These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
Co-Evolution Of Language And
Consciousness The British psychologist
Euan MacPhail is another scholar who believes that consciousness comes from
language, and therefore it is unique to humans. "Association
formation" is ubiquitous in vertebrates, and it forms the basis for every
form of learning. But humans differ from animals in that humans are capable of
language, humans possess an innate ability for acquiring language. MacPhail relates this fact to memory
structures, and he does so by unifying two findings about memory. On one hand, he thinks that humans are endowed with two parallel
learning systems: a conscious (explicit) and an unconscious (implicit) system,
corresponding to two memory systems, one unconscious and one conscious. The unconscious learning system is the human
analogue of an animal's associative learning system. While they are both
present at all times, we cannot consciously recall episodes stored in unconscious
memory, whereas we can consciously recall episodes stored in conscious
memory. Conscious memory develops with
language, and that explains why we cannot recall episodes of our early life. On the other hand, conscious
memory is an "autobiographical" memory in the sense that it develops
as the concept of "self" develops. I can feel pain only after i have
developed a concept of "i", only after i have come to realize that i
am myself. What feels the pain is the network of neurons that constitutes the self. By merging the two aspects
of conscious memory, MacPhail reaches the conclusion that
other animals only have the implicit (unconscious) kind of memory and learning,
whereas humans developed also the explicit (conscious) kind, and the latter
requires the development of the self. The origin of consciousness
is therefore predicated on the origin of the self. The self, in turn, is a
by-product of "aboutness", which is a requirement and a by-product of
language. The association between a subject
and a predicate in language is structurally different from the associations
that animals are capable of. Animals can learn associations between stimuli,
but cannot infer subject-predicate associations, and that is the prerequisite
to acquiring a language. Language
allows humans to think in terms of "representations", of
"aboutness", of the philosophical “intentionality” (from “intendo”,
i.e. being able to refer to something else). Animals, who are not endowed with
language, cannot grasp this "aboutness". The "aboutness" relationship is the fundamental
grammatical requirement for language. It is the ability to deal with
"aboutness" that enables the formation of a concept of self. It is the
concept of self that enables consciousness.
The ability to create relationships of "aboutness" mature in
children and leads to a conception of the "non-self", which in turn
is reflected in a conception of the "self". At this point conscious
memory starts developing, and conscious recall is possible, and conscious life
begins. Consciousness is the
consequence of the evolution of "aboutness". Inasmuch as
"aboutness" is the key to consciousness, Brentano was therefore
correct: intentionality is the fundamental property of mind, that distinguishes
it from matter. MacPhail believes that language, the
self and consciousness develop together in the infant, and this development
somehow recapitulates the evolution of language in our species: we started to
think when we acquired the ability to discriminate self and non-self, and we
acquired that ability when we acquired the ability to learn languages. What remains to be explained
is what causes infants to diverge from other animals. If, as toddlers, we are no more conscious than puppies, what
happens to toddlers that does not happen to cubs, so that after a few years a
toddler is conscious and a cub will never be? Ultimately, MacPhail postulates that the answer lies
in our ability to learn languages, i.e. that something unique in the human genome
sets in motion a process to learn languages that is unique to humans. Back to the beginning of the chapter "A History of Consciousness" | Back to the index of all chapters |