Consciousness likely evolved as an adaptive trait, and its subjective reality cannot be separated from its physical neural correlates. Combining anthropology and neuroscience, this review refutes common fallacies that ignore the evolutionary origin of consciousness or that divorce neuroscience from behavioral science. It describes experience as an ongoing overlap between intrinsic neural dynamics and external stimulation, framed as stochastic dynamics of a control system. This supports a world-brain research program and a naturalistic science of consciousness, grounding qualitative feelings in quantitative description and affirming a realistic ontology where physical and subjective aspects are inseparable.
Consciousness remains poorly defined in modern science. This review examines major philosophical and cognitive-science approaches, with special attention to the Russian activity-based tradition that situates consciousness in interaction with the world and culture. Drawing on recent anthropology and neuroscience, the authors argue that human consciousness is distinct from other forms of subjective reality found in other species. They propose defining human consciousness as the capacity to control one's actions at the level of intentions, a capacity that must be acquired during life. This definition distinguishes human consciousness from other subjective realities and suggests an evolutionary trajectory, providing a foundation for linking subjective states to neural activity.