Consciousness

• seCtIon FoUR: eVoLUtIon

DIFFERENT WORLDS

Every species has evolved sensory systems to suit its way of life. This leads to

the odd realisation that several different species in the same location may all be

inhabiting different worlds. Let’s take the example of an ordinary garden pond

with fish, frogs, newts, snails, insect larvae, flies, and a human child with a fishing

net. We can easily imagine (or think we can) how the pond looks to the child, but

the others must experience it in completely different ways. The fish have sense

organs for detecting vibrations in the water from which they know what to avoid,

PRACTICE 10.1

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE THAT ANIMAL?

This practice is rather different from usual. As you go about your daily life,

look out for other animals and watch what they are doing. They might be

pet dogs and cats, farm cows or pigs, or wild birds, squirrels, or rabbits.

Look out as well for insects, spiders, worms, and fish. In each case ask

yourself, ‘What is it like to be this cow?’, ‘What is it like to be that spider?’

Can you imagine it? Is it easier with some animals than with others? What

does this difference mean?

Microbes Fleas Chickens Chimps

Humans

Humans

Microbes

Clouds

Waves

Rocks

Atoms

2.Acontinuum (seamless transition):

3.Aspace with many discontinuities:

1. Adichotomy (one bigdivision):

FIGURE 10.6 • Models of conceptual spaces.
It is often assumed that the
only alternative to a dichotomy
(conscious/nonconscious) is a
continuum of cases with only
differences of degree. There is
a third alternative (Sloman and
Chrisley, 2003, p. 15).

that consciousness is a fundamental biological adaptation and that the

known anatomical and physiological bases of consciousness are phylo-

genetically ancient, going back at least to the early mammals. We read-

ily attribute consciousness to other people on the basis of behavioural

and brain evidence, so we should not deny it to other mammals. Psy-

chiatrist Todd Feinberg and biologist Jon Mallatt (2016) go even further

back, to the time of the Cambrian explosion more than five hundred

million years ago. Unconscious reflexes gradually evolved into brains

with ever increasing levels of consciousness leading eventually to uni-

fied inner worlds of subjective experience. So in their view, every fish,

reptile, amphibian, and insect is conscious, and possibly cephalopods

like our octopus, too.

Others distinguish between primary consciousness, or sensory con-

sciousness – the ability to integrate perceptual and motor events with

memory to create awareness of the present world around you  – and

secondary or higher-order consciousness, which involves conscious-

ness of being conscious, and the ability to connect the present to the

past and future (G. Edelman, 2003). Distinctions like these may mean that con-

sciousness is basically a binary, on/off phenomenon, or they may allow for certain

animals to be partially or incompletely conscious (Allen and Trestman, 2016). We

should not, in any case, assume that there is just one kind of consciousness. Nor

should we assume that, if there are multiple kinds or levels of consciousness, the

human kind is the standard by which all the others should be measured.

‘Humans and higher

animals are obviously

conscious’

(Searle, 1997, p. 5)

‘affective, interoceptive,

and exteroceptive

consciousness all existed

in the first vertebrates of

the Cambrian explosion’

(Feinberg and Mallatt, 2016,
p. xvii)