Unexamined Life Is Worth Living, The In his recently published book, ''Strangers to Ourselves,'' Wilson argues that the real key to our behavior lies in a part of the brain known as the adaptive unconscious. Evolved perhaps before consciousness itself, it is the realm responsible for such indispensable cognitive skills as acquiring language, sizing up situations quickly, detecting signs of danger, sussing out relationships -- skills that everyone uses every day without even realizing it. Think of the adaptive unconscious as the generator in the basement that hums along unnoticed, but without which little could happen.