Gerald.M.Edelmann
A UNIVERSE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
How Matter becomes Imagination
Basic 2000
pg. 191
Keywords:
Language and the Self - ...neural changes that lead to language are behind tbe emergence of higher-order consciousness - aspects of the evolution of speech - Consciousness of consciousness - a key step in the evolution of higher-order consciousness was the development of a specific kind of reentrant connectivity, this time between the brain systems for language (see figure 15.1) and the existing conceptual regions of the brain. The emergence of these neural connections and the appearance of speech allowed reference to inner states and objects or events by means of symbols. The acquisition of a growing lexicon of such symbols through social interactions, probably initially based on the nurturing and emotive relationships between mother and child, allowed for the discrimination of a self within each individual consciousness. - narrative capabilities emerged and affected linguistic and conceptual memory, higher-order consciousness could foster the development of concepts of the past and future related to that self and to others. At such a point, an individual is freed, to some extent, from bondage to the remembered present. If primary consciousness marries the individual to real time, higher-order consciousness allows for at least a temporary divorce, which is made possible by the creation of concepts of time past and time future. A whole new world of intentionality, categorization, and discrimination can be experienced and remembered. As a result, concepts and thinking flourish. Relationships that promise positive rewards can be fostered, resentments can be nourished, and plots can be laid. Scenes are enriched by symbols. Value connects to meaning and intentionality and can itself be modified in more richly adaptive ways by evolving neural systems that link individual learning back to the alteration of the value systems themselves. - reconstructing the evolutionary origins of language
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Observer Time
In this section we continue our journey into the depths of the brain and the richness of conscious phenomenology to take up several related subjects at the center of human concern. We have considered the neural mechanisms that are essential to the evolutionary origin of primary consciousness. We extended this view with specific hypotheses about the neural basis of conscious experience that can account for its most general properties. But we have not yet explicitly confronted the relationship of consciousness to language, thought, and the limits of knowledge.
This relationship is based on higher-order consciousness, which, as we have shown, allows for the development of concepts of the self, the past, and the future. To untie the world knot or at least to retie it in a less tangled form, we believe it fitting to end with reflections on these large issues. They relate to science, as well as to philosophy, and prompt some further insights into what we may and may not expect from a scientific view of consciousness.Higher-order consciousness is obviously necessary for a scientific exploration of the properties of the conscious process. It is a paradox that as conscious human beings, we cannot fully rid ourselves of higher-order consciousness, leaving only the ongoing event-driven rush of primary consciousness. That may, in fact, be the state toward which mystics aim their devotions. Let us aim ours toward a brief exploration of some subjects related to higher-order consciousness: language, the self, thinking, the origins of information, and the origins and reaches of knowing. It is time to ask what we can expect of the scientific observer who seeks to under-stand the conscious process and report on it to himself and to others - it is observer time.
pg193Language and the Self
In this chapter, we consider several issues of central human signifcance in a new light, relating our efforts to philosophy and to science itself and offer insights into what we may and may not expect from a scientific view of consciousness.
In particular, we argue that neural changes that lead to language are behind tbe emergence of higher-order consciousness and we therefore briefly consider some aspects of the evolution of speech.
Once higher-order consciousness begins to emerge, a self can be constructed from social and affective relationships. This self (entailing the development of a self-conscious agent, a subject) goes far beyond the biologically based individuality of an animal with primary consciousness.
The emergence of the self leads to a refinement of phenomenological experience, tying feelings to thoughts, to culture, and to beliefs. It liberates imagination and opens thought to the vast domains of metaphor. It can even lead to a temporary escape, while still remaining conscious, from the temporal shackles of the remembered present.
Three mysteries - that of ongoing awareness; that of the self; and that of the construction of stories, plans, and fictions - can be clarified if not completely dispelled by considering a combined picture of primary and higher-order consciousness.
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Consider the evolution of brain structures that lead to higher-order consciousness (see figure 15.1). An animal with only primary consciousness can generate a "mental image," or a scene based on the integrated re-entrant activity in the dynamic core. This scene is determined largely by the succession of real events in the environment and, to some degree, by unconscious subcortical activity. Such an animal has biological individuality but has no true self, a self aware of itself. Although it has a "remembered present," maintained by the activity in real time of the dynamic core, it has no concept of the past or future.
