I have fond memories of Gordy – he was such an attentive and loyal dog. We lived together for less than a week, and yet he learned my habits – seeking me out in the basement where my own dog rarely ventures. Tobey was a younger pup at the time, always eager to chase and play. His behaviour changed in Gordy’s presence – as if he took clues from the wise Gordy. Maybe Gordy ‘told’ Tobey that being a dog was more than just enjoying the fresh air of the farm. Gordy seemed to live for me – for people and especially Peter – as if ‘to be’ in each other’s presence was the greatest, most valuable good of all.
In his youth, Gordy suffered from hardship and neglect. He knew scarcity, was rescued, and eventually Peter adopted him. I’m trying not to anthropomorphize him – still, I strongly sensed Gordy’s gratitude emanating from his every gesture. During that week, I could feel his mood – his ‘acknowledging’ that he was at the mercy of his ‘humans’, and yet his complete acceptance of this ‘state of affairs’. Peter and Gordy had developed a pact – an implicit ‘social’ contract between an aware owner and a sentient ‘owned’. More importantly, they formed a pack – a collaborative group interested in meeting each other’s needs. I suspect that it is precisely this ‘aura’ of welcomed interdependence that made Gordy’s death hit Peter so hard.
My own dog Tobey is not so solicitous. In general, he behaves as if only pure abundance exists in the world. We wanted him free to run about and only somewhat disciplined. Yet even without training, he can easily sense his ‘humans’ emotional states. If someone feels despair – or any form of emotional unease – he calms right down and stands guard, offering his body warmth as comfort. I could argued that Tobey has a dog’s ‘good life’ – he runs free in our fields and has never needed for anything. Yet even before conception, he was ‘engineered’ to suit our ‘human’ needs – to be hypo-allergenic (poddle), medium size (golden), intelligent (poodle) and pleasant with families (golden). We paid dearly for this ‘design’ – he didn’t randomly happen! Moreover, we bought him explicitly to be my companion – to ‘be’ the warm ‘thing’ I would hug when I needed comfort during a tougher time of my life. Maybe it was already in his temperament, or maybe he learned that I needed from him. Either ways, he knows exactly what is expected of him.
Given a sample size of 2, I can’t hardly deduce general conclusions. But both Gordy and Tobey showed how their ‘education’ – their formative experiences – shaped their behaviours later in life. I could have described many more examples, or even tales from the lives of countless human individuals. But speaking of humans would have been less clear – for my point is that past and present circumstances shape everyday instincts. As humans, we imagine ourselves so much better because of our words, our verbal reasoning, and moral justifications. And yet, as Nietzsche declared, “By far the greatest part of our spirit’s activity remains unconscious and unfelt.” Both Gordy and Tobey – as sentient but non-verbal creatures – live without the added layer of verbal reasoning. Nonetheless, they understand and interact with the world in complex ways – even forming strong habits – all without using any systems of symbolic meaning. (That I assume – for I have never been in the mind of a dog to ‘know’ for sure!)
Still, in rationalizing our ethnocentricity, human beings often feel superior to all others sentient but non-verbal creatures because we have this very unique ability to create common symbolic systems. Through them – languages and mathematics being great examples of symbolic systems – humans can collaborate and share their subjectivity in complex ways. As Peter shows with his innovation function, these points of connection – between individual consciousness, mediated by shared symbolic systems – allows the creation of more understanding (or at least, the potential for it!). Rationality is our human competitive advantage over other species – or at least, our most distinctive feature. Yet symbolic systems are our ‘edge’, our weapon. For without intersubjectivity, the connections Peter assumes in his function would not happen. And indeed, since language is created by its usage amongst a population, we may lack the vocabulary to describe ‘emerging’ phenomenas. Like you said in the [4] – we may not have the vocabulary to comprehend what is going on!
