On this definition would you defend that human consciousness only came about with the development of langauge? If consciousness is contingent on language, then anthropologically would you base that consciousness had to come out of language because it hinges on it?
An interesting thought: the language center of the brain can be identified. If damaged the person looses all use of language, based on a physiological definition of what is possible. If this is damaged does their consciousness also suffer the same fate?
Spoken language is by no means the only form of language. If a person cannot speak anymore, this does not mean that he cannot express himself anymore.
Let us look at your questions in this light. You ask about human consciousness. I will take this to mean self-consciousness. I have the following theory for its coming about.
When there is a need for communication, i.e., to express content of one’s “internal” world, then one needs to invent an internal language for this content. The invention of this language is tantamount to becoming conscious. For consciousness is being-conscious of something. To be conscious of something, differentiation of the flux or chaos is necessary. One singles out a complex. That is, one imposes Being upon Becoming by separating this complex from the rest and bundling it into an “entity”. This entity does not really exist, but is itself a sign of reference for the self: by this sign, it refers to a bundle of impressions. This referring by signs is the essence of language. But it is not enough to have thus singled out this complex. In order to communicate it to others, one needs to symbolise this image or inner sign by gestures and vocal and facial expressions. So the order may be:
Need for communication → {internal language = consciousness} → external language.
I realise now that this is not really clear. What I mean is this. One has inner processes going on - feelings, emotions. In order to express a feeling, one must first separate it from the others, discern it in the chaos. Thus one creates an image of it as a distinct entity. This is what I call an internal sign or symbol. The ordering of such symbols is what I call internal language.
But is ‘awareness’ something in itself, or only a property ‘attached’ to certain types of bodies? If we follow you and agree that it is some sort of property, that organisms ‘own’ their awareness as some sort of real assemblage of entities, or capacity for self-organization… aren’t we forced to say there is no essential difference between language and the affects of language on bodies? That the sound of a word and the word itself are composed of the same substance: there is no ‘immaterial’ substance, if you will-- it’s all part of the same flow of energy, in which case, awareness can never be ‘isolated’ as something in itself.
Consider the phenomenologists here: if awareness, or consciousness, is always and only awareness of something – that is, it is not a thing in itself – aren’t we left ‘outside’ the field of the unconscious? Or rather – that the field which structures language, memory, and even perception, is itself invisible, outside perception? This is, I suppose, an atheist reading of Spinoza, but the question remains: is the affect of knowledge different from knowledge-in-itself? Or is there no ‘intrinsic’ knowledge other than animal fear, unconscious manipulation, finally, the desire for power and construction of a war machine–in short, is consciousness the result of a long process of imposing upon human subjects a ‘wanting-not-to-know’…?
nothingness:
Yes, I’m almost through the second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia… phew! But I think I’m more a fan of Guattari: the essays collected in Guattari’s Molecular Revolution represent some of the most important institutional criticisms I’ve ever read. However, in their mutual works the voices are pretty difficult to distinguish.
Joker
Reality is not ideality. The basis for our perception, for being affected by the world, is not phonemes or infinitives. It seems to me that structure of the world is not (inherently) linguistic.
Imp is close to us here: it’s rather the structure of the unconscious which is like that of a language.
The world, as that which is produced by the ‘factory’ of the unconscious, ends up having an organization, but not an absolute structure. The difference is key, and we can see it clearly in the question of living organisms. Certainly we wouldn’t attributte something like a capacity for indirect discourses to amoebas: bacteria can’t tell someone else a story or joke they heard. Yet there is a constantly evolving structure, or self-organizing capacity, that can resembles that of a language, and even sometimes expresses itself in a linearized code (for example, consider DNA.)
But it would be fallacious to read an ‘ideal’ into the behavior of living things, or even a ‘striving’ towards ideality. If anything, this would be a striving towards death, away from reality, towards some ‘perfect’ homeostatic cycle where no interruption could take hold. But this is already sexual reproduction, the bifurcation of the individual and thus his death. The psychoanalytic question of sexuality is related essentially to the death of the individual. This then is the evolutionary question: did we evolve from a God? This may or may not be true–and we may or may not be aware of it-- regardless of whether we are able to use language. In any case, it is not certain that we require a transcendent signifier to understand: this is equivalent to saying we require punishment in order to feel guilty. Is it true? Perhaps, but I think this is a social and historical question-- not one of absolute necessity!
I read that apes and elephants and dolphins exhibit signs of self recognition in a mirror. Except for those apes specifically trained by humans they don’t possess symbolic language like humans. So the development self consciousness seems to precede symbolic language.
Ok, well, that’s why I asked you if you consider the amoeba to be conscious. I take it you, like other recent posters, distinguish between awareness and consciousness.
I compare the amoeba to a computer. A computer receives stimuli in the form of low-voltage electronic impulses. But it is only aware of these impulses if they fit a certain mold, namely: when it can assimilate them (in the literal sense) to a pre-established “1”. Everything that does not fit this mold is not registered, and is therefore (in time) assimilated to a “0” (if it does not receive an impulse that fits it mold within a certain time-frame). Likewise, the amoeba: it is only “aware” of stimuli that fit its mold, i.e., that it can assimilate (also in the non-literal sense). So this presupposes a (binary) language.
I was thinking that without language it would be hard if not impossible to articulate our thoughts in knowing especially in specific certain situations, circumstances and constructions.
Does this validate language creating consciousness?
I was thinking that without language it would be very hard if not impossible to know anything at all.
So maybe that is what some philosophers mean when they say that language creates consciousness.
Maybe without the acquisition of language there can be no sapient consciousness as we know it presently but instead there would only be a primitive instinctual mind. ( The animal within us.)
I suppose without language there would be no “sapience” as we know it but instead there would only be the most basic and rudimentary form of consciousness.
It would depend upon your defination of language, if it is defined as being information, it might have somewhere to stand. Information is incorporated from the outside world and given meaning by a subjective consciousness, so no, lanuage in the normal sense of the word, does not create consciousness. Stimulation in the form of information perhaps stimulates and even enhances consciousness. The essense of what life is, is consciousness, but it could not be consciouness without the object/information which stimulates and maintenance the reaction of consciousness–perhaps then languague as information might be said to be vital to consciousness.
language is created by the language of the bbain, the conceptual foundations of human nature have a lot to do with language. As in the underlying nature of the human brain is largely largely reflected in language, underlies language.
People unable to use language aren’t unthinking zombies.
Steven Pinker.
Steven Pinker has been one of the most thorough and impressive langauge researcher’s of this generation of scientists, maybe, one of the most important.
Not to mention we create new concepts and invent new words for those concepts, as well, as theres plenty of times where people can’t express what they are thinking properly because they can’t find the words to do so accurately. New languages arise, and so forth and so on.
To quote Steven Pinker:
“So language is not so much a creator or shaper of human nature so much as a window unto human nature”
The book “The Stuff of thought” explores this in-depth. Again, I hope you don’t discount one of the most important researchers into the subject of language on an emotional whim, but I really think you will.
