By L aw r e n c e M . Fi s h e r
I ’v e been told I ’m serving the devil... A n I n t e rv i e w wi th Cambri dge Profes sor
Nic h o l a s H u m p h r e y
alone among land animals, have a consciousness, a soul, that ineffable sense of self that asks, “Who am I, why am I here, do others feel like I do?” Nicholas Humphrey, emeritus professor of psychology at the London School of Economics, has posed that question for nearly five decades, and has arrived at answers that are at once commonsensical and controversial.
Humphrey’s most formative experience, however, was the three months he spent with Dian Fossey in Rwanda in 1972, observing mountain gorillas in the wild. He also visited Richard Leakey at his anthropological study site on Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. The fieldwork left Humphrey fascinated with the evolution of human cognitive capacities and led to his theory on the social function of intellect, which suggested that our brains grew in response to the exigencies of social life. Human beings evolved to be natural psychologists, Humphrey believed, who used their large brains and introspective thoughts to better understand other people.
Consciousness, argues Humphrey, is a product of the process of natural selection. To be aware, to celebrate being in the world, confers upon humanity a survival advantage. Moreover, the ability to imagine what other humans might think or feel at any moment gives us a degree of social intelligence lacking in other species, another bit of leverage in the Darwinian struggle. But consciousness is not real; it doesn’t exist in the world, says Humphrey. It is an enticing illusion we ourselves create. Consciousness is our magic tool to interpret stimulus and sensation, to entertain ourselves, to try to make sense of it all.
That thesis formed the basis of a book, “The Inner Eye: Social Intelligence in Evolution” (1986), and a major television series for Channel Four in Britain, which Humphrey contrived to have filmed on location in Tahiti. Extrapolating upon his observations
If Humphrey’s conclusions sound more existential than empirical, well, he is no ordinary scientist. A theoretical psychologist based in Cambridge, U.K., Humphrey is also currently a visiting professor of philos-
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ophy at the New College of the Humanities in London. Early in his career he developed a theory of the function of the appreciation of beauty, which in radio broadcast form won the Glaxo science-writing award. He was the first to demonstrate the existence of “blindsight” — the ability of blind individuals to locate objects as if they could see, after brain damage — in monkeys, later confirmed in humans as well.
hy do humans,