Abstract
The purpose of this article is to reconcile the hypotheses that: (1) brain evolution occurred due to a change in diet, and (2) it occurred due to pressures related to understanding more and more about the underlying causes, such as understanding increasingly complex manipulative and cooperative intentions on the part of the other, as well as understanding reality itself (and how to interact with it beyond group issues). I argue that the ingestion of fat, a highly energy-efficient food, would have unlocked the evolutionary process that culminated in the emergence of the practice of reasoning about underlying causes; and that the consolidation of such a practice resulted in a continuous pressure to increase cognition about “whys”; so that many explanations ended up imposing the need for additional ones, and with that came a high level of awareness and the need for the brain to evolve not only in terms of providing a higher level of cognition but also in size.
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Notes
I am assuming the idea that phylogenesis proceeds from ontogenesis (see Gottlieb, 1992, p. 150, 2002), that is, that a certain change, be it a physical or behavioral characteristic, is established beforehand at the level of the individual before establishing itself at the genetic level and becoming, over evolutionary time, a common characteristic of the species. Gottlieb gathered a series of evidence that behaviors acquired by a non-human animal, such as cleaning the nest, can be transmitted genetically and become “natural” behavior patterns of its successors. It is worth noting that, according to the perspective I am ofering, if patterns of behavior are inherited, patterns of thiking are also inherited, which includes the type that allows elaborations and use of heuristics based on “whys”.
This argument starts from the notion that “self-direction of attention comes to create self-awareness” (Barkley, 2012, p. 81).
I agree with Pinker (2001, p. 208) that dealing with increasingly intelligent cheaters must not have been the only selection pressure responsible for triggering human intelligence. It is possible to imagine other ongoing pressures that increase the chance of survival, such as, for example, moving out of a lower status through the prestige route (see Fowers, 2015, p. 153), which depends on demonstrating more knowledge about the reality itself (and how to interact with it beyond group issues) than the other members of the group (if the other knows more and more, it is necessary to know even more to be considered superior); or even having to become a more skillful reader of positive intentions, in order to become a more skillful cooperator in the sense of being more able to help in the achievement of goals that depend on mutual effort to be achieved (especially objectives that increase the chance of survival when achieved) (Tomaselo, 2000).
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Osmo, F. An Integrative Hypothesis of Brain Evolution. Integr. psych. behav. 58, 462–466 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-023-09809-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-023-09809-5