Language and Symbolic Consciousness
Examining the most advanced tools of consciousness.
The Masterworks of Consciousness
Throughout a span of geological time, pockets of consciousness have been continually evolving the ability for more control over the surrounding 3D environment, with swifter agility for change over shorter 4D periods of time. Many amazing structures have been created by consciousness through trillions of iterations of evolution in the past four billion years on Earth -- including protein actuators and receptors, RNA/DNA gene blueprint encoding, specialized organs which can symbiotically work together, chemical and electrical processing centers like the brain, and tools like language which allow greater conscious control and the ability to spread conscious information to others and expand the conscious control sphere.
Understandingthe Consciocentric View of Language
Under the ConscioCentric paradigm, consciousness is an intrinsic element of reality, and conscious potential is present in all matter. Some may prefer to call this type of matter-consciousness interaction "Proto-Consciousness" as to differentiate from modern definitions of higher level consciousness in humans. But consciousness is a continuous spectrum that is connected with all matter.
At a fundamental level, the force of electromagnetism is what gives consciousness its sense of "feeling" of reality. The charge of particles coming into contact with other particles is the most fundamental sense. The electromagnetic force is also at the root of all our human senses, including touch, smell, taste, hearing and vision. If you boil down these senses, they are all the result of photons or particles interacting/vibrating against the particles in our bodies.
The Goal of All Consciousness
The goal of consciousness over time is to expand local control over matter, and have a wider reach to affect the environment and make agile changes, over shorter periods of time. All evolution of life has been the result of consciousness creating, and recreating new patterns of matter that have more control of the local environment over shorter periods of time. Through trillions of iterations of separating and reunifying matter into new patterns, life creates molecules, proteins, RNA, single cells, multi cell organisms, organs, and multi organ lifeforms that work together to better interact with the environment and possess more capability for change over shorter periods of time.
On Earth, humans are the most advanced prototype of consciousness - a complex symbiosis of specialized organs that can efficiently consume and process energy from the environment, sense the local material environment, and interact with and change the environment at rapid pace.
The Organs of Sense - A Masterpiece of Consciousness
The sense of touch is the most elementary, and present in all matter. Humans, along with most other lifeforms have evolved a sense of taste and smell, which is an advanced form of touch, where the interactions of our tongue with specific particles/molecules produces patterns which are then processed by our brains and transmitted back to consciousness, identified as specific complex molecules of taste or smell.
Our sense of vision is also a descendant of touch, where photons interact, electromagnetically with particles in our bodies. Energy from the sun can be seen/felt by all life. The conscious path of humans, through trillions of iterations, developed eyes, which are advanced processing organs specifically for intercepting light. The cones and rods in our eyes collect vast matrices of light information from the environment, and our advanced brain signal processing center transmits the dual 2-dimensional planes of light information received in our eyes, and is able to deliver our consciousness a triangulated 3D map of our vision. The eyes are an incredible masterpiece of consciousness, and its ongoing quest to interact with the environment in more efficient ways, and over shorter time spans.
Our sense of hearing is also a descendant of touch, where vibrating particles/molecules of air interact electromagnetically with the particles in our eardrums. The eardrum and sound processing / pattern recognition sections of our brain are another masterpiece of conscious design over trillions of iterations of evolution. Our two ears, processing vibrational data give us a crude 3-Dimensional map of motion and objects in our environment.
Our sense of hearing, along with our capabilities of the lungs, throat and mouth, have led to a two way capability to create unique noises and hear them. In some animals, like bats, they use this type of combination to send out ultrasonic sound waves, and then listen back for the echoes to create a highly detailed 3-Dimensional map of their surroundings.
The brain is a masterpiece of consciousness that serves as a chemical and electromagnetic data processing center for our organs and bodies, and provides a bidirectional flow of information between our consciousness and our bodies and local environment. Through trillions of iterations of conscious design, our advances bodies have evolved to allow incredible agility to manipulate our 3D environment, and expand our control beyond our bodies to tools, possessions, and control over other species and life on the planet.
Language is a Masterpiece of Consciousness - An Information Pattern System
In humans, our evolutionary path has led another direction, to language. Language is perhaps a greater masterpiece than the eye or brain, when it comes to the work of conscious evolution. With the language processing in the brain, humans have developed a bi-directional communication method with symbolic language. An incoming sound, processed by our ears, is recognized as a word. That word that our brains decode triggers a pattern of electrical activity, sending signals to our consciousness of the 3-Dimensional Object(s) / 4-Dimensional temporal meaning associated with that symbol. Some words may have a more direct 1:1 relationship that triggers a singular image / information construct, while other words trigger a more advanced series of electrical patterns that trigger a variety of juxtaposed memory fragments that create a much larger meaning. For instance, a word like "doorknob" might conjure a very simple, straightforward imagine in our conscious minds eye, with little extra meaning. But a word like "mother" or "happiness" or "god" may trigger a much more complex meaning for our consciousness, based on the accumulation of a breadth of juxtaposed memories related to the topic. The encoded information varies depending on the topic, and our conscious history / memories associated.
In other mammals with more rudimentary forms of early language, this may be limited to chirps or moans indicating a predator in a direction. That symbolic sound is processed in the brain and passed back to consciousness, triggering past memories associated with that sound, or topic. Some of the recognition is built into the RNA and design of the brain, and is instinctively recognized. As the lifeform has its own experiences with the word, the symbolic relationships are enhanced.
For instance, a young child in the forest, being warned about a "bear" from a parent, will trigger a chain reaction of all symbolic connections with that topic. At its most basic form, a sense of fear / tone of voice may be a catalyst for being hyper aware. If the child has heard stories of bears, or seen pictures in books or TV, or played with bear figures, those associations will be instantly juxtaposed in the conscious awareness. That may then trigger a chain of molecular production actions that prepare the body for a flight or fight response. If the child has had direct interactions with bears before, the symbolic word "bear" will bring those interactions into conscious focus, further focusing consciousness on the issue at hand. The advanced brain processing center for symbolic language interpretation works to turn patterns of sounds into triggers of previous 3D juxtapositions associated with the topic. Most likely, parents will have taught the child the behaviors of the bear, through the 3D juxtapositions in stories or playtime. ie: 1. Bear meets deer. 2. Bear attacks deer. 3. Deer is dead 4. Bear eats deer. These 3D juxtapositions are then triggered when the word "bear" is processed, and the meaning is derived: Bear is dangerous. Beware of bear. The symbolic conversion of "bear" to "danger" is created through the masterpiece of the evolved brain and language processing capabilities.
Julian JaynesConscious Researcher, Author "All of these concrete metaphors increase enormously our powers of perception of the world about us and our understanding of it, and literally create new objects. Indeed, language is an organ of perception, not simply a means of communication."
Carlo RovelliTheoretical Physicist "But the effective way of continuing to exist in a changing environment is to better manage correlations with the external world, that is to say, information: to collect, store, transmit, and elaborate information. For this reason DNA exists, together with immune systems, sense organs, nervous systems, complex brains, languages, books, the library of Alexandria, computers and Wikipedia: they maximize the efficiency of information management. The management of correlations favoring survival."