
Before gaining imagination, the actions of our an-
cestors were, undoubtedly, operant behaviors, re-
sponses to stimuli that operate on the environment.
Dennett calls such lower-order animals, creatures
susceptible to operant conditioning: Skinnerian Crea-
tures (1995, 1978). In time, our ancestors developed
the ability to learn about the environment in ways
far beyond mere trial and error behavior. Dennett
speaks of creatures like ourselves that “have two en-
vironments, the outer environment in which they
live, and an ‘inner’ environment they carry around
with them... we are talking of the evolution of (in-
ner) environments to suit the organism, of environ-
ments that would have survival value in an organ-
ism” (1978, p77). Dennett further explains: “the
inner environment is simply any internal region
that can affect and be affected by features of poten-
tial behavioral control systems” (p79), an environ-
ment in which advanced creatures ask, “what they
should think about next” (1995, p378). Having such
an inner environment, hominids, as they evolved
towards human self-awareness, observing the vio-
lent end of a young comrade, the weakening and
deterioration of an older one, the long sleep without
an awakening, from all this, a new kind of behavioral
response would begin to emerge. There would be a
need for new and different survival adaptations. As
awareness emerged, perhaps in dreams, first the
gnawing feeling, then the shocking thought, must
have taken hold: “This may happen to me”. Later,
the more awesome extension of thought: “Death is
a common happening. This will likely happen to
me”. A less dramatic but quite likely scenario is that
proto-humans came to that thought gradually over
generations of increasing melancholy, moving to-
ward depression, encountering death with a growing
awareness of mortality and a feeling of helplessness.
They would look at dead comrades and feel some-
Evolution and Cognition ∣ 11 ∣ 2002, Vol. 8, No. 1