ABSTRACT
Does the fact that we are conscious mean that consciousness must have evolved to serve a function? Not necessarily. This question relates to whether consciousness has causal efficacy and whether we humans might have evolved as zombies rather than ‘conscies’. Four ways of thinking about the evolution of consciousness are explored: 1) Belief in zombies, or ‘conscious inessentialism’, leads to an impasse. 2) If consciousness has an adaptive function in its own right (whether individual or social), we can ask when consciousness evolved, but there is no consensus, with answers ranging from billions of years ago to just a few thousand. 3) Consciousness may have no independent function, but be an inevitable concomitant of other evolved capacities. Theories of this type include eliminative materialism and some forms of functionalism, theories concerning communication and language, and predictive-processing theories. 4) Consciousness is an illusion, and we should instead ask: ‘how did the illusion of consciousness evolve?’ Illusionist theories draw on language, thought, and our ability to control attention and monitor our internal states. Finally, there may be evolutionary processes operating within individual brains or between people in cultures, and consciousness may itself be a complex of memes.