These concepts emerged only when semantic capabilities - the ability to express feelings and refer to objects and events by symbolic means - appeared in tne course of evolution. Necessarily, higher-order consciousness involves social interactions. When full linguistic capability based on syntax appeared in precursors of Homo sapiens, higher-order consciousness flowered, partly as a result of exchanges in a community of speakers. Syntactical and semantic systems provided a new means for symbolic construction and a new type of memory mediating higher-order consciousness. Consciousness of consciousness became possible.
FIGURE 15.1 A SCHEME FOR HIGHER-ORDER CONSCIOUSNESS. {The reader may relate this scheme to the scheme for primary consciousness shown in figure 9.1J. A new reentrant loop appears during the evolution of hominids and the emergence of language. The acquisition of a new kind of memory via semantic capabilities and ultimately language leads to a conceptual expiosion. As a result, concepts of the self, the past, and the future con be connected to primary consciousness. Consciousness of con-sciousness becomes possible.
As in the case of primary consciousness, a key step in the evolution of higher-order consciousness was the development of a specific kind of reentrant connectivity, this time between the brain systems for language (see figure 15.1) and the existing conceptual regions of the brain. The emergence of these neural connections and the appearance of speech allowed reference to inner states and objects or events by means of symbols. The acquisition of a growing lexicon of such symbols through social interactions, probably initially based on the nurturing and emotive relationships between mother and child, allowed for the discrimination of a self within each individual consciousness.
When narrative capabilities emerged and affected linguistic and conceptual memory, higher-order consciousness could foster the development of concepts of the past and future related to that self and to others. At such a point, an individual is freed, to some extent, from bondage to the remembered present. If primary consciousness marries the individual to real time, higher-order consciousness allows for at least a temporary divorce, which is made possible by the creation of concepts of time past and time future. A whole new world of intentionality, categorization, and discrimination can be experienced and remembered. As a result, concepts and thinking flourish. Relationships that promise positive rewards can be fostered, resentments can be nourished, and plots can be laid. Scenes are enriched by symbols. Value connects to meaning and intentionality and can itself be modified in more richly adaptive ways by evolving neural systems that link individual learning back to the alteration of the value systems themselves.
When one contemplates the phenotypic changes that had to be put in place before true language appeared or was invented, the diffculty in reconstructing the evolutionary origins of language becomes painfully obvious. First, the precursor of hominids had to possess primary consciousness - the ability in the remembered present to construct a scene in which both causally related and unrelated objects or events, taken together, have significance with respect to the values and historically influenced memories of the individual animal. A series of morphological changes occurred that led to bipedalism, a prehensile grasp with a heightened tactile sense, and a reshaped basicranium. At some time, the changes in the skull permitted the developmental descent of the larynx, with the appearance of a supralaryngeal space and the ability to produce coarticulated speech sounds. Communicating hominids must have used gestures and sounds to develop social interactions that had some selective advantage in hunting and breeding.
What about the brain? At the least by this time, cortical and subcortical structures for the rich phonological categorization and memory of speech sounds must have evolved. The critical step to higher-order consciousness depended on the evolutionary emergence of reentrant connectivity between these structures and those areas of the brain that are responsible for concept formation. According to the TNGS, the repertoires of different brain areas, operating according to selection, are sufficiently plastic to adapt somatically to a wide range of bodily phenotypic changes, such as the emergence of a supralaryngeal space. This plasticity relieves us of the genetic and evolutionary dilemma of requiring simultaneous correlated mutations that are reflected both in altered body parts and in correspondingly altered neuronal mappings. (Of course, subsequent to the somatic adjustment of the brain to a mutation affecting the body, later mutations in neurally significant genes could then accumulate evolutionarily to the advantage of the organism.
What is required for meaning and semantics to emerge from the exchanges within a developing hominid speech community? First, those exchanges must have affective or emotional components related to reward or punishment. The emotional early mother-child relationship and grooming are likely prototypes but not the only ones. Second, primary consciousness and enhanced conceptual abilities must already have been in place. (Before language is present, concepts depend on the brain's ability to construct "universals" through higher-order mapping of the activity of the brain's own perceptual and motor maps.) Third, sounds must become words - in the species, historically developed vocalizations within the otherwise arbitrary history of a speech community must be exchanged and remembered in connection with referents. Finally, certain areas of the brain must respond to these vocalizations, categorize them, and connect the memory of their symbolic sigruficance to concepts, values, and motor responses. The evolutionary value of these developments derives from an enhanced memory of events that would arise as a result of reentrant connections between areas that mediate memory for speech symbols and the conceptual areas of the brain.
