Health, consciousness, and the evolution of subjects

Abstract

The goal of this programmatic paper is to highlight a close connection between the core problem in the philosophy of medicine, i.e. the concept of health, and the core problem of the philosophy of mind, i.e. the concept of consciousness. I show when we look at these phenomena together, taking the evolutionary perspective of modern state-based behavioural and life-history theory used as the teleonomic tool to Darwinize the agent- and subject-side of organisms, we will be in a better position to make sense of them both as natural phenomena.

The human fear paradox: Affective origins of cooperative care

“…Here, we aim to strengthen Grossmann's fearful ape hypothesis by placing it in the context of Veit's (2022aVeit's ( , 2022bVeit's ( , 2022c pathological complexity framework for the evaluation of lifehistory tradeoffs in evolution and the classification of disorders of consciousness. Pathological complexity refers to the complexity of the fitness challenges faced by an organism.…”