Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Click here to configure this browser for off-campus access.
- Peter Carruthers (2000). The Evolution of Consciousness. In Peter Carruthers & A. Chamberlain (eds.), Evolution and the Human Mind. Cambridge University Press.How might consciousness have evolved? Unfortunately for the prospects of providing a convincing answer to this question, there is no agreed account of what consciousness is. So any attempt at an answer will have to fragment along a number of different lines of enquiry. More fortunately, perhaps, there is general agreement that a number of distinct notions of consciousness need to be distinguished from one another; and there is also broad agreement as to which of these is particularly problematic - namely phenomenal consciousness, or the kind of conscious mental state which it is like something to have, which has a distinctive subjective feel or phenomenology (henceforward referred to as p-consciousness). I shall survey the prospects for an evolutionary explanation of p-consciousness, on a variety of competing accounts of its nature. My goal is to use evolutionary considerations to adjudicate between some of those accounts.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
| Export citation | Other links: cogprints.org philosophy.umd.edu | Scholar | At my library 
Similar books and articles
I appeal to Merker's theory to motivate a hypothesis about the ontology of consciousness: Creature consciousness is (at least partially) constitutive of phenomenal consciousness. Rather than elaborating theories of phenomenal consciousness couched solely in terms of state consciousness, as philosophers are fond of doing, a correct approach to phenomenal consciousness should begin with an account of creature consciousness.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: umsl.edu | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: umsl.edu | Scholar | At my library | More options ...  I appeal to Merker’s theory to motivate a hypothesis about the ontology of consciousness: creature consciousness is (at least partially) constitutive of phenomenal consciousness. Rather than elaborating theories of phenomenal consciousness couched solely in terms of state consciousness, as philosophers are fond of doing, a correct approach to phenomenal consciousness should begin with an account of creature consciousness.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: umsl.edu journals.cambridge.org ncbi.nlm.nih.gov | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: umsl.edu journals.cambridge.org ncbi.nlm.nih.gov | Scholar | At my library | More options ... I will actually talk mostly about evolutionary processes in the brain as we think about what to say next; I'll be happy to answer questions later, however, about how this system we call consciousness itself evolved on the usual evolutionary time scale of the ice ages.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | More options ...
| | Scholar | More options ... Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Many people argue not. They claim that there is an.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: philosophy.umd.edu cogprints.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: philosophy.umd.edu cogprints.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This book provides a comprehensive and novel theory of consciousness. In clear and non-technical language, Christopher Hill provides interrelated accounts of six main forms of consciousness - agent consciousness, propositional consciousness (consciousness that), introspective consciousness, relational consciousness (consciousness of), experiential consciousness, and phenomenal consciousness. He develops the representational theory of mind in new directions, showing in detail how it can be used to undercut dualistic accounts of mental states. In addition he offers original and stimulating discussions of a range of psychological phenomena, including visual awareness, pain, emotional qualia, and introspection. His important book will interest a wide readership of students and scholars in philosophy of mind and cognitive science.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In recent philosophy of mind, it is often assumed that consciousness and self-consciousness are two separate phenomena. In this paper, I argue that this is not quite right. The argument proceeds in two phases. First, I draw a distinction between (i) being self-conscious of a thought that p and (ii) self-consciously thinking that p. I call the former transitive self-consciousness and the latter intransitive self-consciousness. I then argue that consciousness does depend on intransitive self-consciousness, and that the common reasons for denying the dependence of consciousness upon self-consciousness apply only to transitive self-consciousness.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... David Rosenthal and Fred Dretske agree that creature consciousness should be used to give a reductive explanation of state consciousness. They disagree, however, over what type of creature consciousness will do the job. Rosenthal, defending a higher-order thought (HOT) account, argues that higher-order creature consciousness is what is needed. Dretske, defending a first-order (FO) account, argues that first-order creature consciousness is what is needed. I attempt to advance this debate by presenting a case for a third creature-conscious account of state consciousness. what I call the same-order (SO) account. I show that bydefining a conscious mental state as a mental state whose possessor is conscious of what it represents, we are offered a unique creature-conscious account of state consciousness that avoids some of the problems that have plagued both the HOT and FO accounts.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Contents.--General characteristics of the outer consciousness.--The person of the outer consciousness.--The cosmic aspect of the outer consciousness.--The outer consciousness in ethics.--The teleology of the outer consciousness.--The outer consciousness and a future life.--Schopenhauer and the outer consciousness.--The psychology of outer consciousness.--Is superpersonality the looked-for principle?--Hobhouse's theory of mental evolution.--The organic analogy.--Conclusions.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In order to distinguish the conscious state itself from its aspects and contents we need an answer to the question "if there is something it is like to be conscious, what is it?" A succinct answer to this question is provided in the form of a common denominator of all conscious states. This characterization of the conscious state has implications for the systematic study of consciousness through its bearing on a number of concrete issues connected with the nature of consciousness and its relation to the biology of brains and their evolution. These are discussed with a view to delineating the characteristics of consciousness, suggesting the primary functional role of consciousness in the total economy of brain functions, and exploring the tractability of the problem of consciousness from the standpoint of ordinary science. 1997.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | More options ...
| | Scholar | More options ... The paper introduces the field of consciousness studies to an audience outside of philosophy and the cognitive sciences, using the work of the late David Brooks as a starting point. Brooks' account of consciousness, and the cognitive and evolutionary significance of for-the-organism properties, are discussed. Brooks' account is evaluated in the light of the debate over conscious inessentialism; and alternative lines for developing Brooks' account are proposed, drawing on the work of Gerald Edelman.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Peter Carruthers, The evolution of consciousness
 Back
All discussions
Start a new thread
|
There are no threads in this forum |
Nothing in this forum yet.
