The evolution and development of consciousness: the subject-object emergence hypothesis

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Investigating consciousness often compares conscious vs. unconscious brain processes.
• A less explored but promising strategy examines how brain processes become conscious during development and evolution.
• Transitions to consciousness may involve new brain processes becoming objects to emergent higher-level subjects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To apply an evolutionary/developmental research strategy to understand brain process transitions into consciousness.
• To reconstruct a minimally-complex subject-object subsystem underlying consciousness and its adaptive benefits.
• To identify subsequent major transitions in consciousness, including mental modeling.

Main Methods:

• Extrapolation of evolutionary/developmental transitions in brain processes towards their origin.
• Reconstruction of a simple, understandable subject-object subsystem to avoid the homunculus fallacy.
• Examination of adaptive challenges driving transitions and the emergence of mental modeling.

Main Results:

• The minimal subsystem's emergence was driven by real-time body-environment coordination (e.g., hand-eye coordination).
• Conscious processing initially organized real-time sensorimotor coordination.
• Mental modeling evolved from simulating motor actions to anticipate consequences, allowing conscious evaluation of alternatives.

Conclusions:

• Consciousness likely emerged to facilitate real-time sensorimotor coordination.
• Subsequent transitions, like mental modeling, arose to solve complex adaptive challenges.
• Significant future transitions in consciousness are predicted.