Arthur Reber: A novel theory of the origin of mind: Conversations with a caterpillar and a bacterium
My Session Status
What:
Talk
When:
11:00 AM, Tuesday 3 Jul 2018
(1 hour 30 minutes)
Where:
Université du Québec à Montréal
- DS-R510
Themes:
ConsciousnessPsychology
Caterpillarsmindevolutionary biologyhard problem
Arthur Reber (Speaker)
Adjunct Professor University of British Columbia
Adjunct Professor University of British Columbia
Suzanne Held (Moderator)
Bristol Veterinary School (University of Bristol)
Bristol Veterinary School (University of Bristol)
In a soon-to-be published book I put forward a radical theory on the origins of mind, dubbed the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC). It begins with a simple assumption: that sentience is old, very old, as old as life itself -- in short, consciousness, phenomenal awareness, is an inherent feature of life. Prokaryotes, the simplest of organisms, have minds -- though they are very tiny and don't do much. There is a surprisingly large literature in the microbiology of unicellular species that supports this position and we'll take a quick look at it. The CBC model also has philosophical implications and resolves a number of vexing problems in the philosophy of mind including the (in)famous Hard Problem, "How do brains make minds."
Reber, Arthur S. (2016) The First Minds: Caterpillars, Karyotes, and Consciousness. Animal Sentience 11(1)
Bray, D. (2012). The cell as a thermostat: how much does it know?. In Advances in Systems Biology (pp. 193-198). Springer New York.
Reber, Arthur (2018) Where We Get Serious: The Cellular Basis of Consciousness . (Chapter IV of Reber (2019) A novel theory of the origin of mind: Conversations with a caterpillar and a bacterium. Oxford University Press . For an advance copy of the chapter, email the author at areber@brooklyn.cuny.edu
