Learning Consciousness
Learning Consciousness
I am watching my granddaughter learn consciousness.
She is heading toward three. Perhaps you will agree that when she was conceived — when she was no more than a clump of cells and just starting on the journey towards personhood — she had no consciousness. We start at zero. Do you agree with this point?
Even when she was born, that is, was a full fetus with features and early internal organs, she did not have consciousness. This is my conjecture and I have no experimental proof, but what else could be the case. Zero consciousness at conception and unlikely or improbable consciousness at birth.
She had biological senses: vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell. Even these senses were just starting and would grow and develop as time passes. But her nervous system and brain functions had just begun and should be described as very fluid at this point, ready to grow (and to learn). But Conscious?
Of course, the definition of consciousness is not agreed upon, but it always contains something that gives us “awareness” and is often connected with thought patterns and “stream(s) of consciousness”. At the time of birth, the processes required for consciousness simply have not formed yet. They have not yet been learned.
I use “learning” to mean the development of patterns and connections within the brain and its synaptical activation system (neural pathways, chemical stimulation and signaling within our neural networks)
Awareness? Consciousness? At best, at birth she had only the earliest elements of the skills (learned) that would lead to consciousness. And what would those elements be?
Long before thinking and awareness there is the need for air, food, mobility, and recognition of surroundings. This is where our learning starts, not with any consciousness. These are biological functions and skills (learned and improved) that are necessary for life. They operate at a brain level deeper, older and more automatic (mechanical) than anything approaching consciousness. We learn how to exist before we learn who we are and what surrounds us.
Biological functions, including visual imagery and sound receptions, come from the earliest of our evolutionary ancestors. We (life) has been using sight and sound since the earliest of complex life forms. We as hominids have developed consciousness on top of a full functioning mammal body and brain. (Do animals have consciousness? See more below).
Consciousness is not well defined, but it certainly includes the aforementioned awareness and internal thought processes. Fully developed, it contains the ability to recognize ourselves and our world and to make sense of it. It also contains the ability to build thoughts, which is the basis for reasoning.
But it starts at zero in the embryo. First and foremost is the biological entity that will develop into organism with a structure, organization, brain, nervous system, and physical being. And as the biological systems develop our species moves to brain functions which means intelligence and reasoning. These are built upon recognition of details, the concepts of time and space, information processing techniques and some kind of worldview. These came about gradually through natural processes (senses and learning) and only after the basics of survival have been learned, at least at the very elemental level.
Learning is the building and development of neural pathways (tissues and nerve cells growing through learning and use). These patterns combine to reacg higher levels with niew objects and concepts emerging as complexity grows.
The processes that my granddaughter is going through to gain consciousness are likely the same steps early hominids used to gain or learn consciousness. They are the same progressions each of us has gone through as we have adapted to our own lives.
Do we know all the pieces/steps to go from zero to conscious? No. Do we understand the trillions of mental mechanisms (brain stimulations and patterns) involved? Not even close. Yet we can conceptualize the overall process. We can take what we know and think possible systems that lead to learning, knowledge, awareness, intelligence, consciousness.
Here’s my view.
First, you have to learn to eat, to move, to recognize objects and detail. This is the start and it does not involve awareness or consciousness. The child learns by repetition and positive outcomes. If it works, if it satisfies, then the newborn learns the pattern, the response, the stored action that generates or leads to the best response. Trial-and-error, reinforcement, stored memory, internal (biological) sensations and more. All before any kind of consciousness.
The list of skills you need for consciousness:
· recognition of differences in sights and sounds,
· learning the ability to see patterns and store reactions,
· developing the ability to store and recall information,
· building some kind of worldview.
· Concept or recognition of space.
· Concept or recognition of time,
· Connections between sounds to provide higher meaning or more complex patterns,
· MORE
These are learned biological skills, and, while the learning may start immediately, the skills develop slowly and in an appropriate sequence. You cannot become “aware” until you learn to distinguish detail. You cannot be aware until you have something to be aware of.