As a species, we ignore all forms of beings whose consciousness we do not understand (mostly because it doesn’t resemble our own). Of course, I generalize – not everyone is oblivion to other minds, and even different forms of ‘mind’. Dog owners – or at least I – often wonders what goes on in the mind of their furry friend. While I don’t think that Tobey has the capacity to formulate a mental thought such as “I want a carrot, Mommy” – I still know that cognition is still ‘in-there’, for he sits next to the island when I indeed cut carrots. Therefore, he sensed his desire, he located the opportunity – most probably through scent – and exhibited the behaviour most likely to have his desire fulfilled – remembering past experiences.
My point here is that ‘consciousness’ need not be a verbalized state of mind! Sentience, which is Peter’s favourite word, is broader than what we usually refer to when we think of our rational, linguistically-mediated, mental consciousness. Sentience is defined as the capacity to feel, perceive and experience subjectively – subjectivity here being best understood as using one’s own sensorial apparatus (whatever that happens to be). Scholars of phenomenology, the study of subjective experiences, talk of intentionality – the consciousness ‘of’ something. Consciousness is not a ‘thing’ – it’s more like a ‘prism’ through which our sentience feels, perceives and experiences. I haven’t delved deeply enough into phenomenology to assess if that ‘prism’ needs to be ‘mediated’ by symbolic system. My personal gut-feeling is NO! To be ‘conscious of’ something doesn’t require ‘words’ per say. I can see the beauty of the mountains and feels the awe. I can actually be left speechless faced with such beautiful or sublime sight! Therefore, ‘consciousness’ need not be mediated through symbolic systems – and hence maybe doesn’t even need to be restricted to human beings!
This question seems to big to thoroughly explore herein. It seems a matter of definition – as in: what features does consciousness requires to be called ‘consciousness’? Is it sentience? It is awareness? Is it apprehension? Comprehension? The ability to describe ‘consciousness of’ to someone else? Each of these words have distinct though related meanings – and yet I cannot be sure that you, dear reader, will grasp the nuances that I am trying to get at. (For I’m not sure that I do either!)
But I’ll still go out and stake a few claims:
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- Gordy and Tobey can be said to be ‘conscious of’ their surroundings – but their animality means that their ‘being in the world’ has a different subjective experience than the ‘human-form’ of ‘being-in-the-world’. This ‘consciousness of environment’ could also extend to plants – for they somehow must ‘know’ when to bloom. To rocks, I’m not sure. But to Earth as a whole – certainly ! For this ‘learning through feedback loops’ as Peter described implies that the Earth ‘apprehends’ its component parts and their interactions. [Note: I purposefully used the verb ‘to apprehend’ – which meaning is closer to perception or ‘felt’ and ‘intuited’ awareness.]
- Our close relationship with dogs implies that we can connect across different ‘types’ of ‘consciousness of’. Dogs and humans have co-existed long enough to have evolved together – the dogs getting our food scraps and advising us of predators in return. Dog and man have also developed ways to interact, even communicate. Arguably, with enough desire to ‘apprehend’ other forms of ‘being-in-the-world’, we can ‘comprehend’ other forms of consciousness – even if only partially. [Note: Maybe I’m using ‘to comprehend’ a bit loosely here, but I mean: “To grasp or understand into/with our own minds” these other ways in which it is possible to grasp or understand.]
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I meant this essay to be an echo of Peter’s Adolescence. I feel that I failed in addressing its key points – and might try again at some later date. But since this entry is already long, I’ll simply echo its title for now:
I personally do not remember the moment that my magical childhood ended. It must have been at the age of eight, as my parents told me that they were separating. From this life-altering event, I must have concluded that life is not only pure joy – and that ‘what is’ not always ‘what appears’ to be. Yet, with the hindsight provided by writing my memoir, I don’t think that their separation was so traumatic. I had sensed their malaise probably long before they verbalized it to each other. As children do – apt as they are to perceive their surroundings in pre-rational, pre-verbal fashion – I understood clearly their silences, all that they meant by what they left unsaid. Maybe I was particularly sensitive to this ‘intuitive’ way of being ‘conscious of’ . Maybe every child starts there – with non-verbal sentience – before they learn their land’s language, symbolic system and cultural references.
