Vagueness and the Evolution of Consciousness

Abstract

Either consciousness appeared suddenly in living beings so that its appearance is like that of a light switch being turned on or it arose through intermediate stages. On the former view, consciousness is an on/off matter, but once it arose, it became richer and richer through time rather as a beam of light may become brighter and broader in its sweep. On the latter view, consciousness is not an on/off matter. There are shades of gray. Consciousness arose gradually just as life did, becoming richer through time as animal brains became more complex. I argue that both these views encounter insuperable difficulties and thus that a kind of paradox arises. The way out of the paradox is to accept that the various species of consciousness are vague, admitting of borderline cases, and are to be accounted for within a representationalist view of conscious states but that consciousness itself, or rather a central element of consciousness I call “consciousness*”, is sharp. Consciousness*, I claim, is a fundamental feature of micro-reality, and thus it did not evolve, unlike conscious states. The view with which I end up presents novel solutions to three important problems (of undirected consciousness, of combination, and of tiny, psychological subjects). It also takes up the question of how consciousness can be causally efficacious with respect to animal behavior. The final chapter of the book turns to the question of where in the brain macro-consciousness is located and which animal brains so evolved as to support conscious states.