ON THE EVOLUTION OF REALITY - SOME BIOLOGICAL PREREQUISITES AND EVOLUTIONARY STAGES

The discussion of the evolutionary origins of consciousness has largel y been concentrated to the human mind, and it is only in recent years that a comparative ethological view has come into play. Even here, a t endency has been to look mainly at the primates. There is a vast liter ature that discusses the differences between human consciousness and c ognition, compared with that of the other primates, but much less atte ntion has been given to the fact that evolutionary gaps-fulgurations, emergences, new systems-have occurred at many stages in the evolution of cognition. More especially, the complexity of rather simple cogniti ve systems in lower animals has been underestimated, as well as the ne cessary prerequisites for a cognition worthy of the name to exist. Of particular interest in the discission has been the views from evolutio nary epistemology and radical constructivism, since they support the e thologically founded view that mind representations do not depict real ity, but are adaptations for a successful way of behaving in the physi cal world, that reality in this sense is in the mind, that there are m any realities, varying for different species-rich or poor in complexit y-but all of them basically of the same nature. Even such human achive ments as mathematics or logic may thus be seen as specific cognitive a daptions in our species, not as independent aspects of the physical wo rld. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.