Barking up the Evolutionary Tree

OK, I got your draft, read it through, and I have some suggestions

First of all: it is too long and too detailed, I suggest we split it up 😉

So I can elaborate and explain?                                                              

Indeed. But I did like the setup of the argument a lot! 😊

Nice! I noticed there were so many early breakthroughs thanks to experiments on the brain 🧠

that this became the dominant paradigm and we kinda forgot about consciousness

Exactly! And then there is the bit at the end about the alternatives

OK, you should work those out in a separate article, and you have to explain about Darwin first

“The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind”                    (Darwin 1871, 106)

This basically allowed us to translate what happens in animal brains to human brains

and since for the longest time animals were seen as barely more than machines …

… basically we’re back to Descartes, who thought our bodies were biological robots. 🤖

It basically enabled the whole paradigm: to understand the mind, we investigate the brain, humans are sufficiently like animals, so …

we can learn about humans by studying animals, and reduce the whole shebang to biological mechanisms. Clever.

And then I introduce some alternative approaches and critiques    

William James said that despite all the biological explanations it is still a complete mystery “how a motion became a feeling”.

You do need to explain that a bit more though …

Basically by reducing the mind to the brain we try to explain consciousness by matter in motion …

… basically we’re back to Descartes. Sorry, I’m repeating myself 😄

Well, Descartes thought that this couldn’t be done at all, that we needed something other than matter to explain the mind