The evolution of human consciousness

pp. 195-212

in: John G. Taylor, Solving the mind-body problem by the CODAM neural model of consciousness?, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

Determination of the details of how consciousness evolved in living systems is still to be achieved. In this chapter we take an approach to this problem through the evolution of the mechanism of attention across the animal kingdom. This is natural since one must attend to a stimulus in normal viewing conditions in order to be conscious of it. The present understanding of attention in primates, using single cell and fMRI results is shown to lead to a control approach which we suggest evolves through four stages to an extended form of ballistic attention control; a similar sequential approach was already discussed in  Chap. 5, although will take a slightly different form here due to the approach trying to keep to an evolutionary path rather than purely a functional one. The final step in either path is to be finally extended for humans by addition, we propose (on the basis of the CODAM architecture) of a corollary discharge signal of that for the movement of the focus of attention, as developed in  Chap. 6. It is suggested that this is the final (fifth) stage in the evolution of attention, with consciousness as a concomitant of the corollary discharge signal itself.