Investigating the Acquisition and Control-Structure of the Human Mind

A novel analytical methodology has proven fruitful in developing a functional identification of consciousness with operable mental control structure in human higher brain function. Two operational homologies (one associated with language, the other tool use) derived from mammalian instrumental behavioral competence are identified, each exadaptively accessible: one a specialization of attentive search to (conventional, linguistic) internalized symbolic lexicon; the second being a combination – a co-parallel activation – of symbolically specialized attention with the original external ‘spotlight’ in order to support (deliberative, choice-making) navigational tasking. The mechanism by which consciousness becomes articulated to support the specialized control requirements of three cognitive performance levels is described, in particular for the case of the social bipedal hominid. A single articulated template model is posed to intervene between the incoherent neuronal and the coherently conscious mental level of higher brain operation. This cognitive system theory logic lends itself to an explanation of the exadaptive acquisition of a cognitively objectifiable self-model from within subjective experience, and a plausible heuristic for the systematic building of self-aware mental repertoire is discovered.