Writing at Psychology Today in 2020, University of Toronto psychiatrist Ralph Lewis told us,

We have already known for a long time from clinical neurology and from my own field, clinical psychiatry, that without a shadow of a doubt there is no aspect of the mind that is not entirely the product of, and utterly dependent on, the physical brain. Disruption, disassembly or enhancement of brain circuitry (subtle or major) can radically alter any aspect of the mind. And yet the mystery of how exactly the brain produces consciousness has remained unexplained.

Ralph Lewis, “What Actually Is Consciousness, and How Did It Evolve?”, Psychology Today, September 2020 (updated October 7, 2023)

Lewis thought that evolution explains consciousness: “Once we shed all magical thinking about the nature of consciousness and try to understand it as a biological phenomenon, it immediately becomes apparent that like all other biological phenomena and like life itself, it must have evolved in gradations.”

In fact, human consciousness has not — by Lewis’s own admission — been accounted for “as a biological phenomenon.” So it’s not at all apparent that it “evolved in gradations.”

Fast forward to 2023 and what have we learned? In his fresh piece in Psychology Today summarizing current theories, we read,

Is the field any closer to solving the “hard problem” of consciousness—the mystery of subjective experience: why it feels like something to be conscious, and how this could arise from purely physical processes? Not all theorists believe there is such a problem, arguing that the question may have been misframed and needlessly mystified, beginning with many mistaken assumptions… in my own view, the biggest shortcoming of all four leading theories of consciousness is their relative lack of an evolutionary perspective…

Ralph Lewis, “The Predictive Brain and the ‘Hard Problem’ of Consciousness,” Psychology Today, November 28, 2023

In short, we have honed our skills in presenting failure as success and in portraying more of what hasn’t worked as a solution. Does this background of failure help account for science mags’ surprising tolerance of panpsychism (everything is conscious) in recent years?

Evolution of the mind is a ladder with no upper rungs

Panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff, tried to make sense of the origin of consciousness recently at Scientific American. He begins by reminding us of recent history:

Over the summer, the neuroscientist Christof Koch conceded defeat on his 25-year bet with the philosopher David Chalmers, a lost wager that the science of consciousness would be all wrapped up by now. In September, over 100 consciousness researchers signed a public letter condemning one of the most popular theories of consciousness—the integrated information theory—as pseudoscience. This in turn prompted strong responses from other researchers in the field. Despite decades of research, there’s little sign of consensus on consciousness, with several rival theories still in contention.

Philip Goff, “Understanding Consciousness Goes Beyond Exploring Brain Chemistry,” Scientific American, November 7, 2023

Like Lewis, Goff, author of Why? The Purpose of the Universe (Oxford University Press, 2023), hopes to find the answer in “evolution” — interpreted differently. He realizes that the Darwinian faith statement of “human mind from mud” is, at best, a ladder with no upper rungs. Ah, but what if…

But suppose instead that the emergence of biological consciousness brings into existence radically new forms of behavior, over and above what physics alone could produce. Perhaps organisms that have conscious awareness of the world around them, and thereby freely respond based on that awareness, behave very differently than mere mechanisms. Consequently, they survive much better. With these assumptions in place, we can make sense of natural selection’s preference for conscious organisms.

Goff, Beyond Exploring Brain Chemistry

Ultimately, as he admits, Goff is looking for the “HERE IT IS marker of consciousness.” He believes that the answer to the dilemma lies in “a radical form of panpsychism—the view that consciousness goes right down to the fundamental building blocks of reality.” Something like: Electrons are conscious.

Goff’s approach only makes sense if electrons and quarks are conscious. For one thing, “natural selection’s preference for conscious organisms” is nonsense. The vast majority of organisms that have been “selected” are not conscious — in any sense that a human would recognize — any more than the hairs on our heads are. We recognize consciousness in the animals with which we surround ourselves — but that’s why we chose them. Turn over a rock and we find a much less mindful world.

But, of course if “consciousness goes right down to the fundamental building blocks of reality,” it did not evolve from nothing. The mud was already conscious. Whatever else Goff believes about evolution is irrelevant to this question.

Meanwhile…

Lund University neurophysiologist Pär Halje thinks, based on his work giving psychedelics to rats, that psychedelics may unlock the mystery of consciousness by showing that brain cells act collectively:

We ultimately share the same basic neural hardware with other mammals, and possibly some basic aspects of consciousness, too. So by examining what happens in the brain when there’s a psychedelically induced change in conscious experience, we can perhaps glean insights into what consciousness is in the first place.

Pär Halje, “Consciousness May Rely on Brain Cells Acting Collectively,” RealClearScience, August 17, 2023

He admits that the work is “still highly speculative at this point. That’s because the phenomenon has not yet been observed in human brains.”

Claims about the Darwinian evolution of consciousness will doubtless continue to be a mine of similar insights.

You may also wish to read: The likely reason the human mind has no history Our efforts to explain the origin of the human mind fall flat because we are looking for an origin that probably doesn’t exist To the extent that the uniquely human part of the mind is immaterial, it won’t have a history any more than the Pythagorean theorem, in itself, does.