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Consciousness Goes Deeper Than You Think (scientificamerican.com)
An anonymous reader shares a post from Scientific American, written by Bernardo Kastrup: An article on the neuroscience of infant consciousness, which attracted some interest a few years ago, asked: "When does your baby become conscious?" The premise, of course, was that babies aren't born conscious but, instead, develop consciousness at some point. Yet, it is hard to think that there is nothing it feels like to be a newborn. Newborns clearly seem to experience their own bodies, environment, the presence of their parents, etcetera -- albeit in an unreflective, present-oriented manner. And if it always feels like something to be a baby, then babies don't become conscious. Instead, they are conscious from the get-go. The problem is that, somewhat alarmingly, the word "consciousness" is often used in the literature as if it entailed or implied more than just the qualities of experience. Dijksterhuis and Nordgren, for instance, insisted that "it is very important to realize that attention is the key to distinguish between unconscious thought and conscious thought. Conscious thought is thought with attention." This implies that if a thought escapes attention, then it is unconscious.
Indeed, Jonathan Schooler has established a clear distinction between conscious and meta-conscious processes. Whereas both types entail the qualities of experience, meta-conscious processes also entail what he called re-representation. "Periodically attention is directed towards explicitly assessing the contents of experience. The resulting meta-consciousness involves an explicit re-representation of consciousness in which one interprets, describes or otherwise characterizes the state of one's mind.
Indeed, Jonathan Schooler has established a clear distinction between conscious and meta-conscious processes. Whereas both types entail the qualities of experience, meta-conscious processes also entail what he called re-representation. "Periodically attention is directed towards explicitly assessing the contents of experience. The resulting meta-consciousness involves an explicit re-representation of consciousness in which one interprets, describes or otherwise characterizes the state of one's mind.
Consciousness is clearly a continuum. As a very small child, you have no context to place all the sensory data into, and this restricts what you can do. It's interesting to read about people with hyperthymedia, also known as autobiographical memory, because many of them have clear memories from before the age of 1 year old. Which give you an insight into what is interesting or important to an infant, for example, "these clothes are scratchy". At that level, likely infants are always "conscious". So is a cockroach, no offense either to babies or cockroaches.
What I think is actually being asked, is what degree of awareness of self is present? "I am, and I know that I am"? That's the meta-consciousness referred to in TFS.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I'm an engineer. i can't not experiment with my kids.
I watched my oldest daughter in "4d ultrasound" perform self-soothing by caressing her own cheek. After she was born and experiencing "the end of her previous universe", in the first week of life, I caressed the cheek the way she had, and she responded powerfully. It amazed her. It strongly supported bonding. Her eyes got wide, her pupils dilated, and she took a deep breath of surprise. She then leaned into it.
I played pat-a-cake with my daughter when she was in the womb. I would feel my wife's belly for her hands, and then I would push in. When I pushed in once, she would push out once. When I pushed in twice, she would push out twice. There was a concept of time-series, number, or symmetry.
I observed several signficant transitions (jumps) in capability to interact with the "universe", but her "her-ness", her personality, her character, and her mental acuity were consistent. The leaps were more about costs per level of interaction, but not the fundamentals.
I taught her tongue-signs at 2 weeks old. She can nurse, which means she had basic control of her tongue and lips. It ended up being an indicator of if she had will, opinion, or particular desire long before she could hold her head up, and long long before should could crawl, walk, or drive the complexities of the human vocal apparatus. She was clearly able to indicate her desire for 1) a binkie, or 2) a bottle. There were times I tested this, and I gave her one insead of the other. I tried both ways, and each time, she would spit the undesired object out, and repeat the sign.
My bottom line: she was always conscious. It was not that her consciousness changed, but the physical architecture, in terms of muscle control, methods of communication, energy levels, and emotionally coming to terms with the end of the world she had formerly known that had been the changes.
I think people who do not rigorously watch, and experiment (with purpose of learning, such that learning informs empowerment of the child) have to question whether they are conscious after they are born.
I suspect that evil people would use it as a way to create a new class of murder - if their mind is numbed just a little, then they aren't really conscious when they are killed, and it isn't "cruel or unusual punishment". Whether they apply this to execution of prisoners, to the enemy combatant on the battlefield, or to euthanasia of newborns, I think it is dangerous to provide answers to badly asked questions. I have a substantial problem with the false assumptions behind the question of when, after birth, conscious starts. My clear observations strongly support that it existed before birth, and doesn't go away.
-EngrStudent (mathdad)
To some degree, this just sounds like playing word games, and coming up with new terms to sound like you've discovered something. Traditionally, there has been a distinction between sentience and consciousness. If you just want to say that babies feel and experience things, that's sentience and not necessarily consciousness. We can redefine the word "consciousness" to mean "sentience" and invent the word "meta-consciousness" to mean "consciousness", but you haven't really accomplished anything.
The concept of consciousness has been explored and modified over the past few thousand years (at least, we have records of people writing about it that far back), and it's fair to want to modify it some more. However, I think there's been a general view for a while that newborns are sentient but don't have much consciousness, and then we develop consciousness as we grow up. There seem to be developmental periods where our brains become capable of understanding certain things, and debatably those constitute different levels of consciousness and awareness, but again, that debate will be as much about what terms you want to use as it will be about our actual understanding of human development.
The problem is that, somewhat alarmingly, the word "consciousness" is often used in the literature as if it entailed or implied more than just the qualities of experience. Dijksterhuis and Nordgren, for instance, insisted that "it is very important to realize that attention is the key to distinguish between unconscious thought and conscious thought.
So they're redefining thought so broadly that most animals are conscious too by their definition and the pretending they have some revolutionary insight when all they have done is confused themselves about what they are talking about.
Exactly. The problem is that the word "consciousness" is used differently by different researchers. Whether babies are conscious-- or whether animals are-- or even whether you yourself are conscious when you're driving to work at 8am along a road you've driven 1000 times before-- depends on how you choose to define consciousness.
It's an endlessly debatable question, since the word doesn't have an agreed-upon, measurable definition.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So Tesla cars are conscious?
My observations agree with yours. Sample size: 5 Father present at birth: 5 Sex distribution: 4 girls, 1 boy Observations: 1 and 3 of 5, both girls, showed remarkable attention at birth. So much so that the attending doctor commented on both occasions. Both adults now adult with very strong, creative personalities. 2 and 4 of 5 (also girls) showed "normal" attention at birth, turning out to be interesting but not exceptional adults. 5 of 5 (boy) showed little interest in surroundings at birth, was slow to speak (age 2) and somewhat awkward as a toddler. As a teen measured IQ 166, national merit scholar and engineering student. Introvert. Conclusions: Humans arrive at birth largely pre-wired for the personality they will have. Behavior at birth is a gross indicator of that personality. To say personality (and some level of consciousness) is not pre-imprinted in the womb is to ignore ample evidence to the contrary.