Consciousness: A Natural History

This article shows how the proper question to answer concerning consciousness is not 'how consciousness arises in matter', but how consciousness is part and parcel of the evolution of animate forms. The article traces out just such an evolution by consideration of real life forms including bacteria and invertebrates. It vindicates the evolutionary thesis that external proprioceptive organs, as evidenced in their own right, were modified and internalized over time into kinesthetic organs, sustaining, in effect, a directly movement-sensitive corporeal consequences across virtually all forms of evolutionary life. The paper specifies significant consequences of the thesis having to do with the unconscious, with present-day focal studies of the brain that neglect a correlative natural history, and with the need to attend to corporeal matters of fact.