Paula Droege - The Evolution of Consciousness: Representing the Present Moment

Google consciousness explanation and you find something like this: Science cant explain consciousness. Most theories of consciousness are wrong. Philosophers deny the existence of consciousness rather than explain it.

Yet as a philosopher who has been doing research on consciousness since the resurgence of scientific interest in the field in the mid-1990s, the prospect of an explanation has never been more tangible to me. Consensus is developing around answers to many of the early questions about methodology and definition. Lots of debate and disagreement still is ongoing, along with some amount of confusion.

This book aims to present a clear and coherent theory that explains how consciousness evolved as a result of physical processes. It is an unusual book of philosophy by contemporary standards. Rather than engage in technical arguments, objections, and responses, I take an interdisciplinary and synoptic view to show how advances in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and other fields can be integrated into a comprehensive picture of the conscious mind. My model is the marvelous work of Daniel Dennett, whose books capture the productive explanatory dynamics of intersecting ideas. Since few writers are as witty and lucid as Dennett, be advised that my efforts here are rather more prosaic.

My approach is to describe the elements necessary to explain consciousness. I will certainly give reasons for and against various positions that are under debate, but I do not claim to be comprehensive or always conclusive. Readers can find more in-depth arguments in my published papers on the positions I advocate. I deliberately chose not to simply collect those papers into a volume, because I wanted to write a book that would be accessible to nonprofessionals. There are few philosophy books on consciousness that can be read by undergraduate students or a reader without previous introduction to the terminology and history of the topic. Far more reader-friendly books are published in neuroscience and psychology.

This book offers entry into the philosophical issues by providing an explanation of how and why consciousness could possibly be produced by biological systems. The task of bridging the explanatory gap, discussed in the Introduction, is a how possibly problem. Fundamental differences in how we think about our own consciousness, and how we think about brains and bodies, create conceptual obstacles to understanding their connection. Philosophy should be able to help bridge this gap; I hope to show how possibly it could be done.