Consciousness, adaptation and epiphenomenalism

On the evolution of conscious attention

“…Nevertheless, a longstanding claim in the literature is that evolutionary considerations are useless for an understanding of consciousness because conscious awareness seems to lack any specific function, since integrative processes can occur without conscious awareness (e.g., Mudrik, Faivre, & Koch, in press;Talsma, Senkowski, Soto-Faraco, & Woldorff, 2010;Zmigrod & Hommel, 2011). Some even claim that consciousness might be a spandrel, that is, a by-product resulting from increasing complexity in brain structures that does not serve an evolutionarily adaptive purpose (e.g., see Carruthers, 2000;Dennett, 2005;Gould & Lewontin, 1979;Polger & Flanagan, 2002;Rosenthal, 2008). This creates a fundamental problem in our current understanding of consciousness because it seems to prevent a functional analysis of conscious attention, that is, the "reportable" type of attention that is part of conscious awareness (i.e., where the contents of attention are consciously accessible such that one could report detecting this information).…”

“…Surprisingly, little focus has been given to the evolution of attention (but see Cosmides & Tooby, 2013;Tooby & Cosmides, 1995;Ward, 2013;Wright & Ward, 2008, pp. 235-241), especially in terms of how it relates to the evolution of consciousness, which has received more treatment in the literature (e.g., Feinberg & Mallatt, 2013;Nichols & Grantham, 2000;Polger & Flanagan, 2002;.…”

On Variability & Human Consciousness

“…Equally important, however, is to outline what this paper is not intended to represent. This is not intended to be a theory of how consciousness evolved, or whether it exists as a biological adaptation, or a by-product of some other system of adaptations (Buss, 2009;Polger & Flanagan, 2002;Miller, 1999). It is difficult to imagine a scenario, however, in which clarifying the sources of variation for consciousness fails to reveal anything about its origins, as these topics are relevant for evolutionary discussions of other complex traits (Penke, Denissen & Miller, 2007).…”

“…It is difficult to imagine a scenario, however, in which clarifying the sources of variation for consciousness fails to reveal anything about its origins, as these topics are relevant for evolutionary discussions of other complex traits (Penke, Denissen & Miller, 2007). As others have rightly pointed out, the heritability (or lack thereof) of consciousness is a key point to ponder when discussing the evolution of conscious experience and whether it constitutes an "adaptation" in the strict biological definition of the term (Dennett, 1991;Polger & Flanagan, 2002;Miller, 1999) . However, that is not a focal part of the current discussion.…”

Rethinking the Evolution of Consciousness

“…One reason that many theorists seem to think that consciousness must be necessary for some capacity φ or other is the fear that consciousness will otherwise prove to be epiphenomenal (Polger and Flanagan 2002). If there is no φ for which consciousness is necessary, then we don't know what consciousness does (or why nature would contrive to provide us with consciousness-see Q4b, below), and we should conclude that consciousness is epiphenomenal after all.…”