Ultimate and proximate explanations

Continuing this post, on the distinction between ultimate and proximate explanation, this article notes that “ultimate explanations address evolutionary function (the ‘why’ question), and proximate explanations address the way in which that functionality is achieved (the ‘how’ question).” In Chapter 3 Dehaene opens with this:


“In this book, however, I explore […] what philosophers call the ‘functionalist’ view of consciousness. Its thesis is that consciousness is useful. Conscious perception transforms incoming information into an internal code that allows it to be processed in unique ways. Consciousness is an elaborate functional property and as such is likely to have been selected, across millions of years of Darwinian evolution, because it fulfills a particular operational role.”


Of course Dehaene also goes into great detail as to how consciousness and the brain function, but his writing is also concerned with why it came to be this way.