Page "Consciousness" Paragraph 57

Other philosophers, however, have suggested that consciousness would not be necessary for any functional advantage in evolutionary processes.

No one has given a causal explanation, they argue, of why it would not be possible for a functionally equivalent non-conscious organism ( i. e., a philosophical zombie ) to achieve the very same survival advantages as a conscious organism.

If evolutionary processes are blind to the difference between function F being performed by conscious organism O and non-conscious organism O *, it is unclear what adaptive advantage consciousness could provide.

As a result, an exaptive explanation of consciousness has gained favor with some theorists that posit consciousness did not evolve as an adaptation but was an exaptation arising as a consequence of other developments such as increases in brain size or cortical rearrangement.