"In my previous post, I summarized my response to Christian de Weerd, who denied that a Darwinian approach to consciousness is even possible. I argued that consciousness science has unnecessarily insulated itself from the evolutionary tools that revolutionized our understanding of every other biological phenomenon, and that treating human consciousness as the paradigm case distorts our picture of consciousness as a natural phenomenon spanning millions of species across millions of years."
"Frankish has spent decades fighting what he calls the "Cartesian paradigm." This way of thinking, traceable to René Descartes, treats subjective experience as fundamentally closed off from scientific investigation. Consciousness becomes an entirely private mental realm where "qualia" (raw feelings, such as the experience of blue or pain) are revealed directly to a subject, and no amount of neuroscience can bridge the gap."
Consciousness is proposed to have evolved to help animals navigate difficult trade-offs in decision-making. A Darwinian approach applies evolutionary tools to consciousness across species rather than privileging humans. Some critics deny a Darwinian approach is possible, arguing that subjective experience involves private, intrinsically felt qualities beyond scientific explanation. Illusionism contends that apparent qualia are cognitive illusions and that the Cartesian paradigm, which treats subjective experience as private qualia inaccessible to science, must be rejected. The debate centers on whether consciousness can be integrated into evolutionary biology or whether its supposed privacy blocks scientific accounts.
Read at Psychology Today
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