those states became organism -centric and perspectival. With the development of
motility and the need to approach beneficial stimuli and avoid harmful ones came the
beginnings of pleasure and pain. The development of self-representation was
accompanied by the dawn of differentiated self-consciousness and so on. On this
view, evolution accounts for the different forms that consciousness takes— and, in this
respect, continuity theory does not differ, in principle, from discontinuity theory.
However, consciousness, in some primal form, did not emerge at any particular stage
of evolution. Rather, it was there from the beginning. Its emergence, with the birth of
the universe, is neither more nor less mysterious than the emergence of matter,
energy, space and time.
Most discontinuity theorists take it for granted that consciousness could only have
appeared (out of nothing) through some random mutation in complex life forms that
happened to confer a reproductive advantage (inclusive survival fitness) that can be
specified in third-person functional terms. This deeply ingrained, pre-theoretical
assumption has set the agenda for what discontinuity theorists believe they need to
explain. Within cognitive psychology, for example, consciousness has been thought
by one or another theorist to be necessary for every major phase of human
information processing, for example in the analysis of complex or novel input,
learning, memory, problem solving, planning, creativity, and the control and
monitoring of complex, adaptive response. I have presented extensive analyses of the
role of consciousness in human information processing that cast doubt on all these
suggestions (Velmans, 1991a,b, 1993, 1996, 2000, 2002a,b, 2003).
It should be apparent that continuity theory shifts this agenda. The persistence of
different, emergent biological forms may be governed by reproductive advantage. If
each of these biological forms has a unique, associated consciousness, then matter and
consciousness co-evolve. However, conventional evolutionary theory does not claim
that matter itself came into being, or persists through random mutation and
reproductive advantage. According to continuity theory, neither does consciousness.
Which view is correct? One must choose for oneself. In the absence of anything other
than arbitrary criteria for when consciousness suddenly emerged, I confess that I find
continuity theory to be the more elegant. There may be critical transition points in the
forms of consciousness associated with the development of life, representation, self-
representation, and so on. However continuity in the evolution of consciousness
favours continuity in the distribution of consciousness.
References
Arbuthnott, K.D. (1995) ‘Inhibitory mechanisms in cognition: Phenomena and models’,
Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive 14(1): 3-45.
Baars, B.J. (2007) The global workspace theory of consciousness. In M.Velmans and S.
Schneider (eds.) (2007) The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, pp 236-246.
Carruthers, P. (1998) ‘Natural theories of consciousness’, European Journal of
Philosophy, 6(2): 203-222.
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