The Ancient Origins of Consciousness: How the Brain Created Experience
Todd E. Feinberg, Jon M. Mallatt
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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 consciousness: 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.
GenresNeuroscienceSciencePsychologyBiologyPhilosophyNonfiction
366 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2016
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Sandra
274 reviews · 61 followers
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August 13, 2019
Extremely technical, but with some effort still fairly informative for a general reader. All (neuro)science and biology, no quantum woo-woo.
neuroscience philosophy science
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Kobe Bryant
1,040 reviews · 163 followers
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March 24, 2021
all the stuff on the evolution of the senses was very cool
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Yon -
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January 24, 2017
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
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Matt M Perez
7 reviews
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January 1, 2018
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
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Rhys
774 reviews · 107 followers
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April 6, 2018
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.
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Paul
1 book · 1 follower
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August 26, 2021
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
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Taylor
29 reviews · 1 follower
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October 30, 2018
A really interesting overview of consciousness - what it is, how it arises in the brain, and who has it. Very thought provoking.
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Mooncalf
37 reviews · 25 followers
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April 27, 2019
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.
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Kevin
176 reviews · 16 followers
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November 15, 2021
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.
biology brain-symbol-experience evolution
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Alberto Tebaldi
434 reviews · 4 followers
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August 31, 2023
dense and at times difficult, but extremely interesting topic
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
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YON - Jan C. Hardenbergh
5.0 out of 5 stars Grand Vision of the Development of Consciousness
Reviewed in the United States on 5 December 2016
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58 Figures, 220 pages of text, 36 pages of notes, 60 pages of references and 18 pages of index.
This book 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. For example, Figure 6.4 on page 106 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.
As I am primarily interested in Human Consciousness, I skimmed a couple of the chapters, but, even skimming showed a rich harvest of information that allows the common themes of consciousness.
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.
Page.5 NSFCs are introduced. A bit like the NCCs of Christof Koch - Neural 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.
3.1 - mental causation - behaviors influence Reality.
Page.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
p.215: This book does not address higher levels of consciousness - full-blown self-awareness, meta-awareness, recognition of the Self in mirrors, Theory of Mind, Access to verbal self-reporting.
p.217 Consciousness is Adaptive - we evolved them for survival. All of the NoSFCs provide distint advantages to the beholder.
p.224 Mental Unity is a process, not locatable to s single brain region, it requires to synchronized oscillations to unify multiple networks.
The book uses quotes from other research extensively - to good effect. The conclusion starts with Francis Crick: "The Astonising Hypothesis is that "You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased: "You're nothing but a pack of neurons.".
Not true, the emergent behaviors from complex hierarchies, etc, etc, make a qualitative difference. Given the books detailed explanations, the objective and the sensory aspects of consciousness can be explained to close the gap.
The addition of the evolutionary and philosphical explanations "bridge the gap" of NueroOntological Subjectivity, which, essentially, solves the hard problem.
This book has provides much grist for the mill. Enjoy it!!!
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Mike Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars A broad approach that woke me from my anthropocentric slumber
Reviewed in the United States on 24 September 2016
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It's often the case that you can make difficult problems less so by taking a broader view, by widening the context. Feinberg and Mallatt's broad evolutionary approach have woken me from my anthropocentric slumber when it comes to pondering consciousness. In doing so, they've changed my views on consciousness in two broad ways.
First, primary or sensory consciousness is ancient. While theory of mind self awareness probably doesn't arise until the evolution of social species, a more primitive form of consciousness appears to exist in all vertebrates, and probably also in cephalopods (octopusses and related species), arthropods, and possibly even insects.
And that leads to the second realization. Consciousness is about creating image maps of the environment and oneself. But systems that do it with orders of magnitude less sophistication than humans can still trigger our intuition of a fellow conscious being. Feinberg and Mallatt don't explore the implications of this beyond biology, but it certainly caused me to ponder them.
This book gets technical at times, but as a scientifically literate lay reader, I found it mostly approachable. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the biology and evolution of consciousness.
6 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on 11 November 2017
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best scientific book it have read in a long time - expect it to become a classic
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Anthony W.
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, was not a quick read for me
Reviewed in the United States on 15 October 2016
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This book is well done in an academic way. All assertions are backed by copious notes, references and drawings. The information provided is detailed and can take quite some time to absorb. Whether the primary contentions on the long history of conscious organisms on earth are valid and whether the "hard problem" is solved will still be argued by many from many sides. I find the thought that through evolution vision and the other senses are brought together in the brain to build a representation of external and internal reality that is then the basis for how the organism responds to sensory input is a plausible route to consciousness. Read the book to see if you agree.
5 people found this helpful
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S D HOLLOWAY
2.0 out of 5 stars A Huge Disappointment
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 September 2016
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After reading a review of this book (by Steven Rose in the Guardian) I was very hopeful that I would find something new on consciousness, perhaps something as radical Julian Jaynes. Sadly this was not to be. The authors, psychiatrist Todd Feinberg and evolutionary biologist Jon Mallett, have stuck to the well established and now rather hackneyed belief that the brain produces consciousness. They do mention David Chalmers and "the hard problem" but lightly glide over this little problem. For the authors consciousness just naturally arise when the neural system reaches a certain level of complexity. They do come up with something new by entirely redefining what is meant by "consciousness". They decide to define consciousness as the ability of the neural system to turn optical input into mental images. All they have to do now is say how evolution produced this ability and when it occurred. They then make a whole series of assertions about how this came about. All of this is conducted in thoroughly academic fashion through the use of lots of newly invented words and a complex formulation of assertions that particular neural development necessitate certain mental experiences. It is a beautiful construction and may well convince then average reader that here is something profound. The conclusion the authors arrive at is that "consciousness" (as they have defined it) arose approximately 520 million years ago. So now you know.
9 people found this helpful
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Thomas Simmons
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books on evolution since Darwin himself.
Reviewed in the United States on 13 June 2018
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Wow. This interdisciplinary book combines multiple paleontological, neurological, and psychological disciplines to argue for the advent of sentience--I'm not sure I myself would call it "consciousness"--hundreds of millions of years earlier than anyone has previously argued. I find it one of the most useful scientific contributions to the subject of evolution since Darwin himself, and I in fact am primarily interested not in consciousness but in the unconscious. Even so, this book is exceptionally useful.
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Joseph Gilberts
5.0 out of 5 stars A great book at a great price with fast delivery
Reviewed in the United States on 30 April 2018
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The book came well packaged. I am reading now and am enjoying it. A great book at a great price with fast delivery...couldn't ask for more.
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Ken
2.0 out of 5 stars Don't judge a book by its cover...
Reviewed in the United States on 8 June 2020
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From page 108... "This multi-sensory mapping is reflected in the tectum's neuronal layering or lamination where the different layers receive different classes of sensory input and the mapped inputs from the different senses are in typographic register with one another."
If you don't mind "slogging" through 227 pages of this type of writing, then by all means, go ahead and purchase this book. I actually understood most of this sentence, but only after I reread it 5 or more times.
I decided to purchase this book based on the front and back cover and mostly positive reviews. I wish I had taken the time to use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. When I read to learn, I want to actually enjoy the experience while I absorb the content. Sean Carroll's physics and quantum mechanics book "The Big Picture" is the most perfect example of this type of writing. It taught me that even the most complicated subjects can be written about in a way that is understandable and fun for lay-persons.
7 people found this helpful
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Matt M Perez
5.0 out of 5 stars Mind blowing (pun intended)
Reviewed in the United States on 1 January 2018
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Very, very thorough meta-study of brain research combined with a mjlti-perspective theory of consciousness. 1 2 3 4 5 6
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