What can we know about ourselves and how do we know it?

Recent developments in cognitive neuroscience radically changed the perspective on understanding human nature. For the first time in history many philosophical questions can be placed on scientific, rather than on philosophical grounds. These questions include understanding of the mind, self, free will, religious and cultural beliefs, morality, politics and social organization. Scientific consensus based on these discoveries is slowly being developed and will have far reaching consequences. Evolutionary perspective explains how homo sapiens has evolved, why do we have specific structures of the body, brain, sensory abilities, and how the mind emerges from embodiment and social interactions. Social neuroscience shows that there is emergent causality: biology determines affective and cognitive abilities, preferences and beliefs, personality, but it is itself influenced by the environment that changes our brains and bodies. All these mechanisms are deeply hidden from ordinary introspection, creating a wrong perception of human nature. Traditional views on human nature are briefly summarized and radical reductionist interpretations of neurobiologists presented, comparing humans to a bag of chemicals. Scientific discoveries cannot be ignored, but their interpretation is not so obvious. Problems with describing our mental states and knowing ourselves are analyzed. Treating brains as a substrate that enables partially autonomic mental processes, and identifying oneself with the whole organisms rather than some abstract model of self, allows for more optimistic interpretation of . 1. Traditional views: mind over matter. Cognitive sciences revealed many facts about human nature that do not fit to traditional picture based on ancient creation myths. They will clash with traditional views that have contributed to social stability for many centuries, perpetuated by cultural and religious beliefs and organizations. Traditional views on human nature were based on general ideas that formed in the ancient Greece:  all that occupies space is matter;  all that moves is alive;  regular motions are a sign of intelligence. Matter without something to push it was seen as inert. Living bodies had to differ from the dead ones, and the simplest explanation was to postulate existence of the soul, that could bring dead bodies to life, and in humans could have a rational part, or mind. Aristotle in his De anima treatise (Aristotle 350 BC) argues that the mind is immaterial and immortal because it acts with no bodily organ, seems to exists without the body, and thus cannot be corrupted. These ideas led him (and later also St. Thomas Aquinas) to the conclusion that there are at least three different kinds of souls: nutritive, plant souls responsible for growth, animal souls responsible for sensing, desires and reactions, and rational souls or minds that only humans