The invention of the soul
Source: https://aeon.co/essays/you-know-what-consciousness-is-you-live-in-soul-land?utm_source=rss-feed ↗
Humphrey, a distinguished evolutionary psychologist, argues that consciousness as we experience it — the sense of an inner soul — is not a biological given but a cultural invention achieved through language and social construction.
This thesis challenges both religious and materialist accounts of consciousness by proposing that sentience becomes 'sacred' through human meaning-making rather than divine endowment or genetic programming.
For product leaders, this perspective illuminates how digital interfaces shape subjective experience: if consciousness itself is partly constructed through symbolic tools, then the design of our technological environments becomes a question of what kinds of inner lives we are building.
The essay connects consciousness studies to anthropology and cultural evolution, offering a framework for understanding how tools don't just extend cognition but partially constitute it.
Humphrey's work bridges neuroscience and humanities in ways that inform how we think about human-computer interaction at the deepest level.
Central argument
Humphrey argues that consciousness — specifically the felt sense of having an inner soul — is not a pre-given biological feature or a divine endowment, but a cultural invention produced through language and social meaning-making. The core thesis is that sentience becomes 'sacred' not through genetic programming or theology, but through the symbolic tools and practices humans use to construct inner life. This positions consciousness as partially constituted by cultural artifacts, placing it at the intersection of evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and semiotics.
Critique
The central tension in Humphrey's argument is that 'cultural invention' risks conflating the construction of our concepts and narratives about consciousness with the construction of consciousness itself — a move that phenomenologists and philosophers of mind like Nagel or Chalmers would contest sharply. If the hard problem of subjective experience is real, then explaining how cultures elaborate and symbolize inner life does not explain why there is something it is like to be conscious in the first place. The thesis may be more convincing as an account of self-model formation than as a full account of sentience.
Why it matters for product
If the tools and symbolic environments we inhabit partially constitute inner experience — rather than merely mediating it — then product decisions about notification cadence, conversational UI, or personalization loops are not neutral design choices but active interventions in how users construct their sense of self and attention. For a CPO, this reframes discovery research: understanding user needs cannot stop at behavior or stated preference, but must probe how repeated interaction with a product reshapes what users expect from their own cognition. It also raises a direct accountability question for roadmap prioritization: which features are building richer inner lives, and which are progressively narrowing them.