All There Is to the Mind Is to Have the Right Genes, or, Consciousness as a Form of Genetic Engineering

Abstract

Is there a gene or, rather, a set of genes which code for mind and consciousness? To refine this question further, can all our cognitive processes and states be accounted for mainly or even entirely in genetic terms? Clearly, environmental factors are important, since a person may have a gene for X which is never triggered because the right environmental conditions are not present. The question of whether there is a consciousness or mind gene can therefore be unpacked in two ways: whether, in principle, (a) there are systematic relationships of some sort between genes on the one hand and cognition/ consciousness on the other, and (b) it is possible to give an account of conscious processes and states in genetic as well as environmental terms, assuming that such systematic relationships can be discovered. The aim of this paper is to explore the possibility that classical cognitive science will be superseded by biomolecular cognitive science in the near future as our understanding of the human genome grows and advances are made in gene chip technology.