Consciousness, crosstalk, and the mereological fallacy: An evolutionary perspective

The cross-sectional decontextualization afflicting contemporary neuroscience – attributing to ‘the brain’ what is the province of the whole organism – is mirrored by an evolutionary decontextualization exceptionalizing consciousness. The living state is characterized by cognitive processes at all scales and levels of organization. Many can be associated with dual information sources that ‘speak’ a ‘language’ of behavior-in-context. Shifting global broadcasts analogous to consciousness, albeit far slower – wound healing, tumor control, immune function, gene expression, etc. – have emerged through repeated evolutionary exaptation of the crosstalk and noise inherent to all information transmission. These recruit ‘unconscious’ cognitive modules into tunable arrays as needed to meet threats and opportunities across multiple frames of reference. The development is straightforward, based on the powerful necessary conditions imposed by the asymptotic limit theorems of communication theory, in the same sense that the Central Limit Theorem constrains sums of stochastic variates. Recognition of information as a form of free energy instantiated by physical processes that consume free energy permits analogs to phase transition and nonequilibrium thermodynamic arguments, leading to ‘dynamic regression models’ useful for data analysis.

► Applies evolutionary theory to an expanded version of the Bennett/Hacker analysis of the mereological fallacy afflicting neuroscience. ► Uses tools from communication theory, statistical physics, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics to develop ‘dynamic regression models’ useful for data analysis. ► Applies ‘consciousness theory’ to a variety of global broadcast phenomena at various levels of organization in the living state.