Evolutionary biology meets consciousness: essay review of Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul

Browning, Heather ORCID: 0000-0003-1554-7052 and Veit, Walter (2021) Evolutionary biology meets consciousness: essay review of Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul. Biology and Philosophy, 36 (1). ISSN 0169-3867

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.springer.com/journal/10539
Additional Information:	© 2021 The Authors
Divisions:	CPNSS
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Date Deposited:	09 Feb 2021 00:14
Last Modified:	16 Nov 2024 02:30
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/108609

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