ABSTRACT
Making use of the distinctions between the five dimensions, this chapter will attempt to tease apart the problem of consciousness by treating it like an onion, peeling away one of these dimensions after another until only one remains: the most plausible contender for the dawn of subjectivity. Rather than treating consciousness as a complex all-or-nothing phenomenon that makes a gradualist evolution seem impossible, this chapter took an evolutionary reverse-engineering approach that tried to narrow the explanatory gap by re-conceiving consciousness as a multidimensional phenomenon, in which each dimension could have been built upon one other. Furthermore, this chapter will make a case for hedonic evaluation as the most ancient kind of experience and core of consciousness, thereby significantly reducing the explanatory gap.
