The Ancient Origins of Consciousness: How the Brain Created Experience

by Todd E. Feinberg

How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent scientific findings to answer these questions—and to tackle the most fundamental question about the nature of how does the material brain create subjective experience? After assembling a list of the biological and neurobiological features that seem responsible for consciousness, and considering the fossil record of evolution, Feinberg and Mallatt argue that consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed. About 520 to 560 million years ago, they explain, the great “Cambrian explosion” of animal diversity produced the first complex brains, which were accompanied by the first appearance of consciousness; simple reflexive behaviors evolved into a unified inner world of subjective experiences. From this they deduce that all vertebrates are and have always been conscious—not just humans and other mammals, but also every fish, reptile, amphibian, and bird. Considering invertebrates, they find that arthropods (including insects and probably crustaceans) and cephalopods (including the octopus) meet many of the criteria for consciousness. The obvious and conventional wisdom–shattering implication is that consciousness evolved simultaneously but independently in the first vertebrates and possibly arthropods more than half a billion years ago. Combining evolutionary, neurobiological, and philosophical approaches allows Feinberg and Mallatt to offer an original solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness.

Genres: Science, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology, Biology, Nonfiction, Evolution

542 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 25, 2016

Reviews

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely technical, but with some effort still fairly informative for a general reader. All (neuro)science and biology, no quantum woo-woo.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

all the stuff on the evolution of the senses was very cool

[Yon - · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really useful for understanding consciousness! It traces the structures of the brain that provide Phenomenal Consciousness, which is also referred to as Sensory Consciousness and Primary Consciousness. There are dozens of exquisitely detailed diagrams of brains along the evolutionary journey to Consciousness created by Jill Gregory and Courtney McKenna. The diagram to the left is a schematic brain of the Lamprey, a living equivalent of the first animal that had an advanced Optic Tesctum which provided an isomorphic map of the visual field in an array of tissue that created a "mental image". The diagrams really elevate Gregory & McKenna to honoary co-authors.

In addition to the timeline of the evolution of the brain structures that support Sensory Consciousness, there are the system level constituent parts: Exteroception, Interoception and Affective Consciousness. (p. 131) Other 'ceptions discussed: proprioception and nosioception, also perception - not mentioned: Neuroception, Reception, Interception, Conception, Exception, Deception, or Inception.

Nice simple definition of Consciousness - that works for me:
p. 111: "But to us, real consciousness is indeicated by the (optic tectum) making a multisensory map of the world and then attending to the most important object in this map and then signalling behaviors"... based on the map.

p.5 NSFCs are introduced. A bit like the NCCs of Christof Koch - Nueral Correlates of Consciousness. NoSFCs are NueroOntologically Subjective Features of Consciousness. This phrase is important for closing the Expanatory Gaps and the "hard problem".
NoSFCs:
1) Mental Unity - we have one coherrent notion of Reality.
2) Qualia - subjective perceptrons of qualities.
3) Referral, aka Projection - Reality seems to be Out There, not in our heads.
4) Mental Causation, imagining how our behaviors could influence Reality helps us understand what we see.

p.18 Table 2.1 The Defining Features of Consciousness (gen-refl-spec):
Level 1: General Biological Features: life, embodiement, processes, self organizing systems, emergence, teleonomy & adaption.
Level 2: Reflexes of animals with nerevous systems.
Level 3: Special Neurobiological Features (not exactly as in Table 2.1):
- Complex Hierarchy (of networks)
- Nested and non-nested processes, aka recursive, aka re-rentrant,
- Isomorphic representations and mental images
- Affective States
- Attention
- Memory

[Matt M Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind blowing (pun intended)

Very, very thorough meta-study of brain research combined with a mjlti-perspective theory of consciousness. 1 2 3 4 5 6

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely well written for what is a pretty dense book on the emergence of sensory and affective consciousness. There are a lot of potential social/moral repercussions from the perspective that consciousness emerged with the vertebrates.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice, systematic and biologically grounded approach to consciousness. Continuity oriented, with most vertebrates and some invertebrates seen as sharing basic sensory consciousness, but associative and self-conscious aspects only in the more complex brains of amniotic vertebrates

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting overview of consciousness - what it is, how it arises in the brain, and who has it. Very thought provoking.

[Mooncalf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Particularly strong on the biology and neuroscience aspect of the question. One of the best books you'll find on the question of which animals are conscious.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning, breaks down consciousness into three crucial aspects and convincingly shows us that consciousness predates mammals and birds by 100s of millions of years. A must-read.

[Alberto Tebaldi · Rating 4 out of 5]

dense and at times difficult, but extremely interesting topic