Language and Consciousness

Language, and Consciousness

A reader questioned my statement in last month's column (Are All Creatures Consciousness) that where we differ most from other creatures is in our thinking abilities. The reader wrote "I think the element of consciousness that distinguishes humans from most other creatures is our consciousness or awareness of self."

I agree. And, I think our self-consciousness is a result of our thinking abilities, which in turn owes its origins to the accident of language. Let me explain.

Being able to speak changed our consciousness in many ways. Whereas a dog learns principally from its own experience, we can share our subjective experiences with each other and so learn from each other. We can build up a body of collective knowledge that can be passed down from one generation to another.

Not only do we use speech to talk to each other, we can talk to ourselves, inside our own minds: we can think in words. Of all the significant developments that came from language thinking has been the most important.

Among other things, thinking allows us to think about our conscious experience. We are aware not only of the many aspects and qualities of our consciousness, but also of the fact that we are conscious. We are aware that we are aware -- conscious of the faculty of consciousness.

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Date created: 1-Dec-05

The Search for the Thinker

As we observe our own inner experience, we feel there must be an experiencer, a self who is having all these experiences, making all these decisions, and thinking these thoughts.

We have used language to label just about everything else in our world of experience, so it seems a natural step to give this self, whatever it was, a label. We called it "I".

But what was this self? What was it like? Where could it be?

The Scottish philosopher David Hume spent considerable time looking within, trying to find something that was his own true self. But all he found were various thoughts, sensations, images and feelings.

The reason he never found the self was that he was looking in the wrong place; he was looking in the realm of experience, in the contents of consciousness. But the self, by definition, cannot be another content of consciousness. It is that which experiences the contents of consciousness.

The only other possibility is that this sense of self has something to do with the faculty of consciousness itself. But if that is the self we are inwardly sensing, it is not an individual, personal self. It is not a self that has any characteristics or qualities. It is not something that can be perceived or known, as we perceive and know other things. It is not a unique self. It is something we all share.

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Date created: 1-Dec-05

Transcending Language

There is, it would appear, a downside to language. Language is invaluable for sharing knowledge and experience -- without it human culture would never have arisen. And thinking to ourselves in words can be very useful when we need to focus our attention, analyse a situation or make plans. But much of the remainder of our thinking is totally unnecessary. When I observe my own mind, I reckon that ninety per cent of my thinking I would better off without.

If half my attention is taken up with the voice in my head, that half is not available for noticing other things. I don't notice what is going on around me. I don't hear the sounds of birds, the wind, or creaking trees. I don't notice my emotions, or how my body feels. I am, in effect, only half conscious.

Just because we have the gift of being able to think in words does not mean that we have to do it all the time. This is something many spiritual teachings seem to have recognised. Most have techniques of meditation or prayer designed to quieten the voice in the head, and so still the mind. This is what the Indian word samadhi literally means, "a still mind" .

When the mind is still it is able to be more in the present, and more at peace. It is the natural state of mind that is our evolutionary inheritance. It is the state of grace to which we long to return; from which we fell when language took over our consciousness.

Moreover, say the sages, when the mind is completely still then we know our true identity. We know that we are at our core that faculty of consciousness that illuminates all beings. As the Chandogya Upanishad declared some three thousand years ago, "That which is the essence of all things, That art Thou."

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Date created: 1-Dec-05

The Accident of Language

I say language was an "accident" because that is what it probably was. The reason our closest relatives, the great apes, do not speak is not because they lack anything in their brains; they lack a voice. They don't have a larynx, and their tongues cannot move as freely as ours.

Taught sign languages and given other technologies with which to communicate to humans, they learn language nearly as rapidly as a child. Coco, a gorilla in California, now has a vocabulary of more than a thousand words, is learning two new words a day, and composes sentences on her keyboard.

When, for some reason or other, it could have been just a random mutation, the voice-box and flexible tongue appeared, everything changed. If there is one single charachteristic that most distinguishes human beings from other creatures, it is our capacity to speak.

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Date created: 1-Dec-05

Thinking and Consciousness

Words can conjure up associations to past experiences. The word "dolphin" brings back to mind images of dolphins we have seen, dogs we may have known, dolphins we have heard about, things we know about dolphins, and a range of other associations. Through words we can deliberately bring the past back to mind, independently of what is happening in the present. Other creatures may well experience associations to past experiences -- dogs seem to remember people who have treated them badly -- but their associations are almost certainly determined by what is going on around them in the present moment.

Through thinking we can liberate ourselves from this constraint.

Not only can we think about past experiences, we can entertain thoughts about the future. We can make plans and and take decisions, and exercise far greater influence over our future that other creatures. Just our consciousness has expanded in space to encompass even the edges of the Universe, so too it it has expanded in time.

Thinking has allowed us to ask questions -- "How?" and "Why?" -- and ponder their solutions. Such quests led to science and philosophy -- literally, "knowledge" and "the love of wisdom". Our consciousness discovered a whole new realm -- understanding. We could look into the heart of matter.

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Date created: 1-Dec-05