Consciousness: the Precursor to Life?

Ron Cottam, Willy Ranson & Roger Vounckx

Available complete on the GWAL-98 site "Workgroups at GWAL-98"

In press

Third German Workshop on Artificial Life, pp 239-248.
Edited by C. Wilke, S. Altmeyer and T. Martinetz
Verlag Harri Deutsch, Frankfurt, 1998, ISBN: 3-8171-1591-1

Abstract

            In the search for a universally coherent description of our surroundings we must be able to account simultaneously for both the inanimate and the animate aspects of nature. Does life emerge "spontaneously" from an inanimate background, or is its basic character inherent in all of our environment? Critical evaluation of emergence suggests not only the latter, but that the common link is consciousness itself, as a precursor to life and not as a result of it. This, however, is contrary to popular thinking in the current debate over the location of human consciousness...
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