I’m currently in Austria, looking at the majestic Alps. It’s been interesting to immerse ourselves into a foreign land – for people speak German here and use different signs and symbols. I’ve felt like a child again. Looking at displays on the highways and relearning the words for ‘warning’, ‘room’, and ‘day’. I didn’t come prepared but I still picked up quite a bit of German, especially in embedding ourselves with Walter’s long-lost relatives. It is surprising how much context and gestures provide much more ‘meaning’ than we assume when we are immerse in a symbolic meaning that we already share.
After childhood, when we move from this intuitive learning to a more rational one, we tend to ‘get lost’ inside our heads. Our mental states tends to get centerstage – often in the most self-absorbed ways. An adolescent’s wants, needs and desires are so ‘important’ that ‘consciousness of environment’ is largely absent, or at least severely skewed by selection or confirmation biases. Humanity, as a whole, might very well be in this ‘era’ of its development. After all, our global culture pursues self-pleasuring and group status, all the while discounting future cost. Some are so oblivious, so concerted by how their image is outwardly represented, that they fall off cliffs in the pursuit of the perfect selfie!
Adolescence is marked by developing rationality, but refusing the use it. For the adolescent can comprehend many things – arguably he or she can learn anything that they are interested in. The brain plasticity – from which consciousness emerges ‘somehow’ – peaks at some point in the early twenties. Therefore, adolescence is a period of rapid expansion of consciousness – at least potentially! For the only real limits of an adolescent’s learning ability is ‘access to information’ and ‘interest’. However, adolescents are known to care only selectively!
Moreover, the period of adolescence is characterized by the crisis of self-identification. Who am I? What am I? What am I meant to be or do? To answer these questions, adolescents explore – almost recklessly. They throw authorities out the windows – in our metaphor, that would be religions as well as traditions. They are overly concerned with their belonging to a group – maybe that could explain the rise of nationalism in the 20th century. In their interactions with their peers, adolescents either refuse to engage – dismissal of others and their point-of-views – or connect so completely that they want to merge with the object of their idolatry. And there is no such thing as ‘enough’ – though that characteristic might be a remnant of childhood…
Hence, I think Peter’s analogy is instructive. Adolescents eventually emerge of a period of chaos, more self-aware then they were when they left childhood. They have tested and developed values. They have integrated their cultural demands, and chosen to accept, reject or modify the roles expected of them. Maybe adolescents, more than at any other period’s of one’s life, learn how to think and judge adequately – based on their own understanding and the symbolic systems they share with others. Adulthood is not the same amongst all individuals, but it is somewhat defined by a ‘balancing act’ between competing goals, demands and desires. If adulthood is about pursuing multiples objectives, then adolescence is about exploring all that could matter and decide what actually does matter…
If indeed, we – humanity – are deeply steeped into this tumultuous period, we are bound for tall highs and deep lows. Like Peter, I am optimistic that “in the end, all will be well.” But like Keynes said: “In the end, we are all dead.” The current ‘Us’ – me as I am today – care about the next half-century, because that will be the one I live most intensely (God willing).
So if our humanity is really in its adolescent phase, I will do my part. I will give words and concepts to what I sense intuitively – giving a verbal form to what I am ‘conscious of’. I will bring to the fore of rationality all that I am sentient of, with as child-like sensitivity as I can. I will interest myself with my environment and my education, expanding and sharing my understanding of myself, others and the world – testing my ideas against those of others. I will do so such that our inter-subjectivity corpus of knowledge more realistically represent reality – with objectivity becoming understood as the mere consensus of subjective consciousnesses in a constantly emerging dialogue. I will rebel against dogmas and establish new norms – not only by living through example but also verbalizing how and why.
I was silent in high school – minding my own business and hoping not to be noticed. But I have faith now that the person that I am is an important part of this whole called Earth. I am insignificant only insofar as I reject my significance – as one psyche experimenting with the ‘prism’ of consciousness. As an individual, I have survived adolescence – so maybe I can help humanity do the same!