This book develops an original philosophy for the science of animal consciousness. It advocates a Darwinian bottom-up approach that treats consciousness as a complex, evolved phenomenon in nature, rather than a mysterious all-or-nothing property immune to the tools of science and restricted to a single species.

Walter Veit is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Bristol. His interests stretch widely across science and philosophy, but they are primarily located at the intersection of the biological, social, and mind sciences in addition to empirically informed philosophy and ethics.