Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagDarwinism and evolution of consciousness

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Cells under a microscope. Cell division. Cellular Therapy. 3d illustration on a dark background

Cognitive Cells? A Newer Challenge to Neo-Darwinism

The origin of self-referential cognition is unknown, say a trio of researchers who call it “biology’s most profound enigma”
Conundrums like this help us understand why panpsychism (all life forms/cells are conscious in some sense) is beginning to replace materialism in science. Read More ›
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Is Consciousness the Sort of Thing That Could Have Evolved?

Researchers Simona Ginsberg and Eva Jablonka have written a book attempting to trace the evolution of consciousness

Evolutionary biology is a veritable geyser of story-telling. “Just-so stories” is the term evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould used to describe the many fables that biologists concoct to account for the astonishing specified complexity of living things. Of these Darwinian fables that plague evolutionary science, neuroscientist and developmental biologist Emily Casanova has noted, While modern [evolutionary] hypotheses may seem a little less far-fetched [than children’s fairy tales], they are no less fanciful—in part because modern scientists are sometimes so focused on “What adaptive advantage could this trait possible give?” rather than determining how said trait could have arisen and been passed down by other means. In addition, so often these hypotheses are untestable, so in actuality they’re not even “hypotheses”. Read More ›