The Science of Consciousness

Our purpose in this group is to explore the science of consciousness, drawing from sources that range from neuroscience to cognitive psychology to philosophy of mind. Although we will occasionally draw from the insights of spiritual introspective traditions, our focus here will be on what can be supported by the best current science regarding how the mind supervenes on the brain.

What marked the evolutionary transition from organisms that lacked consciousness to those with consciousness—to minimal subjective experiencing, or, as Aristotle described it, “the sensitive soul”? Using a methodology similar to that used by scientists when they identified the transition from non-life to life, Ginsburg and Jablonka suggest a set of criteria, identify a marker for the transition to minimal consciousness, and explore the far-reaching biological, psychological, and philosophical implications.
The authors propose that the evolutionary marker of basic or minimal consciousness is a complex form of associative learning, which drove the Cambrian explosion and its massive diversification of organisms. Finally, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose symbolic language as a similar type of marker for the evolutionary transition to human rationality—to Aristotle's “rational soul.”

For our next meeting, we will finish Chapter 2 and then consider Chapter 3 in this book: The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul by Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka.