IUBio

Evolution of consciousness

Matt Jones jonesmat at ohsu.edu
Thu May 23 11:58:14 EST 1996


In article <jwellington-2105961444260001 at ts26-11.homenet.ohio-state.edu>
Joe Wellingtonder, jwellington at postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu writes:
>I'm currently doing a research project on the evolution of conciousness
>and am trying to answer a few questions such as: When did conciousness

When I was an undergraduate, one of my neurobiology texts was "The
Throwing Madonna" by William H. Calvin. This book attempts to present an
explanation of consciousness from the viewpoint of evolutionary biology.
If I recall, it ties consciousness closely to language and tool use.
Calvin's hypothesis is that language (and subsequently consciousness)
evolved as a byproduct of the evolution of brain areas responsible for 
programming throwing motions of the right hand. I'm not sure this
hypothesis is testable, but the book was interesting and gave one example
of an evolutionary approach to the problem of consciousness.

Recently there have been a number of other books on consciousness. The
May 9th issue of Nature has a review of one of them, and references a few
more. Also, Francis Crick wrote abook recently called "The Astonishing
Hypothesis" or something like that. I haven't actually read any of these,
but I've been meaning to get around to them for a while.

-Matt



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