Rethinking consciousness: Why did phenomenal consciousness evolve and when are we justified to attribute it to humans and nonhuman animals?

Albert Newen (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

Please note that this talk is at 11am-12pm Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Description: The talk aims to answer both questions: I start to characterize the core functional role of consciousness by outlining a two-level theory of phenomenal consciousness to account for the relation between evolutionary old and more recently developed types of consciousness (joint project with Carlos Montemayor). The conceptual suggestion is that we should distinguish two levels of consciousness, namely bodily arousal and general alertness. This conceptual distinction is proven to be empirically adequate and epistemically fruitful. It allows us to distinguish two different core functional roles of consciousness: for an evolutionary old biological system bodily awareness is activated to trigger a state of alarm of the system which enables it to activate an immediate survival reaction, e.g. if homeostatic regulations of temperature can no longer adjust because it is suddenly too hot, then this leads to bodily awareness in form of pain to activate the being to leave and search for a cool area. Evolutionary younger biological system with a developed prefrontal cortex enjoy general alertness. The main function is to enable new types of learning. In the second part of the talk I will answer the question how we can be justified in attributing phenomenal consciousness to nonhuman animals (joint project with Leonard Dung). Although we start to collect some neuroscientific evidences about consciousness, this is mainly collected for humans and only rarely for other mammals. But there is the principle challenge of also accounting for animals with radically different brain organizations like in the case of birds or invertebrates. Two questions arise: First, the distribution question is about which kinds of animals (or beings generally) have conscious experiences. Second, the quality question concerns the differences between the conscious experiences of various species.  It asks not which animals have conscious experiences, but what they experience and how it is experienced, i.e., the content and quality of experience. I will present the recently developed profile theory of consciousness to answer both question with a systematic cognitive profile of consciousness for each species based on empirically measurable features.

Zoom link: https://monash.zoom.us/j/84663747139?pwd=OWZiajBnZHRVMS9SR2I3NVk5QkpkZz09