New Biological Naturalism on Consciousness

Abstract

This paper examines new biological naturalist theories of consciousness, focusing on Ginsburg and Jablonka, and Feinberg and Mallat as their representatives. In doing so, we compare and analyze the two theories from three perspectives: the signature, the ontology, and the function of consciousness. We point out several significant theoretical differences between them, especially that Ginsburg and Jablonka propose a novel naturalistic teleological understanding of the ontological status of consciousness, whereas Feinberg and Mallat's theory conforms with so-called type-B physicalism.