The fundamental relationship in linguistic exchange is a tetradic one between at least two participants, a symbol, and an object. It is the stability of this object (which can be an event) and the degeneracy of the selectional networks in each brain that together permit the building of a stable lexicon with meaning. It does not matter tbat the symbols used are more or less arbitrary and that because of de,eneracy, different neurons are engaged in the two exchanging participants' brains. The constancy of reference to an object and the fixation of the object's connection to the conventionalized symbol in eech brain are sufficient to ensure transactions with meaning.
In these transactions, it is likely that the unit of exchange was not an atomic word but the equivalent of a primitive sentence. Such a sentence, like a gesture, can convey action or immanence and can refer to events or things. The emergence of syntax from a gesturally related "protosyntax" connect-ing pointing actions and objects in sequences of motor acts resulted in the ability to categorize word order. This ability probably required selection for enlarged repertoires in parts of the cortex, such as Wernicke's area and in Broca's area and their associated subcortical loops. The sequence during development goes from phonology to semantics and then, in an overlapping fashion, from protosyntax to syntax.
These transactions are all affective and are strongly linked to value systems. Besides permitting the designation of objects and events, language has expressive functions that allow for exchanges of feelings and judgments.
In chapter 14, we mentioned that many aspects of speech are carried out via unconscious routines. These routines and the consciousness of word meaning lead to an enormously rich new memory system that is mediated, in part, by these language areas. Although the language areas are not themselves responsible for thinking, their reentrant interactions with conceptual areas allow the creation of a vast number of symbolic constructions, or sentences. An enhanced symbolic memory allows for an increasing number of verbal tokens. At a certain lexicon size, a person's conceptual range becomes enormously enlarged, promoting the use of metaphor.
Once higher-order consciousness begins to emerge along with language, a self can be constructed from social and affective relationships. Here we must consider two related issues that are fundamental to the understanding of higher-order consciousness. The first has to do with how critically the subjective world depends on language. The second is related to how qualia are affected by higher-order consciousness.
Views differ strongly about the relation of subjectivity to the development of the self. The two extremes may be called the internalist and externalist positions on the subjective. According to the internalist view, there is first a subjective experience (say, that of a young baby) and then increasing differentiation of the self with self-consciousness occurring as a result of both social and linguistic interactions. Although there is no direct way to know the nature of the early subjective state, it is considered to be the necessary basis for the subsequent emergence of the true self. In this internalist view, some thinking is ontogenetically possible even before language is acquired. Thus, young children can know and figure out the intentions of their parents even before they have language.
According to the alternative, externalist view, it is meaningless to talk about subjective responses or inner states until language is acquired. Language is acquired through interpersonal interactions that are social. When enough language is in place, the conceptual bases of the self emerge. Only when that emergence occurs can one consider that a conscious and, above all, a self-conscious, individual is present. In this view, prior subjectivity is indeterminate, and it is meaningless to ask what it is like to be X, whether X is a prelinguistic baby or a bat.
Like all extremes, these two views are useful but are not likely to be correct in their pure form. The notions of primary consciousness and higher-order consciousness allow us to consider a mix. An animal with just primary consciousness that lacks symbolic capabilities has no possibility of developing a notion of a self, of time past, or of time future. But from early times in a baby with linguistic capabilities, cues from the outside are transformed by emotional exchanges with the mother that begin to have motor and, therefore, conceptual significance. The grounds for phonological and semantic development are in place at an early stage, and so are the rewards for exchanges with the mother. There is a continuous drive toward language from the earliest times. This does not appear to be the case for higher apes, such as chimpanzees, even though they appear to have semantic capabilities with some degree of self-differentiation. But unlike humans, such apes do not appear to be compelled toward language in their native environment and do not seem to be able to master syntax. In the case of a baby, higher-order consciousness, a self-concept, and a notion of past and future emerge rapidly with language and socialization. While we cannot say when the "true subject" starts, we can be sure that, from birth, the baby is constructing his or her own "scenes" via primary consciousness and that these scenes rapidly begin to be accompanied by the refurbishment of concepts through gesture, speech, and language. From the earliest times, the thought that accompanies language and that flowers with its development is likely to be metaphorical and narrative. A child can play house with an imaginary com-panion and make up entire scenarios in which roles and properties are attributed to all kinds of objects. According to this picture, internalism and externalism are too extreme - components of both play major roles in subjective development.
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