Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Series | Book | Chapter

194343

The evolution of human consciousness

John G. Taylor

pp. 195-212

Abstract

Determination of the details of how consciousness evolved in living systems is still to be achieved. In this chapter we take an approach to this problem through the evolution of the mechanism of attention across the animal kingdom. This is natural since one must attend to a stimulus in normal viewing conditions in order to be conscious of it. The present understanding of attention in primates, using single cell and fMRI results is shown to lead to a control approach which we suggest evolves through four stages to an extended form of ballistic attention control; a similar sequential approach was already discussed in  Chap. 5, although will take a slightly different form here due to the approach trying to keep to an evolutionary path rather than purely a functional one. The final step in either path is to be finally extended for humans by addition, we propose (on the basis of the CODAM architecture) of a corollary discharge signal of that for the movement of the focus of attention, as developed in  Chap. 6. It is suggested that this is the final (fifth) stage in the evolution of attention, with consciousness as a concomitant of the corollary discharge signal itself.

Publication details

Published in:

Taylor John G (2013) Solving the mind-body problem by the CODAM neural model of consciousness?. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 195-212

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-7645-6_12

Full citation:

Taylor John G (2013) The evolution of human consciousness, In: Solving the mind-body problem by the CODAM neural model of consciousness?, Dordrecht, Springer, 195–212.