Self deception

What sets humans apart? One common answer is that it is our self-awareness; our sense of self. Whilst there isn't a qualitative division, this certainly seems to be something that is far more developed in humans than in other animals. So a natural question to ask is how it came to be so highly developed. There's a relatively simple story which gives one plausible answer. It may well not be right, but if it is it is rather humiliating for us. The feature which sets us apart may have been born in deception.

Here's the story:

Proto-humans began to develop a community structure which relied on intelligent communication. Some proto-humans began to build mental models of other proto-humans. This helped them to judge and more accurately predict the behaviour of others. They survived better, and this became widespread.

Some proto-humans began to meta-model - to model the modelling that was occuring in the minds of others. They survived better, and this became widespread.

In some, this meta-modelling was especially detailed with respect to the models that others had of them. This was for at least two reasons. First, it was easy for their brains to gather data about their own state and the ways it was making them behave. Second, it was these meta-models which yielded the most significant information for those doing the modelling. They survived better, and this became widespread.

Finally, some proto-humans began to make use of these meta-models in more sophisticated ways; to modify their own behaviour so that they were harder to second-guess, and even to give a misleading impression to others. In order to do this, their mental self-models became extremely detailed and detached from any specific model of the minds of others. They survived better, and this became widespread.

Does this story have a moral? If so, it isn't that deception is natural for humans and therefore morally fine. The question of whether a thing is natural (in the sense of emerging in an understandable way from the normal running of nature) is independent of the question of whether it is good. Instead, if this story is true, the moral is that we shouldn't trust our sense of self quite so much. When we rotate our inner eyeballs to look back into ourselves, it may be that the image we see is one that was born in deceit.