by all our interlinked computers and servers that are constantly copying, vary-
ing, and selecting vast amounts of digital information (Blackmore, 2010). If this is
the right way of looking at the evolution of information technology, we can only
speculate whether it might give rise to a new kind of digital consciousness, or
perhaps a new illusion of consciousness.
Barlow, H. (1987). The biological role of con-
sciousness./Humphrey, N. (1987). The inner eye of
consciousness. In C. Blakemore and S. Greenfield
(Eds), Mindwaves (pp. 361–374, 377–381). Oxford:
Blackwell.Asking what selective advantage consciousness confers,
both authors conclude the advantages are social,
but Barlow is more sceptical than Humphrey about
introspection.Blackmore, S. (2010). Memetics does provide a
useful way of understanding cultural evolution./Wimsatt,
W. (2010). Memetics does not provide a useful way of
understanding cultural evolution. In F. Ayala and R. Arp
(Eds), Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology
(pp. 255–272, 273–291). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Debate on the value of memetics (for and against).Blackmore, S. (2017). Untestable claims and the
evolution of consciousness. Trends in Ecology and Evo-
lution, 32 (5), 311–312.A critical review of Feinberg and Mallatt (2016),
with a detailed response by the authors at http://www.
cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/comments/
S0169-5347(17)30036-8.Graziano, M. A., and Kastner, S. (2011).
Human consciousness and its relationship to social neu-
roscience: A novel hypothesis. Cognitive Neuroscience,
2 (2), 98–133.Proposes that consciousness is information created
by the neural machinery which evolved for social
perception.READING