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Minimal Selfhood and the Origins of Consciousness ness In MinimalSelfhood andthe OriginsofConsciousness, ous R.D.V. Glasgowseeks to ground thelogical rootsof ci consciousness in what he haspreviouslycalled the ns ‘minimal self’. Th eideaisthatelementary forms Co of consciousness arelogicallydependent not, as is of ns commonly assumed, on ownershipofananatomical i brainornervous system, but on theintrinsic reflexi- rig vity that definesminimal selfhood. Theaim of the eO bookistotracethe logical pathwaybywhich mini- th malselfhood givesrisetothe possible appearance of consciousness.Itisarguedthatinspecificcircum- and R.D.V. Glasgow stancesitthusmakes sensetoascribe elementary ood consciousness to certain predatorysingle-celled or- ganismssuchasamoebae anddinoflagellatesaswell elfh as to some of thesimpler animals. Such an argument lS involves establishingexactlywhatthose specific ima circumstances areand determining howelementary Min consciousness differsinnatureand scopefrom its more complex manifestations. sgow la .G R.D.V Würzburg University Press ISBN 978-3-95826-078-8 Rupert D.V. Glasgow Minimal Selfhood and the Origins of Consciousness Rupert D.V. Glasgow Minimal Selfhood and the Origins of Consciousness Impressum Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg Würzburg University Press Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg Am Hubland D-97074 Würzburg www.wup.uni-wuerzburg.de ©2018 Würzburg University Press Print on Demand Coverdesign & Illustrationen: Christina Nath ISBN: 978-3-95826-078-8 (print) ISBN: 978-3-95286-079-5 (online) URN: urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-157470 Except otherwise noted, this document – excluding the cover – is licensed under the Creative Commons License Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ The cover page is licensed under the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Acknowledgements The present book originally formed a rather long final chapter of a PhD dissertation entitled The Minimal Self. Once again, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Roland Borgards, Martin Heisenberg and Karl Mertens of Würzburg University for their generous guidance and encouragement throughout that project. Together with Bertram Gerber of the Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology in Magdeburg, moreover, it was their idea that I should turn that long, final chapter into a book in its own right. Given the stamina that would have been required of readers of The Minimal Self to reach that long, final chapter, I think that the advice was absolutely spot-on. As with The Minimal Self, special thanks go to Bertram, who has provided invaluable criticism and feedback as well as support and friendship. It was Bertram who first encouraged me to pursue my thinking on ‘selfhood’, and without his influence I doubt whether the book would have even been conceived (at least by me), let alone written. It goes without saying that I bear full responsibility for the mistakes and shortcomings. Again, I should like to thank the organizers and participants in the vari- ous courses and talks I have given on the ‘The Phylogeny of the Self’. In particular, I thank (in alphabetical order) Mirjam Appel, Achim Engelhorn, Alex Gómez Marín, Apollonia Heisenberg, Manos Paissios, Alois Palmet- shofer, Teiichi Tanimura and Ayse Yarali. Many thanks also go to Christina Nath for contributing the beautiful illustrations, to the team at Würzburg University Press for their great care and skill in preparing the book and to Christina Kolbe for helping me to track down some of the research material. I am very grateful, once more, to Bertram Gerber for making the illustra- tions possible. A special mention also goes to my lovely friends in Zaragoza and else- where. Carmen Canales, Las Peñas Altamira and Los Helechos, and Winni 6 Schindler and Sarah Lothian have all coped admirably with my even more than usually idiosyncratic behaviour, as have Barbara Glasgow in Berkhamsted and Faith Glasgow and Tony and Mattie Doubleday in Stoke Newington. RDVG Zaragoza, Spain Contents I. A Brief Introduction to Minimal Selfhood Minimal Selfhood ..............................................13 II. Consciousness: Preliminary Considerations Consciousness and Behaviour ....................................23 A Scale of Consciousness ........................................32 Consciousness, Meta-Mental States and Tacit Selfhood ...............37 Consciousness and Brains .......................................42 III. From Motionlessness to Directed Motility Non-Movers and the Almost Immobile ............................51 The Sessility of Plants ...........................................57 Plant-like and Animal-like Unicellulars ............................60 Motile