This article introduces and defends the “pathological complexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having to (...) deal with a complex body with high degrees of freedom, what I call “pathological complexity.” By modeling the explosion of this computational complexity using the resources of state-based behavioral and life history theory we will be able to provide an evolutionary bottom-up framework to make sense of subjective experience and its function in nature by paying close attention to the ecological lifestyles of different animals. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the extent to which nonhuman animals are conscious. Most important perhaps is what criteria should be used in making such a determination.

The body is a highly complex, coordinated system engaged in coping with many environmental problems. It can be considered as some sort of opportunity or obstacle, with which internal processing must deal. Internal processing must take into account the possibilities and limitations of the particular body. In other words, even if the body is not involved in the realization of some cognitive explicit task, it is not a neutral factor of our understanding of why a system solves a task in (...) one way or another. Therefore, when conducting research on embodiment and the body’s cognitive system we should not neglect internal, cognitive processing. I appeal to Goldman’s research on embodied cognition to sketch the broader framework for internal processing in embodied cognition. I believe that even if we don’t accept Goldman’s approach as the viable proposal for embodied cognition in general, it’s a quite natural starting point for our analysis. Goldman (2012; 2014, and with de Vignemont 2009) argue for the essential role of the bodily formats or bodily codes (respectively: B-formats and B-codes) in embodied cognition. B-codes are here described as the processing of regions or sub-regions of the central nervous system. They are primarily employed for body control or monitoring, and reused for cognitive tasks. Beyond doubt, this conception provides an excellent starting point for analyzing the internal (mostly neural) processing in cases of embodied cognition. At the end of this paper, I will argue that the embodiment of cognition needs a conceptual twist. Following Keijzer’s (2015) interest in the evolution of the nervous system, and the minimal forms of cognition, I argue that in investigating embodied cognition, we should investigate the role played by cognitive processing for specific kinds of organisms, meaning organisms with a body of a particular morphology (size, shape, kinds, and distribution of sensors and effectors). Doing that, I refer to some conceptual and empirical considerations. I will also try to show that research on embodied cognition is still not sufficiently anchored in evolutionary and comparative studies on cognition, nor on the nervous system and body morphology. Bigger reliance on these kinds of studies, will make it make possible to gain a deeper understanding of internal processing in embodied cognition. (shrink)

The role of emergence in the creation of consciousness has been debated for over a century, but it remains unresolved. In particular there is controversy over the claim that a “strong” or radical form of emergence is required to explain phenomenal consciousness. In this paper we use some ideas of complex system theory to trace the emergent features of life and then of complex brains through three progressive stages or levels: Level 1 (life), Level 2 (nervous systems), and Level 3 (...) (special neurobiological features), each representing increasing biological and neurobiological complexity and ultimately leading to the emergence of phenomenal consciousness, all in physical systems. Along the way we show that consciousness fits the criteria of an emergent property—albeit one with extreme complexity. The formulation Life + Special neurobiological features → Phenomenal consciousness expresses these relationships. Then we consider the implications of our findings for some of the philosophical conundrums entailed by the apparent “explanatory gap” between the brain and phenomenal consciousness. We conclude that consciousness stems from the personal life of an organism with the addition of a complex nervous system that is ideally suited to maximize emergent neurobiological features and that it is an example of standard (“weak”) emergence without a scientific explanatory gap. An “experiential” or epistemic gap remains, although this is ontologically untroubling. (shrink)

It remains a standing problem how and why the first nervous systems evolved. Molecular and genomic information is now rapidly accumulating but the macroscopic organization and functioning of early nervous systems remains unclear. To explore potential evolutionary options, a coordination centered view is discussed that diverges from a standard input–output view on early nervous systems. The scenario involved, the skin brain thesis, stresses the need to coordinate muscle-based motility at a very early stage. This paper addresses how this scenario with (...) its focus on coordination also deals with sensory aspects. It will be argued that the neural structure required to coordinate extensive sheets of contractile tissue for motility provides the starting point for a new multicellular organized form of sensing. Moving a body by muscle contraction provides the basis for a multicellular organization that is sensitive to external surface structure at the scale of the animal body. Instead of thinking about early nervous systems as being connected to the environment merely through input and output, the implication developed here is that early nervous systems provide the foundation for a highly specific animal sensorimotor organization in which neural activity directly reflects bodily and environmental spatiotemporal structure. While the SBT diverges from the input–output view, it is closely linked to and supported by ongoing work on embodied approaches to intelligence to which it adds a new interpretation of animal embodiment and sensorimotor organization. (shrink)

