The origin of consciousness. A review of several major theories and animal consciousness possibility and accessibility

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2006 in the subject Psychology - Miscellaneous, grade: 8,0 (NL), Maastricht University (Psychology), language: English, abstract: The origin of consciousness has come into main focus recently and is a widely discussed and controversial topic. This paper gives an overview of some of the most important theories of the origin of consciousness, including evolutionary and functional theories of consciousness emergence, theories of consciousness to be an optional extra and the idea of consciousness emergence by being not separable from higher-order functions. However, it will be shown that every theory faces its own, severe problems, which do not seem to be solvable in the near future. Furthermore, is the possibility and accessibility of non-human consciousness examined, with an emphasis on animal consciousness accessibility. It is shown that this question is also difficult to answer due to several limitations and further research is suggested.