Walter Veit (2025), Adaptive Behavior 34(1):53–71 (online 2025-12-27); preprint on PhilSci-Archive (#27585) — DOI-10.1177/10597123251413204
Key takeaways
- Veit defends and extends the evolutionary, bottom-up account of consciousness from his book A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness against four commentaries, distinguishing his naturalism from autopoietic enactivism, answering the charge of residual Cartesianism, and defending consciousness as an evaluation-first adaptation.
Seeded from the abstract alone, before the reading in NOTE-187. What follows is what the work says about itself.
The article is Veit’s reply to four critical commentaries on the evolutionary account of consciousness developed in his 2023 book. He clarifies what his evolutionary bottom-up approach commits him to, in response to de Weerd, and distinguishes his naturalistic framework from autopoiesis and enactivism, in response to Sachs. He answers Frankish’s charge of residual Cartesian commitments and Suzuki’s prediction-based alternative to his evaluation-first view, including Suzuki’s criticisms on disunity and his doubt that consciousness is an adaptation. He closes by addressing Chincarini on how the pathological complexity thesis bears on animal welfare science.
Standing in the record
Filed from the 2026-09-26 sweep of the papers-feed tracker for philosophy: 0 seconds of active reading over 0 sessions. It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-187 is the close reading of 2026-09-26, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading as the only extended statement of the metaphysics behind the pathological complexity thesis, and as the direct answer to Frankish (LIT-103). The reply to Frankish is the substantive part. The replies to de Weerd and Suzuki mostly restate the book’s positions against objections quoted only in part, so read them alongside the commentaries.
When seeded, before the reading in NOTE-187, the entry gave a priority for a deeper reading: low — never opened (t = 0); a reply piece whose substance depends on the book it defends; get the open-access full text first.
What the seeding asked a deeper reading to check (NOTE-187 is that reading):
- A current statement of an evolutionary, gradualist, animal-centred naturalism about consciousness, set against enactivist and predictive-processing rivals and Frankish’s critique.
- Check the reply to Suzuki: whether “evaluation-first” is distinguishable from predictive-processing accounts on empirical grounds or only in framing.
- Read the target book and the special-issue commentaries (Adaptive Behavior) to judge the replies fairly; this piece alone presupposes them.
Access when seeded: philsci-archive.pitt.edu blocks direct fetches (F5 “Request Rejected”); its record metadata (datestamp 2025-12-21, subjects) came from a Wayback snapshot, but the preprint PDF has no archived copy. The journal version (CC BY per Semantic Scholar) is behind Cloudflare at journals.sagepub.com. The abstract, DOI, volume/pages and online date are from Crossref. No full text reached. published: is the PhilSci deposit date; the PhilSci title omits the serial comma.