If evolution is true, where does our ego come from?

Question

I am not for or against evolution, I am asking different questions about parts of the different beliefs that don't make sense to me.

How can chemicals and evolution explain me as an ego and not just me as an animal with thoughts and instincts. For example, you can theoretically create a robot that reacts to its environment, tries to protect itself, thinks, learns, has instincts, and even has emotions as controlled by chemicals. But that robot still wouldn't be a real being, but just a machine. They would not truly feel those emotions and wouldn't truly exist beyond chemicals, parts, and whatever else is used.

Shouldn't we, as humans, also be nothing more than neurons and chemicals? Yet each of us knows that we are conscious and real and feel things and have egos.

Answer 1

We have a body *as well* as a soul|


As Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out, the soul is the *form* of the body|

Now the form of the *human* body is too fine and subtle a structure to be maintained by the material substratum of it (as is the case with animals)|

So its form must be something "extra" which is the soul infused by God at *conception* and which separates from the body at *death* to go to judgment before God, then to purgatory, heaven, or hell|


Now our ego comes from our pride, which is based in the soul|

Evolution may only explain the emergence of the *physical vehicle* of man's body|

So any moral vices would not come from evolution, but from an erroneous act of free-will, which is based in the spiritual soul|




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Answer 2

If you asked that robot, what would it say?

This question come up in various forms all the time in fiction - movies and books. I think it happens for good reason too - these are really interesting ideas and they stay interesting no matter how long you ponder them.

Perhaps it would say it is alive and it is conscious and is not just running a program.

Perhaps WE are just stupendously complicated biological machines and that's why we say the same thing.

Perhaps if we are conscious, so must be the robot.

By whatever definition you use to define consciousness, if you have the hypothetical robot as you describe, both must either be conscious or neither is conscious - at least to a point that can be determined - any test would be passed by both robot and man in this hypothesis. You might say that can't be the case, but its just as impossible to prove the idea wrong as it is to prove it right.

That said, ego, consciousness and other things kind of get scary to define if that happens doesn't it? Humans loose the one thing that makes us special and our EGO doesn't like that. Or we can choose to think in a way that our egos don't depend on our being special in the first place.

Answer 3

An ego is just a way for us to manage our intimidation techniques. It gives us confidence to fend off others who would try to steal our mate, food, homes or what have you. All animals have egos, it boosts them up, makes them think that they are big enough, strong enough to fight off any thing that comes their way. Other attacking animals will sense this confidence, this aggression, this ego, and may be scared off and try to find some other way to get what they want. It's all controlled by chemicals, they same way as our aggression is determined by our serotonin levels, ego is just another form of aggression. As for your robot theory, it's just that. A theory. Until we actually build a robot that can use chemicals like the ones found in our bodies, we can't know how they would react, or how we would react. It's just speculation and an irrelevant one at that. It doesn't do humanity any good to build that robot. I'm sorry to tell you, but we really are just chemicals and neurons. It's a highly organized pattern that allows us to be what we are. Everything we do and everything we are has been explained through these tactics of chemicals and physics and biology. That doesn't mean we're not real, we're still here, we still have to live our lives. Don't worry about your soul, just focus on your life.

Answer 4

It is all a matter of degree. Many animals can't recognize themselves in a mirror. Yet chimps and other intelligent primates can recognize themselves. So ego is a matter of degree. All animals have emotions, the will to live, etc... We just happen to be able to recognize our own mortalitly, the future, things like that.

Plus if you believe that the earth is over 4 billion years old and that there were 5 major die-offs including one about 65 million years ago, you pretty much have to acknowledge that humans (and all other species) are basically an accident. If you don't believe in evolution, do you also think the earth is 6,000 years old?

It may seem like a cop-out, but if the age of the earth makes sense to you as well as various catastrophes, the ego, no matter how awe-inspiring to you, muat be part of a dterministic process.

Look at how flawed the ego is. It causes crime, lying, brutality, ecological destruction, etc... It's not all it's cracked up to be.

Answer 5

My friend had the same problem with shrooms he just started crying lol. I didn't have any problems maybe it was because I smoked a lot of Sour Diesel with them. I don't really care how or why we are here. I used to but I just sort of let it go. I realized there's no point in wondering what happened 3 billion years ago because we will never know. It's all just educated guesses or in religion's case powerful fiction writing. I just live for love and try to enjoy the blink of an eye I have on this rock. When I die, whatever. At least I'll be able to look back at a life that was as comfortable as I could make it.

Answer 6

We are not programmed. We learn. We have senses and drives that are loosely only loosely wired. Much of what we do comes from experience. Infants develop at their own pace. They have to figure out how to walk. All that is prewired are some reflexes that help.

Most of our drives like into the pain/pleasure response area from the so-called reptilian brain. Somewhere along the way, we acquired abstraction. the ability to see things that aren't, but could be. It is a function of the complexity of the brain. If you built a robot with an analog brain (or at least partially analog), such that responses are not whooly uniform, and gave it drives and needs, not emotions, your analogy would be more proper. Further, if you gave it senses and an environment full of stimuli, not a task list, it would act in ways that are not predefined.

If you look at other primates, such as baboons, you social interactions have a major stimulus of pleasure and pain and build identity. When you can build a robot that can bond with its family and interact with its peer group, you have created a robot with a primitive ego.

Answer 7

Great question.... well argued.

Indeed ego controlling every human body and mind proves beyond doubt that evolution is not the whole truth or total explanation of what we are. However, evolution does explain a lot about our 'robot' aspect as you put it.

On the other hand, a mere belief that God created us and sent us here to fulfill some great grand unified purpose also does not cut ice.... however, again, that the whole Beginning has to begin in a 'super will' beyond time and space regulations does lead to some validity in the concept of God.

At the end of it all, what makes the most sense to me is to remember how 'small' and minuscule we are.... hence should not shrink any further by denying our inability to comprehend it all either fully or perfectly, in other words, by being any dogmatic in our beliefs and views.

Answer 8

well, have you considered the ego itself might be illusion? If you programmed this robot as you say, would it not argue that it is alive and has a unique soul?

"Yet each of us knows that we are conscious and real and feel things and have egos"... again there is no proof. We 'know'.

Here is an interesting article on 'free will' that ties closely to the things you are wondering about:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19025504.000

Answer 9

ego comes from the element included in our everyday being...it's a doubled dose of confidence for continued (what we believe) achievements.

Answer 10

Substance 'evolves'... 'Consciousness' expands which is neither created nor can it be destroyed.
Ego is the 'I' Principal It comes from the same place everything else comes from... "SOURCE"!