From Evolutionary Learning to Emergent Intelligence and Consciousness
Barry James
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) October 26, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23670878 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Proposes a thought experiment in which evolutionary pressures acting on emergent senses and their interpretive models yield a learning organism whose cycle of sensing, interpreting, and acting, updating an initially sensory internal model, could give rise to intelligence, affect, drives, and eventually self-awareness and consciousness. The author offers this as a possible basis for a framework for consciousness research. |
Abstract
A thought experiment and evolutionary pathway showing how evolutionary pressures creating and acting on emergent senses and their entailed interpretive models may evolve a learning organism with initial and increasing intelligence, and how the organism may acquire self-awareness and consciousness. It has been suggested that "consciousness research is ready for its "Einstein moment" (Wiltsche and Archer, 2026). This short paper offers a thought experiment, based on what we know about evolution and neural networks, to explore emergence from the evolutionary learning cycle as a basis for that framework. It considers how rolling evolutionary experimentation and retention of what works constitutes a form of learning embedded in our universe, and how this may give rise to a learning creature: a cycle of sensing, interpreting and acting, updating its internal, initially sensory, model from experience. It follows this developing capacity through the relationships between signals, sensing, qualia, interpretation, and the related emergence of affect and drives, to show how the creature may begin to recognise itself as sensing and acting within its world.