Empirical Essence of Consciousness

Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Philosophy - Miscellaneous, , language: English, abstract: This investigation approaches the phenomenon of consciousness in empirical terms by placing it in the context of human life, or more generally the life of any animal, as viewed objectively. It thus asks what function consciousness fulfils, thereby recognizing its development as concomitant with the processes of evolution. As consciousness cannot have originated otherwise than as a biological component of an animal’s makeup, it must have played an essential part in the origin and development of species as first formulated by Charles Darwin. That is to say, consciousness must almost certainly have evolved due to some evolutionary advantage that it possesses, and consequently it is only since the discovery of evolutionary processes that a firm basis for a theory of consciousness has become available. The phenomenon of consciousness is accordingly examined from that perspective.