Evolutionary Origin and the Development of Consciousness.

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This review seeks to combine advances in anthropology and neuroscience to investigate the adaptive value of human consciousness. It uses an interdisciplinary perspective on the origin of consciousness to refute the most common fallacies in considering consciousness, particularly, disregarding the evolutionary origin of the subjective reality in looking for the neural correlates of consciousness and divorcing studies in neuroscience and behavioural sciences. Various explanations linked to consciousness in the field of neuroscience, supplemented with the theoretical explanation of an experience as an ongoing process of overlap between intrinsic neural dynamics and stimulation can be summarised as the stochastic dynamics of one's control system experienced by the individual in the form of subjective reality. This framework elaborates on the world-brain research program and lays foundation for the quantitative description of one's qualitative feelings and naturalistic science of consciousness. Furthermore, this study highlights the philosophical perspective of the inseparability between the physical correlates and the subjective reality contributing to the realistic ontology of conscious processes.