A Global Evolutionary Approach to Consciousness in Cognitive Science

At the present stage of consciousness research, there is an extraordinary variety of models of consciousness proposed by science and philosophy. In this regard, the construction of a typology of consciousness concepts is appropriate, as well as the dialogue of philosophy and cognitive science in the research of consciousness. The article compares the main approaches to the phenomenon of consciousness in cognitive science: neurobiological (neural network), informational (quantum informational), and nonlinear dynamic. The authors propose to include a global evolutionary approach in this typology. The global evolutionary approach is close to a nonlinear dynamic view, but the understanding of consciousness is refined by the inclusion of control parameters that exerted impact to the sociocultural stage of universal evolution. Creativity has a special role to play in this approach. The classification is based on ideas about the real evolution of consciousness and its participation in the global evolutionary process. In such a context, consciousness is understood as a complex self-developing system, but its functioning is conditioned by the cognitive activity of the brain, body, culture, and the world. The article reveals the concepts, in which the explanation of consciousness can be correlated with the global evolutionary approach. They include the emerging modern concepts of embodied cognition, the theory of spatio-temporal neuroscience by G. Nortoff, as well as the concept of consciousness by T. Metzinger. The authors generate the hypothesis about the expediency of using the methodology of the second-order observer to discuss the problem of a unified theory of consciousness. The article indicates the correlation of these theories with the global evolutionary approach, in which the functioning of consciousness is not reduced to neural network structures of the brain, but extended to a view that consciousness is a part of the world and at the same time includes it. Thus, consciousness has a creative evolutionary potential, due to which it builds holistic images and encompasses irrational, creative parameters. The authors suggest a hypothesis about the possibility to combine first-person and third-person studies of consciousness based on the methodology of the second-order observer. In this assumption, they assess consciousness performing the function of an observer on the basis of the methodology of the second-order observer (V.I. Arshinov) and the interpretation of observation as an operation that reproduces the observer (D. Becker). The observer of complexity (the observer of the second order) in this context is consciousness, or rather self-consciousness. The observer simultaneously observes and generates processes, forming a kind of an “assemblage point” of reality, in which the agent-based properties of the observer of complexity are manifested.

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