"Why does consciousness exist? The answer lies in the evolutionary origins of the simplest forms of subjective experience, not in studies of human consciousness alone, which represent just one special case within the animal kingdom. The need for a Darwinian bottom-up approach that reconstructs these simple origins and then successively builds more complex forms on top was a central message of my book A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness."
"This may not seem controversial, but philosophers have long been hostile to the idea that evolutionary biology could resolve major philosophical problems. In the first 10 commentaries published in special issues on my book, scientists and philosophers alike agreed with my evolutionary approach, applying my theory to species such as elephants and macaques (more on this in a future post). I was almost disappointed, however, having prepared myself to defend the importance of evolution for understanding the mind."
Consciousness originates in the evolutionary emergence of simple subjective experiences across the animal kingdom rather than in human-only studies. A Darwinian bottom-up approach aims to reconstruct these simple origins and then build progressively more complex forms on top, emphasizing biological diversity instead of a single scale toward human perfection. Philosophical hostility toward evolutionary solutions has existed, yet initial scholarly responses to the evolutionary approach were broadly supportive across multiple species. A substantial critical commentary prompted an extensive, detailed reply and led to an open-access journal article addressing evolution, science, and metaphysics of consciousness. Treating consciousness as categorically different from other biological phenomena is unjustified.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]