From senses to self-consciousness. The evolutionary investigation of Peter Gärdenfors

In his book How Homo Became Sapiens: On the Evolution of Thinking, Peter Gärdenfors, a professor of cognitive science at the University of Lund, presents his original concept concerning the order of the increase of the number of functions of human mind such as planning, imitation, understanding of reasons or self-consciousness. Gärdenfors assumes the modular theory of mind and tries to substantiate why natural selection prefers those organisms which minds were equipped with these functions. The present article is a summary of the main idea of Gärdenfors, an explanation of his terms and an attempt to draw a philosophical conclusions of Gärdenfors’ concept.

Keywords: evolutionary theory, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, Peter Gärdenfors