The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness By Simona Ginsburg,Eva Jablonka

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A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness.What marked the evolutionary transition from organisms that lacked consciousness to those with consciousness—to minimal subjective experiencing, or, as Aristotle described it, “the sensitive soul”? In this book, Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka propose a new theory about the origin of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the transition to basic consciousness. Using a methodology similar to that used by scientists when they identified the transition from non-life to life, Ginsburg and Jablonka suggest a set of criteria, identify a marker for the transition to minimal consciousness, and explore the far-reaching biological, psychological, and philosophical implications.After presenting the historical, neurobiological, and philosophical foundations of their analysis, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose that the evolutionary marker of basic or minimal consciousness is a complex form of associative learning, which they term unlimited associative learning (UAL). UAL enables an organism to ascribe motivational value to a novel, compound, non-reflex-inducing stimulus or action, and use it as the basis for future learning. Associative learning, Ginsburg and Jablonka argue, drove the Cambrian explosion and its massive diversification of organisms. Finally, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose symbolic language as a similar type of marker for the evolutionary transition to human rationality—to Aristotle's “rational soul.”

At this time of writing, The Ebook The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness has garnered 8 customer reviews with rating of 5 out of 5 stars. Not a bad score at all as if you round it off, it’s actually a perfect TEN already. From the looks of that rating, we can say the Ebook is Good TO READ!

Best Edition The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness with Free PDF EDITION!

This is probably the most complete book ever written on the topic of consciousness. The first part of the book can be thought of as a textbook on consciousness as it provides a short history of the major ideas on the topic, it tackles the common philosophical arguments against materialism, it explains the major modern theories of consciousness, and tackles the distribution question. The second part of the book builds a strong case for unlimited associative learning as a positive marker for consciousness and proposes that learning was the driving force behind the Cambrian explosion and the evolution of the biological features with constitute subjective experience.For me the most valuable insight from this book was the idea of thinking of consciousness a mode of being rather than a thing. This for me solved the hard problem of consciousness, or rather it made it irrelevant.Most of us think of consciousness as a thing with distinct and independent existence: something a creature has. Something in addition to its body and brain. This is reflected in the types of questions we ask: Why are certain brain states accompanied by consciousness while others are not? How does the brain produce subjective experience? Could I upload my consciousness into a computer? When you ask these sorts of questions, you make the mistake of trying to understand consciousness as a thing and stumble on “the hard problem of consciousness.”Ginsburg and Jablonka propose we should stop thinking of subjective experience this way. It’s not a thing. It’s not a property. It’s not something with distinct and independent existence from the physical body, just like life is not a thing with distinct and independent existence from a chemical system. Rather, they propose subjective experience is best understood as a level of organization - a collection of several cognitive systems working together. In their book The Evolution Of The Sensitive Soul, they give a list of features which neurobiologists and philosophers currently deem individually necessary and jointly sufficient for subjective experience:Global activity and accessibilityBinding and unificationSelection, plasticity, learning, attentionIntentionality (aboutness)Temporal thickness (sensory persistence)Values, emotions, goalsEmbodiment, agency, and a notion of “self”If a creature has all these features, almost everyone would agree that it is minimally sentient. But each of these features by itself is non-sentient - we can even create some of them in computers. So one might ask: why is it that when you put them all together they are accompanied by subjective experience? That’s a bad question. Just like asking if all the components of a cell are dead why is the whole cell accompanied by life. Subjective experience is not a thing that emerges from these features. It’s probably best understood as the collection of features itself. These things together are what constitutes subjective experience. Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka call it a mode of being. It’s a level of organization that is composed by this collection of cognitive systems. So when you look at it like this you realize that perhaps the explanatory gap isn’t unbridgeable after all. Subjective experience is not an entity that exists somehow attached to these systems. What we need to figure out is what features constitute subjective experience, how they work, and how they evolved.

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