Publishing note: The core of this post was written in February 2023, with tweaks, updates, and finishing touches added in late August.
Something that’s infrequently coming into my mind is the idea of consciousness, and how it is formed. I wanted to share those thoughts because they have some level of sense to them, at least to me (even if it is biased – they are my consciousness’ thoughts, after all.)
Do note that I’ve done zero research for this, have no academic credit in this area, and am, in essence, making this all up. It would be hard to conduct this as a study for ethical reasons, but we’ll get to that later. Also, note that things that I present as ‘fact’ are my philosophical opinions. Taking them as facts helps to understand my points. Further, this is a ‘stream of consciousness’ post; I am exploring ideas as I write, rather than organising thoughts into coherent arguments.
My intention is for this article to act as a marker in time. Maybe in 20 years, I’ll be known as a cutting-edge consciousness thinker. Ha. It may also be useful for those looking into consciousness in AI. Either way, I thought it interesting enough to share.
So… what is consciousness?
The basics of consciousness
Consciousness, as defined by a quick Google search, is “the state of being aware of and responsive to one’s surroundings.” It is sentience, and the ability to recognise oneself. That being said, sentience and consciousness can be separated. Sentience is “the ability to experience”, while consciousness is “being aware”; we are both.
What I’m interested in, however, is how that consciousness is formed. Apparently, it’s a mystery that we as humans struggle to answer, but I have a theory.
I think some are more afraid to answer the mystery than to accept there is an answer. Because – and hot take, here – by refusing to accept consciousness can be answered, people can continue to live in wonderland. They can claim that consciousness is a spiritual or religious thing, rather than complete chance via evolution. Whatever helps you cope with the fear of death, I guess.
But I digress.
I have a few ideas on how consciousness is formed and what it actually is, so I’ll get straight to it.
How I believe consciousness is formed
My theory is quite simple, and I think is shared among a lot of people (even if they don’t realise it). Consciousness is a thing of the brain. And the reason it’s formed is through language.
Let’s break that down.
Language is a medium that allows us to express thoughts, feelings, and other information.
As such, it follows that language allows us to identify thoughts, feelings, and other information – so that we can express them.
This may not be a ‘conscious’ process, often being automatic (in everyday life, who actually thinks before they speak?), but the idea is that we must have a way to communicate ideas for others to be aware that we are conscious. We’ll talk about that a bit more shortly.
When you ask people who speak multiple languages which language they think in, it’s almost always the first language they learned, because that language is integral to their innate consciousness. Or, if it’s not their mother tongue, it’s the primary language they use.
As a young child, we weren’t really aware of anything until we were a few years old. Almost certainly after the point of learning basic speech. They say it’s because our brains are developing at that age, and I believe, in some ways, that the development of the brain is key to recognising and learning language, which will, in turn, allow you to speak or communicate ideas.
Our ancestors were primates. We are very similar to them. I’m sure you’ve heard the term “monkey see, monkey do”; our brains have ‘mirror neurons’ that allow us to copy what another person is doing or feeling. It’s how we learn to talk – we simply copy the words that are frequently said around us, allowing us to in turn communicate.
My theory here is that mirror neurons paired with language are key to developing consciousness (in humans).
More than words
But, this concept isn’t limited to language. Remember, language is a way to express ideas, and is an effective form of doing so when everyone uses it. But it’s not the only way. We can draw, dance, build. As such, we cannot say with complete certainty that language is the only way for a species to be conscious. We evolved alongside language, meaning at some point we were conscious with very limited language.
Now, I’m musing here, but this does contradict my prior point.
Language is not the reason for consciousness; language is an effective medium through which consciousness is developed, as it is an effective medium through which ideas are shared.
Meaning, a species can develop consciousness without language, assuming it communicates ideas in another way. Heck, telepathy could, in theory, be that medium – so a telepathic species could become conscious without being able to speak.
The same is true for higher primates like chimps and bonobos. Some of these primates are studied and taught how to communicate ideas by pointing at pictures or doing certain actions. Does that mean they are conscious? Well, possibly.
Identifying consciousness (externally)
There are two beings that can recognise consciousness; ourselves, and others. If a being is self-aware and able to respond to their surroundings, they are, by definition, conscious. So, sticking strictly with this definition, if a chimp were able to recognise itself in a mirror and respond to its reflection, it would be conscious. So why do we not consider them conscious?
One theory is that their capacity to share ideas is limited, which is where having a medium such as language is useful. Words can express one’s self-awareness. It’s much more difficult to do so with pictures, even more so with pictures that are created by a more intelligent lifeform who is studying you. They are unlikely to share many images of brains, thoughts, mirrors, etc., instead sharing pictures of food, trees, and more everyday objects.
With that limited capacity, compounded over thousands of years, it’s not really a surprise that primates are not seen as conscious. We evolved with a medium of sharing ideas (language); other primates did not. With that limited capacity to share ideas, they have a limited capacity to learn and understand shared ideas, and thus the process is slower.
This leads us nicely into some thought experiments on consciousness.
Thought experiments
There are two thought experiments I want to explore here. Each should help us understand consciousness more.
Letting chimps communicate
The first continues with our idea of limited capacity for sharing ideas.
So, let’s imagine we gave chimps the ability to communicate. This may be through language or through another medium. We know what happened when humans, who were previously primates, had access to language for thousands of years, so it’s safe to guess that something similar would happen if chimps could talk.
