Speaking

The so-called 'hard problem' of consciousness has proved intractable, in large part because current scientific approaches in the field of neuroscience seek correlations not explanations.  In this paper, I offer an explanation as to how the quintessentially subjective element of experience arises within natural languages as an emergent property. When we think of languages, we tend to think of the sounds, syllables, words and sentences that make up the audible and visible external forms of a language. But there is another domain, as yet uncharted, that represents the most essential quality of a language and transcends its transient forms. That domain, often regarded as a proxy for thought, is Meaning. It is in and from this hidden domain that consciousness arises as an emergent property.

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The domain of Meaning comprises a complex system of meaning-sound relations that has so far gone unrecognized by mainstream science. Meaning is capitalized here to indicate that we are not talking about meaning as it pertains to individual words or sentences. The capitalized term relates rather to meaning instantiated at a higher, systemwide level; a level residing behind the scenes in the unconscious mind of speakers. My research reveals that the domain takes the form of a hierarchically ordered network of concepts, beginning with the concept ONE. The network constitutes a system of Meaning (a Meaning System or System) that grows in a manner analogous to biological organisms, the difference being that it grows by the bifurcation of concepts rather than by the division and subdivision of cells. The System is activated when a toddler learns a language.

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Functionally, a Meaning System, which is self-organizing, serves to separate out 'What is Me' from 'What is Not Me', a distinction that is a prerequisite to the emergence of consciousness. In addition to separating out the subject 'I' at the center of an individual's experience, it casts all other entities as 'Other' (i.e., that which is Not Me), and assigns names to those designated Others that are consistent with their distinguishing qualities and attributes. No meanings in Meaning Systems are arbitrary or are unrelated to the thing named, although the provenance of the names has long since been forgotten. Meaning Systems allow us to navigate in space and time with a map to Meaning that contains a foreknowledge, albeit unconscious, of the various named entities that exist out there in the world that are mediated by the senses.

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My presentation will identify the hard and soft evidence that supports the existence of the above-described domain of Meaning in languages. It will also identify notable design features of the same, including the design feature that gives rise to consciousness. Although the paper principally draws on evidence from the English language, the hypothesis outlined above predicts that consciousness is an emergent property of all human languages. As such, all languages, past and present, must necessarily be (or have been) similarly endowed with such hierarchically ordered systems of Meaning.