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Think of vision, something older and deeper than consciousness. Blurry at first and then more precise over time (soon after birth) and able to distinguish details (color differences and movement). Over time. more detail and more distinctions between the pieces that make of the surroundings. Learning distinctions had to come before awareness.
(Aside, maybe this last point is not correct. Could awareness come before distinctions and objects? I will leave it for you to debate that one. End of Aside.)
There is no way to say when consciousness turns on. It is a gradual build up that involves hearing sounds and turning them into meaning (visual memory, evoked emotion) as well as learning to store sounds and memories.
You may note, I think that consciousness is learned on top of other biological functions, that it has “emerged” as systems are built on underlaying systems and components. Yes. And more on this later.
From the beginning, the child is hearing sounds (patterns of sound wavelengths) and it is through repetition and connection to physical events or images that these sounds are given meaning and put together to build larger worldviews. By age of one, she was learning to repeat sounds. Since then, she has put them together, discovered time and space and built the skill to store and process information.
Into the mix has come the recognition of self, her name, her image in the mirror, her connection to others around us. Is she conscious by age of two? She is aware of her surroundings, but it starts with the immediate environment immediately around her. Over time she enlarges the view (conception, picture) of her environment. She is doing this by learning, by building neural networks with more defined synapse connections, better patterns through more complex pathway networks.
And when does she (or has she) develop a dialogue as stream of consciousness? Consciousness is not just awareness. There is “stream of consciousness” wherein we carry on a dialogue with oneself. But this dialogue can be explained as a consequence of language, and I consider it an add-on to brain function independent of awareness.
Awareness is recognition of the environment as an object outside of us. It includes the recognition of ourselves within that environment. It starts as a glimmer and builds through repetition and pattern recognition.
At the age of two she certainly exhibits no signs of full recognition of anything.
Consider how she has learned:
· Better vision and the distinction of color differences and movement
· Objects, that is entities, surrounded by boundary conditions (color distinction)
· Sounds associated with objects (“Mom”, can you say MOM? Repeated maybe a hundred times before the child learns, and says MOM)
The objects to be recognized were those around her and shown to her starting on day 1. Early distinctions are sensual and tactile, the colors and movement, then details and objects, then names and sounds then actions and more sounds. Learning objects and actions is fundamental to any understanding and awareness.
She has no consciousness, but it could be starting. I think language is the key to developing consciousness. Not formal language with syntax and all, but the use of sounds (many different sounds) carrying meaning and strung together to make bigger pictures or concepts. By identifying objects (details, distinctions) and giving them names (specific sounds), the individual develops awareness, develops a worldview, develops consciousness.
So my personal observation is that consciousness is a learned skill. Our species, of course, has developed this capability, but the skill would be available to other species and may have started in some manner. Is my dog conscious when he responds to bodily urges and asks to go out? He has limited language and minimal social activities but perhaps he has developed some rudimentary awareness.
And what about whales and dolphins with their languages?
If consciousness is a learned skill, perhaps is not as much of a mystery as some have lead us to believe. Perhaps we are thinking about it wrong. Maybe the hard problem of consciousness emerges at higher levels that require basic biological functions.
I don’t think it (consciousness) is cosmic or some universal thing. I think it comes from pattern recognition and brain skills that allow memory, conception of time and space. I think it comes from the ability to hear and produce sounds which has given us language and knowledge. I think we develop the skills to be aware, to have inner dialogue, to explore knowledge and understanding physical workings. We learn the ability to give names to emotions and feelings. We learn to recognize.
In the literature about consciousness (the “hard problem” and “qualia”), many observers come from the top down, trying to deep dive through thought structures down to pathways and synapses.
I see learning as bottom up, synapses and pathways developing strength through re-enforced use, these form the patterns of memories or thoughts, and these form patterns of viewpoints or cultural beliefs. It is in this environment that awareness comes about, we learn to recognize and identify objects, distinctions, movement and build the worldview.
I consider myself a naturalist, or biologist, or materialist, or whatever, but I think the simple solution to the consciousness debate is that it is skill we have learned.
It is part of our unfolding. It is the result of biological evolution as we moved into the whole world of imagination and thought that came from the sounds to meaning paradigm.
V
