CONSCIOUSNESS 21$ 



quences of possible action in terms of past experience 

 and anticipated future. With the emergence of the plac- 

 oderm fishes, going from here to there became both 

 easier and more comphcated, because spines had given 

 way to fins, and the mud bottom had given way to a 

 world of up-and-down and left-and-right. As the rovmd 

 mouth of the ostracoderms was replaced by jaws, capa- 

 ble of catching and crushing other fast-moving animals, 

 life in this three-dimensional world fostered increased 

 speed, accuracy, and cunning— a moving target requires 

 prejudgment of the future, as well as perception of the 

 past and present. When the Amphibia crawled out of 

 the water onto the banks of the Mississippian lakes and 

 rivers, the distances between one clump of rushes and 

 another, the feel and smell of moist or dry ground, re- 

 quired new elements of judgment, as did the trick of 

 wrapping a tongue around a careless dragonfly. The rep- 

 tiles, when they left the watercourses to lay their eggs 

 on land and to grub on land for food, had to assess hghts 

 and shadows, colors, shapes, humidities and tempera- 

 tures, all with some skill, and they had better sense- 

 organs for these purposes. The homeothermic mammals 

 had to look out not only for themselves but also for their 

 young: the nest, the lair, the hideaway, became a nu- 

 cleus around which sights and sounds and smells wove 

 a tangled web challenging sensory acuity, quick integra- 

 tion, accurate anticipation. At each stage, natural selec- 

 tion favored the animals that had an increased capacity 

 to see their way from here to there, and to anticipate 

 the consequences of going from here to there. 



This view affords us a somewhat better definition of 

 consciousness, which we can now designate as aware- 

 ness of environment and of self, revealed objectively 

 by self-serving, neuromuscular activity which exhibits 

 choice between alternative actions and simultaneously 

 relates past experience to anticipated future. Without 

 temporal persistence in perception— without what we 

 have called the *time-binding' quaHty of consciousness— 



