Biological Theory
August 25, 2022
Walter Friedrich Veit
21 citations
Consciousness is not a single, all-or-nothing quality but a set of dimensions that evolved separately. By reverse-engineering their evolutionary functions, simpler valenced states likely arose first, with more complex phenomenological layers emerging later. This Darwinian approach reframes consciousness as phenomenological complexity. Support for this evaluation-first view comes from recent experimental philosophy of mind.
Biological Theory
March 12, 2026
Fredric Schiffer
2 citations
Standard physicalism often makes subjective experience seem epiphenomenal, while interactionist views struggle with mental causation and energy conservation. This paper proposes that experience itself acts as a real, physically efficacious force on neural architecture, confined to the brain's structured biological information, similar to how the strong nuclear force is confined. Within the brain's open thermodynamic system, experience biases activation barriers of neural logic gates, releasing stored metabolic energy in a direction determined by the meaning of the experience and prior history. The framework reconceives subjective experience as a confined physical force essential for biological agency, offering a biophysical mechanism for meaning-driven causation.
Biological Theory
March 30, 2026
Peter Jedlicka, Jaroslav Varchola, Jakub Betinsky
Biological evolution appears to increase complexity, but defining complexity is difficult. Measures that assign low complexity to both highly ordered and highly random systems and high complexity to intermediate systems show that most biological systems fall in this range. These measures quantify the information an organism stores about its environment, supporting the idea that evolution increases the knowledge organisms accumulate about their niche. This aligns with cognitive biology, which views evolution as a progressive accumulation of knowledge or epistemic complexity, resembling a cognitive ratchet pushing toward higher complexity. A dynamic environment creates problems to be solved, and each solution becomes embodied knowledge. The framework also links to integrated information theory, suggesting that human self-reflection marks a new qualitative level in epistemic complexity.
Biological Theory
September 14, 2022
W. Veit
Consciousness may have evolved as a solution to a computational overload problem that threatened complex multicellular life after the Avalon explosion. The pathological complexity thesis argues that animals with complex bodies faced an economic trade-off problem: managing many degrees of freedom became computationally unmanageable. Sentience solved this design problem during the Cambrian explosion. By modeling this computational explosion with state-based behavioral and life history theory, a bottom-up evolutionary framework can explain subjective experience and its function across different animal ecological lifestyles.
Biological Theory
August 30, 2022
W. Veit
A bottom-up comparative study of animal minds, grounded in cognitive ethology, can advance a biological science of consciousness by removing humans from the center of reference. The article uses the pathological complexity thesis to argue that state-based behavioral life history theory provides a firm foundation for such a study. Comparing the life histories of gastropods and arthropods offers insight into the possible origins and function of consciousness for organisms in their natural environments.
Biological Theory
January 1, 2022
Stephen T Asma
Imagination is not merely a peripheral cognitive feature or a topic for aesthetic research but is instead the core operating system for human sense-making. This article argues that imagination has fundamental epistemic and therapeutic functions that ground all human cognitive activities. It offers a sketch of imagination as a form of embodied cognition and suggests ways to organize imagination studies into a more rigorous science-humanities research area, advocating for a stronger thesis than currently adopted in psychology and philosophy.