Consciousness

NO INDEPENDENT FUNCTION FOR

CONSCIOUSNESS

An alternative approach is to deny consciousness a separate
function of its own and ask instead how creatures built like
us come to be conscious – much as we might ask how an ani-
mal comes to be alive or to be healthy, or how a car gets its
horsepower.

Many kinds of theory fit this general approach. Perhaps the
most extreme version is eliminative materialism. The Church-
lands, for example, argue that once we understand the evolu-
tion of human behaviour, skills, and abilities, the whole idea
of consciousness will just slip away, as did the idea of the ‘life
force’ or ‘phlogiston’. In other words, there is no independent
consciousness, and we need not ask how it evolved.

More common are those theories which deny consciousness
a separate function without eliminating it. For example, psy-
chologists Peter Halligan and David Oakley suggest that ‘It is
our capacity to tell others of the contents of our consciousness
that confers the evolutionary advantage  – not the experience
of consciousness itself ’ (2015, p. 27). This, they say, is because
communication about consciousness helps us predict the
behaviour of others and respond to social influences. This is
similar to Humphrey’s and Barlow’s social theories, except that
it is communication, not subjectivity itself, that natural selec-
tion favours.

Many scientists working on human evolution avoid the tricky topic of conscious-
ness, but implicitly adopt a functionalist position. Although some philosophers
argue that functionalism cannot account for subjectivity at all (Chapter 8), others
equate subjectivity with such functions as social interaction, language, or prob-
lem-solving. In this view, consciousness is not separate from those functions and
so cannot have causal properties or functions in its own right (one of the reasons
why the term ‘functionalism’ can be confusing). Explaining how the functional
organisation of the brain and the rest of the body came about is all that is required.

Humphrey’s ideas moved on from his earlier work on ‘nature’s psychologists’ to
provide a different take on how ‘the mind–brain identity equation for sensations
could work’ (2006, p. 98). Having begun to sketch an action-based or enactive
theory (Humphrey, 1992), he now tells a new just-so story (2006), starting with an
amoeba-like creature that reacts to chemicals or vibrations around it by wriggling
towards or away from them. At first, the responses are purely local, but soon they
become linked into some kind of nervous system for more effective action. As
sense organs evolve, the creatures react with more complex wriggles until the
time comes when they need to make internal representations of their world. And
here is Humphrey’s key point – they can do this by using their own reactions to
the outside world, via the command signals they already issue. So this creature
learns about the outside world and its own feelings ‘by the simple trick of moni-
toring what it itself is doing about it’ (2006, p. 87).

‘to sense the presence of

red light, [the animal]

monitors its signals for

wriggling redly’

(Humphrey, 2006, p. 90)

Localresponse occurs

at pointofstimulation

Response becomes

targeted on incoming

sensory nerve

Response becomes

‘privatized’ within

brain

!

!

!

FIGURE 11.8 • The ‘privatisation’ of sensation

(Humphrey, 2002, p. 112).