Consciousness comes from the Cambrian — what an alliterative climax! Thanks for exploring this as a narrative (of evolution); it makes this much easier to reason about.
Have you read Ogas’ and Gaddam’s book, “The Journey of the Mind”? I need to re-read it, but I recall them drawing the consciousness line at fish (because of something cool and self-referential about their neural representations). Also, do you think that Hoel’s take that consciousness is graded?
Thank you for reading! I'm glad you found this a useful way of considering it. The point about gradation of consciousness is one of the key points I was aiming to get across with this one, so I'm glad Erik picked that out in the highlight – I think it's more useful to see consciousness as gradated and that it has developed in complexity over many generations, just as any other body feature in the animal kingdom.
Thank you, also, for the book recommendation – I haven't read that one yet, but it certainly sounds up my street. My take on the fish point is that trying to determine the cutoff of the evolution of consciousness within the evolutionary timeline of the animal nervous system by analysing the nervous systems is impossible without understanding how consciousness emerges from nerves in the first place. I credit Erik Hoel with making the point that consciousness is the primary cause of animal behaviour (from his excellent "Neuroscience is pre-paradigmatic. Consciousness is why" article earlier this year); the logical extension of this is that it has *always* been the primary cause of animal behaviour, and, to me, this better fits with the evidence we have on the fossil record.
We're obviously a long way from figuring any of this out, but I hope that reframing the problem in this way may bring us a bit closer to some answers!
Consciousness comes from the Cambrian — what an alliterative climax! Thanks for exploring this as a narrative (of evolution); it makes this much easier to reason about.
Have you read Ogas’ and Gaddam’s book, “The Journey of the Mind”? I need to re-read it, but I recall them drawing the consciousness line at fish (because of something cool and self-referential about their neural representations). Also, do you think that Hoel’s take that consciousness is graded?
Thank you for reading! I'm glad you found this a useful way of considering it. The point about gradation of consciousness is one of the key points I was aiming to get across with this one, so I'm glad Erik picked that out in the highlight – I think it's more useful to see consciousness as gradated and that it has developed in complexity over many generations, just as any other body feature in the animal kingdom.
Thank you, also, for the book recommendation – I haven't read that one yet, but it certainly sounds up my street. My take on the fish point is that trying to determine the cutoff of the evolution of consciousness within the evolutionary timeline of the animal nervous system by analysing the nervous systems is impossible without understanding how consciousness emerges from nerves in the first place. I credit Erik Hoel with making the point that consciousness is the primary cause of animal behaviour (from his excellent "Neuroscience is pre-paradigmatic. Consciousness is why" article earlier this year); the logical extension of this is that it has *always* been the primary cause of animal behaviour, and, to me, this better fits with the evidence we have on the fossil record.
We're obviously a long way from figuring any of this out, but I hope that reframing the problem in this way may bring us a bit closer to some answers!