Evolutionary biology meets consciousness: essay review of Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul
Evolutionary biology meets consciousness: essay review of Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul
In this essay, we discuss Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul from an interdisciplinary perspective. Constituting perhaps the longest treatise on the evolution of consciousness, Ginsburg and Jablonka unite their expertise in neuroscience and biology to develop a beautifully Darwinian account of the dawning of subjective experience. Though it would be impossible to cover all its content in a short book review, here we provide a critical evaluation of their two key ideas—the role of Unlimited Associative Learning in the evolution of, and detection of, consciousness and a metaphysical claim about consciousness as a mode of being—in a manner that will hopefully overcome some of the initial resistance of potential readers to tackle a book of this length.
Browning, Heather
8d13aa04-7648-4403-b29c-11f7674f6618
Veit, Walter
8137e8be-a04c-41c6-979e-87fe1a4010be
11 February 2021
Browning, Heather
8d13aa04-7648-4403-b29c-11f7674f6618
Veit, Walter
8137e8be-a04c-41c6-979e-87fe1a4010be
Browning, Heather and Veit, Walter
(2021)
Evolutionary biology meets consciousness: essay review of Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul.
Biology & Philosophy.
(doi:10.1007/s10539-021-09781-7).
Abstract
In this essay, we discuss Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul from an interdisciplinary perspective. Constituting perhaps the longest treatise on the evolution of consciousness, Ginsburg and Jablonka unite their expertise in neuroscience and biology to develop a beautifully Darwinian account of the dawning of subjective experience. Though it would be impossible to cover all its content in a short book review, here we provide a critical evaluation of their two key ideas—the role of Unlimited Associative Learning in the evolution of, and detection of, consciousness and a metaphysical claim about consciousness as a mode of being—in a manner that will hopefully overcome some of the initial resistance of potential readers to tackle a book of this length.
Text
s10539-021-09781-7
- Version of Record
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Accepted/In Press date: 1 February 2021
Published date: 11 February 2021
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 475397
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/475397
ISSN: 0169-3867
PURE UUID: c889575f-15a0-4d64-9b8a-c4de86aba80b
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Date deposited: 16 Mar 2023 18:05
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:15
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Author:
Heather Browning
Author:
Walter Veit
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