The First Minds

Table of Contents Preface Where the Voyage Began: A Personal Note A Quick Overview An Aside on Terminology An Aside on the Nature of Philosophic Argument Distinguishing between Evolutionary Biology and Evolutionary Psychology A Note on Citations Summary Chapter I : Can Robots be Conscious? Functionalism or the Possibility of "Hardware-Independent" Consciousness What Do I/You Know about Minds? Yours and/or Mine? Is there Something It Is Like To Be a Robot? John Searle's Chinese Room The Anthropomorphic "Tug" Summary Chapter II: Why Has A CBC-Type Model Not Been Proposed Before? My Propaedeutic Caterpillar Three Reasons for Hesitating In Defense of Anthropomorphism A Short Aside on Fish Pain? An Object Lesson Those Who Are, Might Be, or Perhaps Should be Comfortable with Sentient cells Summary Chapter III. Bio-centric Views of the Origin of Consciousness: The Search for the Solution to the Hard Problem General Theories of the Origins of Consciousness Phylogenetic Searching for the First Appearance of Consciousness Some Thoughts on These Efforts Stumbling into a Category Error The Emergentist's Dilemma Anticipating Criticism: Some Prophylactic Arguments Summary Chapter IV: Where we Get Serious: The Cellular Basis of Consciousness Common Threads with Other Areas of Research A Short Aside on a Personal Bewilderment A Short Aside on which Unicellular Species We're Talking About The Cellular Basis of Consciousness Framework A Closer Look at Unicellular Life Summary Coda: Anticipating Criticism (once more) and Defending Against it Chapter V: Entailments of the Cellular Basis of Consciousness Stance On Evolution's Hierarchical Structure Reductionism Avoiding Mysterianism Empirical Problems Searching for Solutions Plants Ethical Considerations A Short Aside on Altruism and Cooperation Secondary Gains Summary Appendix A: An Exercise in Lexicography: Defining (?) Consciousness Appendix B: The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, with Commentary References