ABSTRACT
The preceding discussion of neurophysiology, genetics, experience, the morphogenesis of the brain and the evolution of the mind should have illustrated beyond reasonable doubt that each individual is unique in terms of their conscious awareness. Although it has been proposed that we share a primal instinct, certainly Eros and perhaps Thanatos as well (the need to kill prey and predators comes to mind), and higherorder consciousness (being grounded in the collective symbolic order) it is proposed that this is not so for primary conscious. Primary consciousness stands as the differentiating middle ground between these two other aspects of mind which both pre-and post-date its emergence. Primary consciousness is based upon value-memory anchored within a remembered present. It involves the integration of perceptual categorisation, memory and learning from which arise actions intended to facilitate survival of the individual and the species (involving, amongst others, the satisfying of hunger and sex drives). In this respect, primary consciousness functions intentionally, directed by a learned capacity to satisfy instincts in an efficacious manner. Primary consciousness is where individual consciousness begins. If it was not for the fact that the formation of primary consciousness is malleable at each moment of its genesis, then there could be no self-conscious self which harboured individual meaning. As the formation of primary consciousness progresses, through selective cell death, the selection of neural pathways by external and internal events, reentrant mapping and the evolution of global maps fashioned by continuous experience of the external world, a distinct way of seeing and valuing the world arises. As Edelman has argued, qualia, such as colours or tastes, will be not be the same for any two individuals. Differences in perception arise
from differences in neural pathways and neural maps. Some differences will arise by chance during morphogenesis, whilst others will emanate from differences in experience. As discussed in chapter two, Plomin and others have demonstrated that even identical twins will be subject to differences in experience, even within the home. Instincts, which in biological terms may be considered to be the broad parameters of value resident within the limbic and brain stem regions of the brain, are given by species level constraints, as even small deviations may result in an inability to thrive. But primary consciousness is an adaptive and malleable element of the mind from which differences in meaning and reason arise. It cannot be otherwise, or, in the absence of the diversity within the species which exists at the level of the individual, natural selection could not give rise to evolution in ways shown to be the case through the work of Darwin, and many others since.
