Ep 37: Loading the Dice

What forms of consciousness exist in the natural world? What roles did associative learning and episodic like memory play in its origins?  Does consciousness have a function, and is it an adaptation? On this episode of Big Biology, we speak with Eva Jablonka from the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv, and Moncy Ginsburg, a neurobiologist formerly from the Open University of Israel, about their book called "The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul." We discuss how Universal Associative Learning led to the evolution of consciousness. Cover art by Anna Zeligowski.