While life in general can be explained by the mechanisms of physics, chemistry and biology, to many scientists and philosophers it appears that when it comes to explaining consciousness, there is what the philosopher Joseph Levine called an “explanatory gap” between the physical brain and subjective experiences. Here we deduce the living and neural features behind primary consciousness within a naturalistic biological framework, identify which animal taxa have these features (the vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopod molluscs), then reconstruct when consciousness first (...) evolved and consider its adaptive value. We theorize that consciousness is based on all the complex system features of life, plus the even more complex features of elaborate brains. We argue that the main reason why the explanatory gap between the brain and experience has been so refractory to scientific explanation is that it arises from both life and from varied and diverse brains and brain regions, so bridging the gap requires a complex, multifactorial account that includes the great diversity of consciousness, its personal nature that stems from embodied life, and the special neural features that make consciousness unique in nature. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to commentaries by Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg and by David Spurrett on my target article “Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness,” in which I have offered the first extended articulation of my pathological complexity thesis as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins and function of consciousness. My reply is structured by the arguments raised rather than by author and will offer a more detailed explication of some aspects of the pathological complexity thesis.

This article examines the nature of affective states across biological taxa. It argues that affect constitutes a primary form of consciousness. Creatures capable of affect are sentient of their bodily states and can behave in ways intended to maintain or restore them to a homeostatic range. After reviewing and critiquing neurobiological and philosophical theories of the evolution of consciousness, this article argues that some possible creatures are limited to self‐directed affective states, even if those creatures are capable of exteroception. Such (...) creatures enjoysolipsistic sentience: awareness of their own selves and bodily demands, but unawareness of their exogenous environments. (shrink)

In our target article, “Learning and the evolution of conscious agents” we outlined an evolutionary approach to consciousness, arguing that the evolution of a form of open-ended, representational, and generative learning (unlimited associative learning, UAL) drove the evolution of consciousness. Our view highlights the dynamics and functions of consciousness, delineates its taxonomic distribution and suggests a framework for exploring its developmental and evolutionary modifications. The approach we offer resonates with biosemioticians’ views, but as the responses to our target article show, (...) our proposal also faces challenges and has led to suggestions that extend, develop and qualify it. Our response to the 14 varied and rich commentaries starts with the recurring and deep question raised by many of them – the relation between life and sentience. We explore this question by introducing and expanding on “vivaciousness”, a term we coined to describe the turbulent, flexible exploration-stabilization processes inherent in the living condition, as well as addressing the related concepts of Umwelt and selfhood. We then consider the question of the adequacy of unlimited associative learning (UAL) as an evolutionary transition marker (ETM) of minimal consciousness (rather than as a marker of a complex form of sentience), and the possible precursors of sentience. The engagement with these broad themes is entangled with a discussion of evolutionary transitions, constitutive emergence and the function/s of consciousness. The suggestions of our commentators, urging us to explore new concepts and new avenues of research within the framework of a richer view of evolution are then discussed. We end by briefly considering what we regard as a conceptual lacuna, which is leading to the indiscriminate use of the term “sentience” and which awaits further investigation. (shrink)

Many philosophers of biology have embraced a version of pluralism in response to the failure of theory reduction but overlook how concepts, methods, and explanatory resources are in fact coordinated, such as in interdisciplinary research where the aim is to integrate different strands into an articulated whole. This is observable for the origin of evolutionary novelty—a complex problem that requires a synthesis of intellectual resources from different fields to arrive at robust answers to multiple allied questions. It is an apt (...) locus for exploring new dimensions of explanatory integration because it necessitates coordination among historical and experimental disciplines . These coordination issues are widespread for the origin of novel morphologies observed in the Cambrian Explosion. Despite an explicit commitment to an integrated, interdisciplinary explanation, some potential disciplinary contributors are excluded. Notable among these exclusions is the physics of ontogeny. We argue that two different dimensions of integration—data and standards—have been insufficiently distinguished. This distinction accounts for why physics-based explanatory contributions to the origin of novelty have been resisted: they do not integrate certain types of data and differ in how they conceptualize the standard of uniformitarianism in historical, causal explanations. Our analysis of these different dimensions of integration contributes to the development of more adequate and integrated explanatory frameworks. (shrink)

In human conscious experience, many features are present in combination: objects are presented through the senses, information from different sensory modalities is integrated, events are marked wit...