Bacteria: Escherichia coli and Company ......................66 Motile Protozoa: Oxyrrhis marina and Company ....................73 8 I V. Appetite and Tacit Selfhood Hunger, Satiety and Siesta . .81 Recognizing Hunger: Some Doubts ...............................86 Appetite, Motivation and Pleasure ................................92 Further Aspects of Tacit Selfhood: Pain and Emotion ...............102 Attention, Arousal and Their Absence: Sleep and Anaesthesia ........109 V. Where Consciousness is Superfluous Taxis and Reflexes .............................................121 Metazoan Cells . .129 VI. Limits to Claims about Rudimentary Consciousness A World of Objects ............................................135 Choice and Freedom ...........................................142 Future and Past . .147 Knowledge, Thought and Morality ...............................155 VII. Epilogue: Consciousness in Simple Animals Three Questions ...............................................165 Sponges and Other Filter Feeders ................................169 The Non-Directional Movement of Placozoans ....................172 ‘Hungry’ Cnidarians ...........................................174 Two Worms . 179 Contents 9 Glossary......................................................191 List of Figures.................................................199 Endnotes .....................................................201 Bibliography ..................................................243 I. A Brief Introduction to Minimal Selfhood A Brief Introduction to Minimal Selfhood Minimal Selfhood The present treatise seeks to ground rudimentary forms of consciousness in what I have elsewhere referred to as the ‘minimal self’. This concept has been explored at length in a book of the same name.1 The idea underlying the present treatise is that consciousness is logically dependent not, as is commonly assumed, on ownership of an anatomical brain or nervous system (as happens to be the mammalian paradigm), but on the intrinsic reflexivity characteristic of minimal selfhood. While minimal selfhood need not in itself imply consciousness, it provides the foundation for its possible appearance. I hope to trace the logical path by which basalmost consciousness can be presumed to have emerged from minimal selfhood and thereby to pinpoint the sort of empirical questions we should ask when trying to decide whether or not to ascribe consciousness to any particular type of organism.2 Possibly counterintuitively, it will be proposed that consciousness can in certain circumstances be meaningfully attributed to a subset of single-celled organisms such as amoebae and dinoflagellates, as well as to some – but not all – of the simpler animals. Before unfolding this argument, however, we must recapitulate the basic features associated with a concept of minimal selfhood based on intrinsic reflexivity. The aim of this brief introduction, therefore, is to spare readers unacquainted with The Minimal Self the trouble of having to plough through it in order to make full sense of the present argument about rudimentary consciousness. So what is reflexivity? Consider our everyday use of the word ‘self’ as a pronoun in a simple reflexive proposition such as ‘I wash myself’.3 The iden- tity of the grammatical subject with the grammatical object of the sentence 14 A Brief Introduction to Minimal Selfhood suggests an activity that is in some sense turned back on itself,4 resulting in a relationship of something to itself. By defining a self in terms ofintrinsic reflexivity, the reflexive activity is pinpointed as constitutive of the self that performs such activity. Well-known examples of intrinsic reflexivity are self-organization and self-production (often referred to as autopoiesis). By contrast with the extrinsic or contingent reflexivity of washing oneself, the reflexivity of self-organization or self-production is judged to be essential to the entity engaged in the activity. The claim is that a self is the sort of entity that engages in and is constituted by intrinsically reflexive processes such as self-organization or self-production, and if it ceases to undertake these intrinsically reflexive activities (e.g. if it ceases to organize or produce itself), it will cease to be. Entities constituted by such intrinsically reflexive processes necessarily embody two underlying features: reflexivity and continuity in time. To the extent that I engage in such processes (say, by producing or creating myself), reflexivity comes to light in the duality of subject and object, cause and effect. Through the process of self-creation, I become my own creator and my own creation. The continuity of the process is logically guaranteed by the use of the first person for both constituents
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