Evolution & Experience

One way of making sense of experiential states is via an evolutionary explanation. To do this, we need to clearly explicate the adaptive role which experiential states play in the organisms which have it. In his works, Peter Godfrey-Smith provides two different ways of understanding experiential states as evolutionary adaptions and calls the two views the “transformation view” and the “latecomer view”. Godfrey-Smith adopts the transformation view, and, in this article, I defend the latecomer view. This paper is broken up into six sections. In the first section, I provide an overview of the transformation view and the latecomer view. In the second section, I provide a more detailed analysis of the latecomer view, highlight its connection to the global workspace theory of consciousness and provide an argument for it. In the third section, I provide a response on behalf of Godfrey-Smith to my argument and provide two arguments for why we should prefer the transformation view to the latecomer view. In the fourth section, I argue against the transformation view by claiming that, unlike the latecomer view, it does not provide an adaptive role for experiential states. In the fifth section, I attempt to provide, on behalf of Godfrey-Smith and the transformation view, an adaptive role for the transformation view but argue that the response fails. In the sixth section, I respond to the two arguments articulated in the third section and show how they can be overcome. I conclude by discussing the upshot of the arguments presented in the article. Keywords: Evolution, experience, global neuronal workspace, primordial emotions, latecomer view, transformation view