CONSCIOUSNESS

4. Physical and Biological Sciences 171
4.9 Evolution of consciousness
248 Towards a Unified Field Theory of Human Behavior - Global Cultural
Evolution Marcus Abundis, (GFTP, Stanford Graduate School of
Business (GFTP), Santa Cruz, CA)
This paper develops a new structural psychology, and therein proposes a specific model
for the scientific study of consciousness. The presented model uses Earth’s geologic history
of mass-extinction & recovery (evolutionary dynamics) in determining humanity’s adaptive
response (conscious and non-conscious traits). It argues humanity adaptively mirrors Earth’s
basic evolutionary dynamics, in a “mythologizing of natural adversity” as foundation for all
human knowledge - a process that continues well into the modern era. The intellectual lineage
used to develop this model includes: Evolutionary biology - offers a context for this study answering
Chalmers’ “hard question”; Paleoanthropology - defines the circumstance of human
emergence from Gaia; Environmental forces - on a dexterous human neurophysiology derive
an ambiguous but instructive narrative logic (mythic sensibility); Psychology tracks humanity’s
shift from animal-self to modern creative-self, using work of Hegel > Freud > Jung >
Rank > Joseph Campbell > Arnold Mindell as a new structural psychology; Fractal geometry
offers a holographic design for modeling consciousness, in a form consistent with Quantum
Theory; Memetics presents a tool for measuring conscious traits, in a variation of the
Hall-Tonna values inventory; Finally, Structured Opportunistic Thinking, a hybrid of NTL’s
T-group, and Pierce’s Power Equity Group Theory, suggests a developmental methodology.
This work presents a “general hypothesizing model” of human consciousness, in attempting
a science of consciousness. Additional info available at: http://vimeo.com/evolv and http://
philpapers.org/profile/4404 P10
249 If Birds Have Conscious Experiences, Do Fish Too? James Beran
(Richmond, VA)
Although brains of birds are much different than ours, there is evidence that birds have
conscious experience similar in ways to ours. [1] It has also been suggested that human conscious
experiences correspond to features of rhythmic electromagnetic (EM) waveforms
measurable by electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). [2]
Although human brain mechanisms that produce EM waveforms are not fully understood,
extracranially measurable waveforms are believed to result from synchronized electrical currents
in apical dendrites of pyramidal neurons. [3] This work compares features of pyramidal
neuron formations in mammalian and avian brains, and finds evidence of some similar
EM-waveform systems. [4] If EM waveform features indeed correspond to conscious experiences,
simple EM-interactive neural structures that learn to have conscious experience
could have arisen in primitive EM-waveform systems; then, development of more advanced
EM-waveform systems could have led to complex consciousness. [5] Therefore, this work
also considers features of brains of primitive, jawless fish, e.g. hagfish, and advanced, pretetrapod
fish, e.g. lungfish, with attention to precursors of pyramidal neuron formations. If
EM-waveform systems in fish brains led to formations that learn to have conscious experience
in mammalian and avian brains, do fish also have conscious experience? We propose a threestage
model based on dendritic interaction with EM waveforms: Under the proposed model,
evolving structures within EM-waveform systems could learn to have conscious experience;
the model’s stages resemble certain analog signal processing techniques. [1] See, e.g., Pepperberg,
I.M., Alex & Me, Collins, 2008, at pp. 202-205 and 219-222. [2] See, e.g., Lewine, J.D.
and Orrison, W.W., Jr., “Magnetoencephalography and Magnetic Source Imaging” in Orrison
et al., Eds., Functional Brain Imaging, Mosby, 1995, pp. 369 et seq., at pp. 411-412. [3] Id.
at pp. 375-382; see also Kirchstein, T., and Koehling, R., “What is the Source of the EEG?”
Clinical EEG and Neuroscience, July 2009, pp. 146-149. [4] Compare, e.g., ten Donkelaar,
H.J., “Reptiles”, in Nieuwenhuys et al., Eds., The Central Nervous System of Vertebrates,
Springer, 1998, pp. 1315 et seq., at 1480. [5] Compare Buzsaki, G., Rhythms of the Brain,
Oxford, 2006, p. 115. C20