Biological understanding of human cognitive functions is incomplete because of failure to understand the evolution of complex functions and organisms in general. Here, that failure is attributed to an aspect of the standard neo-Darwinian synthesis, namely commitment to evolution by natural selection of genetic programs in stable environments, a position that cannot easily explain the evolution of complexity. When we turn to consider more realistic, highly changeable environments, however, another possibility becomes clearer. An alternative to genetic programs—dubbed “biogrammars”—is proposed here (...) to deal with complex, changing environments and explain evolving complexity from pre-genetic life to human socio-cognitive functions. (shrink)

Godfrey-Smith’s environmental complexity thesis is most often applied to multicellular animals and the complexity of their macroscopic environments to explain how cognition evolved. We think that the ECT may be less suited to explain the origins of the animal bodily organization, including this organization’s potentiality for dealing with complex macroscopic environments. We argue that acquiring the fundamental sensorimotor features of the animal body may be better explained as a consequence of dealing with internal bodily—rather than environmental complexity. To press and (...) elucidate this option, we develop the notion of an animal sensorimotor organization that derives from an internal coordination account for the evolution of early nervous systems. The ASMO notion is a reply to the question how a collection of single cells can become integrated such that the resulting multicellular organization becomes sensitive to and can manipulate macroscopic features of both the animal body and its environment. In this account, epithelial contractile tissues play the central role in the organization behind complex animal bodies. In this paper, we relate the ASMO concept to recent work on epithelia, which provides empirical evidence that supports central assumptions behind the ASMO notion. Second, we discuss to what extent the notion applies to basic animal architectures, exemplified by sponges and jellyfish. We conclude that the features exhibited by the ASMO are plausibly explained by internal constraints acting on and within this multicellular organization, providing a challenge for the role the ECT plays in this context. (shrink)

Hutto and Satne identify three research traditions attempting to explain the place of intentional agency in a wholly natural world: naturalistic reduction; sophisticated behaviourism, and pragmatism, and suggest that insights from all three are necessary. While agreeing with that general approach, I develop a somewhat different package, offering an outline of a vindicating genealogy of our interpretative practices. I suggest that these practices had their original foundation in the elaboration of much more complex representation-guided control structures in our lineage and (...) the support and amplification of those control structures through external resources. Cranes became increasingly important in the explanation of systematically successful action. These more complex representational engines coevolved with selection to detect and respond to the control structures of others. Since much of that selection was driven by the advantages of cooperation and coordination, in part these control structures were co-opted as external signals and guarantees, in cooperation and coordination. As the time depth of cooperation and co-ordination extended, these public signals of belief and intent acquired secondary functions, as mechanisms to stabilise and structure control systems, making humans not just more transparent to one another at a time, but more predictable over time. Mindshaping, not just mindreading, became increasingly important in our lineage. (shrink)

Electromagnetic field oscillations produced by the brain are increasingly being viewed as causal drivers of consciousness. Recent research has highlighted the importance of the body’s various endogenous rhythms in organizing these brain-generated fields through various types of entrainment. We expand this approach by examining evidence of extracerebral shared oscillations between the brain and other parts of the body, in both humans and animals. We then examine the degree to which these data support one of General Resonance Theory’s principles: the Slowest (...) Shared Resonance principle, which states that the combination of micro- to macro-consciousness in coupled field systems is a function of the slowest common denominator frequency or resonance. This principle may be utilized to develop a spatiotemporal hierarchy of brain-body shared resonance systems. It is predicted that a system’s SSR decreases with distance between the brain and various resonating structures in the body. The various resonance relationships examined, including between the brain and gastric neurons, brain and sensory organs, and brain and spinal cord, generally match the predicted SSR relationships, empirically supporting this principle of GRT. (shrink)

Complexity theory attempts to explain, at the most general possible level, the interesting behaviors of complex systems. Two such behaviors are the emergence of simple or stable high-level behavior from relatively complex low-level behavior, and the emergence of sophisticated high-level behavior from relatively simple low-level behavior; they are often found nested in the same system. Concerning the emergence of simplicity, this essay examines Herbert Simon's explanation from near-decomposability and a stochastic explanation that generalizes the approach of statistical physics. A more (...) general notion of an abstract difference-making structure is introduced with examples, and a discussion of evolvability follows. Concerning the emergence of sophistication, this essay focuses on, first, the energetics approach associated with dissipative structures and the fourth law of thermodynamics, and second, the notion of a complex adaptive system. (shrink)