Pathological complexity and African elephant consciousness

Veit (2023) provides a framework for modelling and empirically investigating varieties of consciousness as a Darwinian phenomenon, based on abduction from life histories of animals. The alleged ‘hard problem’ is exposed as an artefact of ignoring mechanisms by which increasingly complex varieties of consciousness evolved under selection pressure over evolutionary time. I illustrate Veit’s approach through a case study of a highly complex but non-human variety, consciousness in African elephants. This is useful for specifying more exactly the kind of anthropocentrism that Veit criticises.