Abstract:

The study of animal consciousness is becoming a respectable domain of study, which has implications for neuroscience, evolutionary biology and ethics. In this lecture I discuss the theoretical commitments of different naturalistic approaches to animal consciousness and point to markers of consciousness. I suggest that an approach focusing on cognitive capacities in humans that were shown by contrastive experiments (comparing conscious and non-conscious perception) to require consciousness is a good starting point for the search for consciousness markers in non-human animals. However, the choice of contrastive experiments that are deemed relevant for animals is theory-dependent. I present an evolutionary approach suggesting that consciousness is the outcome of the evolution of a complex form of associative learning (unlimited associative learning, UAL), and that the cognitive architecture that evolved to enable this kind of learning is the architecture of minimal consciousness. This theory provides a framework for observational and experimental studies in animals and has many testable predictions. I end by discussing the implications of the evolutionary approach for consciousness studies and for research in evolutionary biology.

Royce Hall 306

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