Phenomenal Consciousness as Phenotype

Jean-Louis Dessalles * and Tiziana Zalla **

Abstract

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.