Abstract
A number of conceptual difficulties arise when considering the evolutionary origin of consciousness from the pre-conscious condition. There are parallels here with biological pattern formation, where, according to Alan Turing’s original formulation of the problem, the statistical properties of molecular-level processes serve as a source of incipient pattern. By analogy, the evolution of consciousness can be thought of as depending in part on a competition between alternative variants in the microstructure of synaptic networks and/or the activity patterns they generate, some of which then serve as neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs). Assuming that NCCs perform this function only if reliably ordered in a particular and precise way, Turing’s formulation provides a useful conceptual framework for thinking about how this is achieved developmentally, and how changes in neural structure might correlate with change at the level of conscious experience. The analysis is largely silent concerning the nature and ultimate source of conscious experience, but shows that achieving sentience is sufficient to begin the process by which evolution elaborates and shapes that first experience. By implication, much of what evolved consciousness achieves in adaptive terms can in principle be investigated irrespective of whether or not the ultimate source of real-time experience is known or understood. This includes the important issue of how precisely NCCs must be structured to ensure that each evokes a particular experience as opposed to any other. Some terminological issues are clarified, including that of “noise,” which here refers to the statistical variations in neural structure that arise during development, not to sensory noise as experienced in real time.
Highlights
The literature on the subject of consciousness is vast and diverse, reflecting the range of interests of those who write on the subject, from philosophers to neuroscientists (Velmans, 2009; Van Gulick, 2018)
The question is important because, if natural selection is truly agnostic regarding the nature of the real-time precursors on which it acts, it follows that once the first sentient experience has emerged in a taxon, evolution can complete on its own, through its ability to shape experience, the process of converting that first experience to fully evolved consciousness in all its baroque complexity
A further problem, not addressed in the above analysis, is that for natural selection to act at all to shape experience, and for consciousness to evolve over time, there must be a route by which emergent experience can influence the real world through its action on behavior
Summary
The literature on the subject of consciousness is vast and diverse, reflecting the range of interests of those who write on the subject, from philosophers to neuroscientists (Velmans, 2009; Van Gulick, 2018). They could well be activity-based, to reflect the functional properties of developing circuits, but structural variables fit more in Turing’s model in its original form, requiring fewer additional assumptions, and the outcome of the analysis is not, in any case, changed, at least with regard to the advantages and limitations of this type of formulation.
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