The Armoured Shrimp and the Evolution of Consciousness
Schedule
Wed Mar 11 2026 at 05:30 pm to 06:30 pm
UTC+00:00Location
Old Fire Station, cafe | Oxford, EN
Royal Institute of Philosophy public lecture by Walter VeitAbout this Event
The Armoured Shrimp and the Evolution of Consciousness
The so-called emergence of a science of consciousness in the 1990s has at best been a science of human consciousness. This talk aims to advance a true Darwinian science of consciousness in which its evolutionary origin, function, and phylogenetic diversity are moved from the field’s periphery to its very centre, thus enabling us to integrate consciousness into an evolutionary view of life. Accordingly, this talk has two objectives: (i) to argue for the need and possibility of an evolutionary bottom-up approach that addresses the problem of consciousness in terms of the evolutionary origins of a new ecological lifestyle that made consciousness worth having and (ii) to articulate a thesis and beginnings of a theory of the place of consciousness as a complex evolved phenomenon in nature that can help us to answer the question of what it is like to be a bat, an octopus, or a shrimp.
Dr. Walter Veit is an award-winning philosopher, author, and lecturer. He has authored over 100 academic publications as well as several books on the nature of consciousness, evolutionary theory, and how we can understand what goes on in the minds of other animals. He has travelled all over the world to speak about his research, meeting the Dalai Lama in India, bomb-sniffing Rats in Tanzania, mischievous corvids in Cambridge, and self-aware cleaner fish in Japan.
Where is it happening?
Old Fire Station, cafe, 40 George Street, Oxford, United KingdomUSD 0.00
