23 May 2024
The possibility of consciousness in nonhuman animals has long been debated. The search for the beginnings of consciousness in nature has resulted in many positions. These have ranged from attributing it to all matter (panpsychism), all life (biopsychism), or denying its existence altogether (eliminativism), with myriad perspectives in between. Donald Griffin, the founder of the field of cognitive ethology, urged taking the mental lives of animals seriously. Charles Darwin had revolutionised how we see life, leading us away from a notion of human uniqueness, however, Griffin noted that this revolution has not yet extended into the realm of consciousness, which far too often is still seen as specifically human. Walter Veit’s “A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness” aims to answer this call. His work focuses on how consciousness evolved, and the ecological manner of life that emerged, necessitating the first sparks of consciousness. This raises the central question of the evolutionary origins of consciousness. It also prompts the functionalist inquiry into what consciousness enables an organism to do, and how it manifests in various forms and degrees. The transformation of consciousness studies into a ‘true Darwinian science,’ as Veit contends, offers a desperately needed standard for investigating in the natural world. To achieve this, Veit advocates for an evolutionary bottom-up approach and formulates the rudiments of a theory that adopts such a perspective, thereby facilitating the comparison and examination of different animals’ consciousness.
In this work, EMERGE partners from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, discuss the main original contributions of Veit’s book. In doing so they highlight the strength of this short, yet dense, book in its criticism of some common tendencies in the field of consciousness studies, and its interesting suggestion of valence as the core of consciousness. This is followed by noting how the strategy offered by this book might actually lead to a fragmentation and shift of the problem of consciousness.
Read the paper in the link below.
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