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The neuroevolutionary sources of mind

The ancestral constitution of affective consciousness and the core-SELF
  • Jaak Panksepp✝
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The Constitution of Phenomenal Consciousness
This chapter is in the book The Constitution of Phenomenal Consciousness

Abstract

The bipolar affective structures of brain emotional processes – namely negative and positive affects – provide ideal ways to make scientific progress on the “hard problem” of primal consciousness: wherever in subcortical brain regions one applies highly localized electrical deep brain stimulation, and obtains coherent emotional behaviors, animals treat these brain arousals as ‘rewards’ and ‘punishments’ using various simple learning tasks. Humans also consistently report experienced affective changes during such artificial brain arousals. Such evidence suggests the first glimmers of consciousness in BrainMind evolution arose in medial brainstem regions. These hedonic effects, of subcortical origin, are here deemed gold standards for the existence of evolved affective qualia in animal and human brains, perhaps the first evolutionary substrates of mind, critical for the emergence of cognitive consciousness.

Abstract

The bipolar affective structures of brain emotional processes – namely negative and positive affects – provide ideal ways to make scientific progress on the “hard problem” of primal consciousness: wherever in subcortical brain regions one applies highly localized electrical deep brain stimulation, and obtains coherent emotional behaviors, animals treat these brain arousals as ‘rewards’ and ‘punishments’ using various simple learning tasks. Humans also consistently report experienced affective changes during such artificial brain arousals. Such evidence suggests the first glimmers of consciousness in BrainMind evolution arose in medial brainstem regions. These hedonic effects, of subcortical origin, are here deemed gold standards for the existence of evolved affective qualia in animal and human brains, perhaps the first evolutionary substrates of mind, critical for the emergence of cognitive consciousness.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. The constitution of visual and phenomenal consciousness 1
  5. The scientific study of consciousness
  6. Theories and methods in the scientific study of consciousness 17
  7. The scientific study of coma and related states 48
  8. De-confounding the neural constitution of phenomenal consciousness from attention, report and memory 81
  9. The correlation/constitution distinction problem 104
  10. The neural correlates of consciousness 155
  11. On the various neural correlates of consciousness 177
  12. On why the unconscious prerequisites and consequences of consciousness might derail us from unraveling the neural correlates of consciousness 205
  13. The neuroevolutionary sources of mind 226
  14. The future of consciousness science 260
  15. Philosophy of mind
  16. The philosophy of phenomenal consciousness 273
  17. The philosophy of mind needs a better metaphysics 293
  18. The scientific evidence for materialism about pains 310
  19. The status of consciousness in nature 330
  20. Identity over time, constitution and the problem of personal identity 348
  21. Constitution, realization and identity 372
  22. Correlation, causation, constitution 400
  23. The material constitution of phenomenal consciousness 418
  24. Material constitution, the neuroscience of consciousness, and the temporality of experience 433
  25. The structure of phenomenal consciousness 445
  26. Index 465
https://doi.org/10.1075/aicr.92.09pan

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. The constitution of visual and phenomenal consciousness 1
  5. The scientific study of consciousness
  6. Theories and methods in the scientific study of consciousness 17
  7. The scientific study of coma and related states 48
  8. De-confounding the neural constitution of phenomenal consciousness from attention, report and memory 81
  9. The correlation/constitution distinction problem 104
  10. The neural correlates of consciousness 155
  11. On the various neural correlates of consciousness 177
  12. On why the unconscious prerequisites and consequences of consciousness might derail us from unraveling the neural correlates of consciousness 205
  13. The neuroevolutionary sources of mind 226
  14. The future of consciousness science 260
  15. Philosophy of mind
  16. The philosophy of phenomenal consciousness 273
  17. The philosophy of mind needs a better metaphysics 293
  18. The scientific evidence for materialism about pains 310
  19. The status of consciousness in nature 330
  20. Identity over time, constitution and the problem of personal identity 348
  21. Constitution, realization and identity 372
  22. Correlation, causation, constitution 400
  23. The material constitution of phenomenal consciousness 418
  24. Material constitution, the neuroscience of consciousness, and the temporality of experience 433
  25. The structure of phenomenal consciousness 445
  26. Index 465
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