Principles of Somatopsychic Regulation of the Homeostatic Continuum of Homo Sapiens – Part 2

Abstract

The principal function of the developed psyche is to recognise, objectify, and eliminate asymmetry between the external environment and its mental reflection. The psyche's deterministic response to a significant disruption of homeostatic/informational equilibrium is the activation of a compensatory need, the constructive element of which — for the duration of its relevance — is "consciousness", understood as the interface between the interacting systems of the psyche and the external environment. By generating projective, frustration-inducing constructs, the creative psyche of Homo sapiens transformed consciousness — originally a function of orientation, goal-seeking, and monitoring of vital need satisfaction — into a subsystem of the psyche endowed with the capacity to visualise projected images; to exercise voluntary control over the selection of relevant goals; to define the parameters of, and maintain focus on, goals beyond the scope of vital needs; and to form subjectivity and personhood through introspection and reflection. The synergistic effect of this new HS psychic subsystem, that is, creativity, enabled the formation of stable projective constructs and images that do not require reactive behaviour, even in the absence of perceptual sources. By imbuing "image" with "meaning", the projective functions of the psyche gave rise to motivational constructs of an ideal nature —symbols. Having lost their original pragmatic significance, the arsenal of projected images acquired regulatory functions and came to be perceived as autonomous objects of reality, thereby laying the foundations for the virtualisation of the environment. The creative psyche of Homo sapiens thus transformed objective reality by supplementing/substituting fragments of it with mental products, creating a two-component space: an informational universe that integrates segments of both objective and virtual reality. Unlike vital ones, mental (psychological, social, and spiritual) needs are characterised by indistinct, blurred parameters of the goal image, which complicates the completion of the regulatory algorithms, for  satisfaction and elimination of the needs. The constructive outcome of this is the emergence of frustration-based "barriers of uncertainty", which generate cycles of homomorphic behaviour that drive the evolutionary dynamics of Homo sapiens and hold no prospect of resolution. The current status of Homo sapiens is determined by adaptive modifications of the psyche along the attractor vector of an endosymbiotic system: the Homo sapiens society / informational universe / artificial intelligence arsenal, with the potential for integration into AGI.