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A Contribution to Understanding Consciousness: Qualia as Phenotype

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Abstract

In this model consciousness is a form of memory. We are essentially “living in the past” as our experience, the qualia, is always of past events. Consciousness represents the storage of past events for use in future situations and it is altered by external experience of the organism. Psychological frameworks of conditioning and learning theory are used to explain this model along with recent neuropsychological research on synaesthesia and phantom limb pain. Consciousness results from the gradual evolutionary development of the human information processing function. Language is hypothesised to have evolved at a pre-conscious stage of human development as a function of the need for ‘within-organism’ data storage. Communication with others may not have been the initial evolutionary advantage conferred by language. The later incidental use of language as a communication tool, which results in the reflecting back of one’s experience through others, is what has triggered a conscious experience.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinical Psychology, UPMC Beacon Hospital, Sandyford, Dublin 18, Ireland

    Fiona O’Doherty

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  1. Fiona O’Doherty
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Correspondence to Fiona O’Doherty.

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O’Doherty, F. A Contribution to Understanding Consciousness: Qualia as Phenotype. Biosemiotics 6, 191–203 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-012-9140-x

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