Phenomenal Consciousness as Phenotype
Dessalles, J-L. & Zalla, T. (1998).
Abstracts of 'Neural Correlates of Consciousness'
Phenomenal Consciousness as Phenotype
Jean-Louis Dessalles * and Tiziana Zalla **
* ENST - Département Informatique & Réseaux
46 rue Barrault - 75013 Paris - France
dessalles@enst.fr
** CREA - Ecole Polytechnique
1 rue Descartes - 75005 Paris - France
zalla@poly.polytechnique.fr
The question of the epiphenomenality of consciousness can be addressed
from an evolutionary perspective. If phenomenal consciousness is not an
evolutionary epiphenomenon, but is it part of our phenotype, we should
conclude that consciousness is not a functional or neuronal epiphenomenon.
Phenomenal consciousness, in each modality, is topologically structured
(cf. Clark, 1993). Do phenomenal properties or the underlying neural
structures have been selected through evolution? In other words, which
one is the phenotype (Dawkins, 1982) ?
Some bird songs have
acoustic features that make them locally optimal for their (presumed)
function. In such case, the song is the phenotype, whereas brain
structures that make the song possible are only one element in the causal
link between genes and phenotype. The optimality of such brain structures
is inherited from the optimality of the song. The latter can be directly
assessed and even checked (e.g. with artificially produced songs). This
is not true for the optimality of underlying neural structures.
A parallel argument holds for phenomenal consciousness. The topology
of qualitative spaces is not fortuitous. In each sensory modality,
physically most distant stimuli are experienced as most dissimilar. For
signal processing theorists, this property would appear as optimally
designed for a discriminative function. Since this optimal design must
be the result of natural selection, phenomenal consciousness should
be considered as a phenotypic character. In other words, it cannot be
considered as an evolutionary epiphenomenon. This suggests a possible role
of consciousness in discriminating information and, as its topological
structure is specific to each modality, it can also play a role in
identifying the source of information.
keywords : phenomenal consciousness, evolution, epiphenomenon, phenotype.