Rafael Pintos-López

This paper proposes a well-defined taxonomy between human consciousness and those of other species. It also submits the presence of a duality within human consciousness: elements that complement each other but have incompatible natures. Sentience, a fundamental —rather than emergent— phenomenon, appears to have remained unchanged, at least since the beginning of the Hominidae family and probably well before then. Human cognition (heretofore meta-cognition), an emergent component, would be exponentially different from the [basic] cognitions of other species. Quantitatively and qualitatively. Sentience and meta-cognition are essentially discrete elements of consciousness. The semantic value proposed for the term ‘meta-cognition’, apart from thought, includes time, enduring identity, long-term episodic memory, voluntary imagination, free will, adventurousness, creativity, ethics, aesthetics, judgment, and abstracta —e.g., mathematics— all of which would be exclusively human phenomena. It is submitted that there is no continuum between H. sapiens consciousness and those of other animal species. The inflection point would be the introduction of speech. Approximately 100,000 years ago, increasingly sapiens hominins initiated the ‘invention’ of language, a game-changer whose acquisition lasted many millennia and changed the nature of their basic cognition. Thus, human consciousness would be a hybrid phenomenon with a natural component and an artificial one. A biological feedback cycle would have created linguistic functions and areas within a growing PFC: Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. Dialogue increased the feeling of separateness between interlocutors, which created a more pronounced —different— form of self-awareness. A linguistic community —a culture— necessitated identity. Paradoxically, then, communication would have resulted in introspection: the onset of meta-cognition, and thus humanity. Other animal species habituate (Pavlov), but enjoy no long-term episodic memory. Ducks don’t recall being ducklings; nor bears have enduring identities. In nature there is just change. Time is a [meta-cognitive] measurement, perforce, non-relative. Only change is relative. In situations of danger, time appears to stop because intuition takes over and we revert to basic animal instincts (fight or flight). Meta-cognition disappears. Only change remains. How does it feel to be a pre-linguistic toddler? Before language, nothing feels like anything. There are sensations, like hunger, and pleasure, and pain, but no episodic memory. Only present and change. How does it feel to be a bat? Without inquisitiveness, like nothing. Curiosity may exist, but inquisitiveness requires language. Again, bats ask no questions. We can ask “How does it feel…?” only because we’re meta-cognitive animals. Individuals of other species seem to be iterations; without identity there is self-awareness but no ‘witnessing’, no objective reality. Sentience is transmitted biologically by both parents. It’s genetic. Meta-cognition needs to be taught by the group through language. It’s cultural. If it’s not taught, the child does not become operationally human, he/she simply dies. Consciousness cannot be fully explained or understood because sentience —its fundamental component—, being ostensive, cannot be explained or understood (Wittgenstein, Schrödinger, Schopenhauer, Zen Buddhism). Explanations are linguistic —meta-cognitive— and sentience is not. Therefore, we could only explain the dynamics of experience, but we cannot convey qualia. All science and philosophy can explain are meta-cognitive phenomena.

Rafael Pintos-López is an alum of the Australian National University, where he studied linguistics at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and obtained awards for Italian Language and Literature; he was a lecturer at the University of Canberra, where he lectured in Spanish and Interpreting/Translating for several years. He worked as a translator at FAO/WHO conferences for two decades. He has published several books on consciousness, the influence of Christianity in the West, Zen Buddhism and fiction, some of them also in Spanish. He is currently retired and lives in Queensland, Australia.