ABSTRACT
Consciousness is a notoriously elusive notion, in part because it points to a cluster of related phenomena. The author employs the strategy to use insight from phenomenological analysis of consciousness to generate differentiating empirical predictions about the behavior of animals that have consciousness and those that do not. A complex active body (CAB) is one equipped for perceptually guided, powered motion: swimming, crawling, climbing, leaping, flying, burrowing; and object manipulation. Consciousness, the predictive extraction of intentional content from a temporalized stream of perception- and action-data, provides the cognitive structure crucial for control of a CAB. Therefore, it is a good bet that consciousness emerged in evolution together with complex active bodies; the cognitive structures essential to consciousness are crucial prerequisites to having a CAB as well. Consciousness and CABs may also have been lost together in evolution, for example, in taxa with parasitic lifestyles and extreme reduction in size and bodily complexity.