But what about images? Let’s pretend we are god-like beings with infinite time, complete control over an environment, and able to study creatures in-depth over many millennia. Effectively, able to create a simulation.
Here’s the scene. We’ve got a huge land mass filled with chimps in their natural habitat; predators, prey, etc. The only difference in this experiment vs in reality/history is that in this habitat, we have many ‘communication hubs’ set up, which contain thousands of nuanced images. Imagine many domes scattered across this landmass, each maybe 8 feet high, with the insides covered in images on removable tiles. There would also be apparatus inside that allowed the chimps to create new images depicting whatever they wished.
By pointing to these images inside the domes, or taking several of these image tiles and placing them in a sequence, chimps can communicate ideas. Indeed, they can form strings of ideas akin to sentences by laying out several tiles together.
For example, a line of images containing a tree branch, a pile of sticks, a stone, the sun, and some animal meat, could communicate the idea of creating a fire to cook food (assuming fire is not one of their existing images).
Or, more simply, a line of images containing the following could indicate a late-night gathering and feast :
- A tree
- Several different fruits
- Several images of chimps
- The moon
Of course, these ideas are crude, but they should help understand the idea.
Let’s now compound this scene over millennia.
Assuming the chimps had a need or want to share ideas (such as to indicate predators are coming, to attack a rival tribe, that they’ve found a new water source, etc), it would be extremely likely that they would evolve alongside this medium of sharing ideas, and would become to depend on it for doing so.
With time, these chimps would grow in intelligence and capability (with greater access to the ideas of others and those who came before them in the form of created images), which would allow them to develop. And given enough time, they would, in theory, grow conscious.
They would grow to become aware of their surroundings and able to interact with those surroundings within awareness.
They would have images to represent themselves as a species, and perhaps images to show themselves as individuals akin to names.
They would be able to recognise their own reflections – reflective surfaces exist organically in nature, such as in water. You could possibly speed this process up by adding mirrors to the domes.
In this theory, consciousness is developed through the ability to communicate ideas, and the need to share those ideas, compounded with time.
The deprived child
On the flip side of the previous experiment, this second is on a human participant. And while before we were looking at adding to a creature’s environment, in this we will take away.
For ethical reasons, this isn’t something we could really test. And we certainly shouldn’t. But we can think about how it would work and perform a thought experiment.
The idea is this. You’d deprive a newborn child of all language input and access to language to prevent them from learning to speak. You’d also deprive all access to external ways of communicating ideas. Of course, you can’t remove the natural instincts of a child to cry or express emotion when they want something. And it’s certain that at first, the child would cry out when hungry etc. But without any other way of communicating other than innate sounds and actions, what would happen?
Let’s ensure they are fed, watered, etc on a strict, regular basis, without any human interaction. We get robots to do it for us. There are no mirrors. The room the child is kept in is bland and featureless. There is nothing to do. And let’s assume mental health is not an issue, that we have some way of ensuring the child does not experience loneliness, depression, etc from a lack of human contact, such as through medication.
They have everything they need to live, and nothing to do other than survive. In this experiment, they exist to be studied.
What would happen to that child over the course of their life?
Without an external need to communicate ideas (no threats, no need to indicate hunger or thirst, etc), would they develop consciousness?
While our brains are so evolved at this point to naturally develop consciousness, the type of consciousness the child develops, if any, would likely be different to our own, likely more akin to sentience.
And even if they were conscious, without a way to express that consciousness (through language, images, etc), how could we know?
If your answer was dance or physical action, it would likely be wrong. There would be no possible way for them to affirm their ideas were understood, and so no learning would take place to know their ideas were received, thus no reward for sharing the idea and no motivation for doing so again.
For consciousness to develop, we need the sharing of ideas. For ideas to be shared, we need to know that those ideas have been received; some way of affirming the idea to let the sender know it has been understood. Without that, sharing the idea is meaningless.
Let me explain. If I told you there was a hungry T.rex running at us at full speed, but you didn’t receive the idea (e.g. deaf, blind, and unreceptive to touch), you would be eaten. As such, the sharing of that idea was meaningless; it did not alter your course of action or have the potential to do so. Then, repeated enough times or with significant enough affirmation, I would learn that telling people about hungry T.rexes is a pointless endeavour, and so wouldn’t do it again.
The same is true for our child. With no need to share ideas, and no way of knowing their ideas have been received, the child simply would not share any ideas. It would not develop a way of sharing ideas (such as dance) as it has no need to. Any ideas it initially attempts to share would not be received, so there would be no motivation to share ideas in the future. Without the sharing of ideas, would it – could it – develop consciousness? And how would we know?
In short, we wouldn’t. You could look the child in the eyes and see a human, but if we were to remove the innate human ability to recognise other humans (in both us and the child), it would just be a creature, and looking in its eyes would be similar to looking in a dog or a cat’s eyes.
Summary and closing thoughts
So, those are my thoughts. My theory is this – consciousness requires certain criteria to be met in order to develop. Those primary criteria are the ability to communicate ideas, be that through language, images, or dance, and the need or desire to communicate those ideas. Without those criteria, you get sentience, not consciousness.
We’ve explored this theory through the above thought experiments. While this proves nothing, it’s a starting point for our understanding of consciousness. I find it fascinating and hope you have too. What are your thoughts? Do you think I’m right, or wildly off the mark? Let me know in the comments.
Until next time, peace.