Damasio’s body-map-based view, Panksepp’s affect-centric view, and the evolutionary advantages of consciousness
South African Journal of Philosophy 38 (4):419-432 (2019)
Abstract
Although dualism has the advantage of being intuitively plausible, it is not compatible with a 21st-century (scientific) world view. Jaak Panksepp and Antonio Damasio are contemporary writers who reject dualism, and whose views take the form of “biological naturalism”. I first discuss how their views compare in five specific respects; and then I look more closely at how the different emphases of the views affect their ability to account for the evolutionary advantages of consciousness, specifically. Both authors agree that “consciousness” provides creatures with a survival advantage in terms of their ability to produce novel and/or flexible responses, their ability to plan ahead, and their motivation to promote their own survival – but the exact means by which they think these advantages are conferred, in each of these respects, differ. One might say that, whereas Damasio thinks the main evolutionary advantages of “consciousness” (the “higher reaches” of which are unique to humans) have to do with enabling creatures to work out what to do to promote their well-being, Panksepp thinks the main advantage of “consciousness” is that being “conscious” of affective feelings urgently motivates creatures to take action when their well-being is threatened. Considering that “working out what do” is only possible for a small selection of cognitively sophisticated organisms, I argue that Panksepp’s account is more plausible than Damasio’s account.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1080/02580136.2019.1697569
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References found in this work
Consciousness without a cerbral cortex: A challenge for neuroscience and medicine.Bjorn Merker - 2007 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (1):63-81.
Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans.Jaak Panksepp - 2005 - Consciousness and Cognition 14 (1):30-80.
The liabilities of mobility: A selection pressure for the transition to consciousness in animal evolution.Bjorn H. Merker - 2005 - Consciousness and Cognition 14 (1):89-114.
Philosophical Implications of Affective Neuroscience.Stephen Asma, Jaak Panksepp, Rami Gabriel & Glennon Curran - 2012 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 19 (3-4):6-48.
Panksepp?s common sense view of affective neuroscience is not the commonsense view in large areas of neuroscience.D. Watt - 2005 - Consciousness and Cognition 14 (1):81-88.