✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

How Did Consciousness Evolve? - The Atlantic

theatlantic.com · 2,284 words · saved by 1 readers

A neuroscientist on how we came to be aware of ourselves

Ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, evolution has been the grand unifying theory of biology. Yet one of our most important biological traits, consciousness, is rarely studied in the context of evolution. Theories of consciousness come from religion, from philosophy, from cognitive science, but not so much from evolutionary biology. Maybe that’s why so few theories have been able to tackle basic questions such as: What is the adaptive value of consciousness? When did it evolve and what animals have it? The Attention Schema Theory (AST), developed over the past

Explore this link on the map →

saved by

related reading