The examination of conscience

Most attempts to understand consciousness begin with human consciousness, which is surely the most challenging case. Not only is there the self to deal with, but there is also the fact that we humans are, or can be, conscious of being conscious—we have metaconsciousness, adding a whole other layer of complexity. Then there is the role of culture and history in the shaping of human consciousness; consciousness in the West in the twenty-first century is different in important respects from consciousness in other cultures at other points in time. It’s little wonder that the phenomenon of human consciousness can seem to us so far removed from the rest of nature. P. 1-2

We are half way through the month of August 2026 in which I am reporting on my reading of Michael Pollan’s book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness. Pollan divides his description of consciousness into four components: sentience, feeling, thought, and self consciousness.

Most religions comment on and offer advice about how their practitioners should manage their self consciousness all the way from Christians who teach that every human being has been born into sin due to Adam and Eve’s disobedience of god’s command not to eat of the apple from the tree of knowledge to the nondualistic spiritualities that teach the world as we perceive it is an illusion which we make up as we project our fear, guilt, and shame onto what we perceive.

Pollan points out that not only is self consciousness the product of our neurobiology but of our cultural understandings and conditioning.

What were you taught about your self consciousness? 

As a child of seven as part of my religious formation as a Roman Catholic I was taught that before communion is was to go to confession which involved examining my conscience to identify my sins and then report them to the priest in the confessional so that I could be forgiven by god. So as I reached the age of reason at age seven I not only was taught that I had a conscience but that I was to examine it on a regular basis and report to the priest my mistakes (sins) and seek forgiveness.

Socrates taught that an unexamined life was not worth living. As a young child I was taught the same thing and given a practice to engage in examining and reporting on my findings on a regular basis.