Antti Revonsuo
University of Turku
Biological naturalist Consciousness requires living metabolic hardware
Antti Revonsuo, of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Turku, built one of the few fully evolutionary theories of consciousness, and he built it in the one state where experience is isolated from sensory input. His threat simulation theory holds that dreaming is an ancestral rehearsal system, selected because simulated threats trained waking behavior, and his broader framework, developed in Consciousness, The Science of Subjectivity (2010) and the Inner Presence model, treats consciousness as a biological, world-simulating function of the brain rather than an accident of complexity. His 2025 dream EEG database work (PMID 40804039) continues the empirical program, with Naotsugu Tsuchiya among collaborators profiled on this site.
The site’s interest in Revonsuo runs through what dreaming does to the AI question. Dreaming demonstrates that the brain can generate full, structured experience with no external input at all, which makes the generation side of consciousness a biological competence that any candidate theory must explain, and which the site’s measurement discipline treats as a target property rather than a given.
His position, that consciousness is a biological phenomenon with a function, sits deliberately between the reductive and deflationary camps, and the dream evidence is its sharpest tool.
Known for. Dream science and the threat simulation theory, evolutionary theory of consciousness, Inner Presence framework, consciousness as a biological phenomenon
Coverage on this site
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Antti Revonsuo is listed with the other biological naturalists, who hold that consciousness requires living metabolic hardware. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.