Subjective Evolution Of Consciousness

Traces the development of consciousness from the origin of the species to various theistic and scientific postulates.

Evolution is generally thought of as something objective. But objective evolution is a misperception of reality. Evolution is actually based on consciousness, which is subjective. In this volume, Swami B.R. Sridhar discusses the origin of our world and its relation to the supreme. He explores the conceptions of great philosophers and how they relate to matter, consciousness and the absolute truth. Spiritual evolution is explained and in the chapter "The Subjective Bhagavad-gita", a revolutionary understanding of Sri Krishna is revealed. The book concludes with the author's unprecedented explanation of the Gayatri Mantra.

How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent scientific findings to answer these questions—and to tackle the most fundamental question about the nature of consciousness: how does the material brain create subjective experience? After assembling a list of the biological and neurobiological features that seem responsible for consciousness, and considering the fossil record of evolution, Feinberg and Mallatt argue that consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed. About 520 to 560 million years ago, they explain, the great “Cambrian explosion” of animal diversity produced the first complex brains, which were accompanied by the first appearance of consciousness; simple reflexive behaviors evolved into a unified inner world of subjective experiences. From this they deduce that all vertebrates are and have always been conscious—not just humans and other mammals, but also every fish, reptile, amphibian, and bird. Considering invertebrates, they find that arthropods (including insects and probably crustaceans) and cephalopods (including the octopus) meet many of the criteria for consciousness. The obvious and conventional wisdom–shattering implication is that consciousness evolved simultaneously but independently in the first vertebrates and possibly arthropods more than half a billion years ago. Combining evolutionary, neurobiological, and philosophical approaches allows Feinberg and Mallatt to offer an original solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness.

“A first-class intellectual adventure.” —Brian Greene, author of Until the End of Time Illuminating his groundbreaking theory of consciousness, known as the attention schema theory, Michael S. A. Graziano traces the evolution of the mind over millions of years, with examples from the natural world, to show how neurons first allowed animals to develop simple forms of attention and then to construct awareness of the external world and of the self. His theory has fascinating implications for the future: it may point the way to engineers for building consciousness artificially, and even someday taking the natural consciousness of a person and uploading it into a machine for a digital afterlife.

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.”

The Evolution of Consciousness brings together interdisciplinary insights from philosophy, neuroscience, psychology and cognitive science to explain consciousness in terms of the biological function that grounds it in the physical world. Drawing on the novel analogy of a house of cards, Paula Droege pieces together various conceptual questions and shows how they rest on each other to form a coherent, structured argument. She asserts that the mind is composed of unconscious sensory and cognitive representations, which become conscious when they are selected and coordinated into a representation of the present moment. This temporal representation theory deftly bridges the gap between mind and body by highlighting that physical systems are conscious when they can respond flexibly to actions in the present. With examples from evolution, animal cognition, introspection and the free will debate, this is a compelling and animated account of the possible explanations of consciousness, offering answers to the conceptual question of how consciousness can be considered a cognitive process.

This book explains that each one of us is an individual Consciousness that is eternal and continually evolving forward. It explains that the Universal Laws of Cause and Effect, Relativity, and Evolution are the guiding principles that propel us onward in our development. The latest scientific knowledge and metaphysical principals are used to answer the questions: Who are we? Why are we the way we are? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is our destiny? Science is objective and can be fairly well understood by most people. On the other hand, metaphysics is subjective and more difficult to understand. To make the subjective clear, numerous analogies, metaphors, equivalences, and descriptions of familiar experiences are uses. This book explains the basics of the "Law of Cause and Effect" as well as the more complex and metaphysical aspects of "Spiritual Cause and Effect." The "Divine Plan" which may also be called the "Game of Life" is clarified as well. It is important to understand the basics of "Relativity" since we live in a relative universe. Every moment of every day of our lives is lived in a relative environment yet; we are practically oblivious to it. The relativeness of truth, happiness, good, bad, right and wrong are also explained. Charles Darwin introduced us to a very important part of evolution which is the evolution of physical bodies of plants, animals and humans. This book goes far beyond and explains the evolution the instinctive operating mind in plants, animals and humans. There is also a comprehensive explanation of the functions of the human Trainable Mind, the Intellectual Mind, and the Intuitive Mind. But, most important of all is the Evolution ofConsciousness. Consciousness evolves in stages from the very primitive to the advanced stage of the human and beyond. The trials and tribulations of the past human history as well as the wonders that are yet to come in our lives are likewise explained. This included many details of the wonders of life in the Spiritual Domains of our universe. Many misconceptions of the past are also clarified in a logical and simple to understand manner. Some of the misconceptions that are made clear are: The purpose for the large human brain. The purpose of the human upright walking posture. The purpose for the creation of the universe. The purpose and evidence of reincarnation.