Animal Consciousness

Carl H. Flygt

March 2006

Human experience, it is reasonable to assert, is a matter of three dimensions of space and one of time. Equally reasonable is the idea that the experience of a lower animal, a snail for example, must involve fewer spatial dimensions, probably only one, and one dimension of time. For the sake of argument, let us say the snail does not enjoy perceptions, which are spatially complex and highly propositional, but only sensations, which are simple and first-order, one-dimensional as it were. (Should the reader feel inclined to object that the snail does indeed experience perceptions, let him (her) consider the self-consciousness of an animal yet lower on the Great Chain of Life, the paramecium, for example). The snail (the paramecium) is nevertheless self-conscious. It experiences bodily distress and probably bodily satisfaction. Its consciousness is very rudimentary, but undeniably it is there. The snail is a sentient, self-referential being.

Where does the snail’s sentience come from? How is it able to achieve self-reference? Let us avoid discussing the neurology or the electrostatics of these organisms, although these are undoubtedly the efficient and mechanical causes of their bodily self-consciousness. Let us say instead, from a more ontological point of view, that the snail’s inner sense comes out of time, and that the neural networks of the snail function to bind together its sense of time. Time is the great source and repository of all the snail’s self-consciousness. The irritation that comes if we prick it with a pin, the nourishment that comes if it encounters a concentration of organic material, as far as the snail is concerned, comes out of the dimension of time. It does not experience the pin or the organic material as objects in space; it only experiences the irritation of the pin, or the sustenance of the organic matter. The snail’s sense of self-reference and propositionality comes from its capacity to experience time. The snail has ideas because it has a grasp of time.

Now in actual reality we would say that the cause of the snail’s sensations is not so much in time but in space. The true causes of the snail’s experience are in dimensions of space that it has no capacity to sense. The pin hovers above it in space, not in time; the pile of organics is a spatial reality, not a temporal one. The snail’s self-consciousness is thus dimensionally outclassed by the other orders of possible self-consciousness, our own for example, which are able to understand the reality it knows as essentially temporal as essentially spatial.

I believe the above thought experiment is sufficient to show that propositionality, self-reference and intentionality in general are nothing more, and nothing less, than the organism’s relationship to the dimension of time. I think it also shows that time is nothing but space, imperfectly apprehended. It follows from these that any form of consciousness, so long as it experiences some sort of temporality, probably has more evolutionary work to do. That work involves the reification of time into spatial (geometrical) perception. It involves transforming the organism’s ideas into spatial realities.

Now how about the mind of the higher animal? What does it have and what does it lack? Clearly it has propositionality and self-reference, and a perception of space the lower animal lacks, but it seems equally clear that it is dimensionally outclassed  by the mind of the human being, which quite naturally recognizes three dimensions of space and one of time. There is undeniably an unbridgeable gap between the mind of the dog and the mind of its master, and it seems reasonable to suppose that this gap is most elegantly explained by a basic incommensurability between them, a difference in the number of dimensions of space each is able to perceive. Let us theorize then that the mind of the horse or of the dog occupies an intermediate position between that of the snail and that of the human being, and is aware only of two dimensions of space and one of time.

From this schema it would follow that what is missing in the animal self-consciousness that is present in the human being’s is the perception of depth. The animal is aware only of surfaces, and has no awareness of solid, three-dimensional objects. For those, something involving the infinite generativity of language is necessary, and this probably devolves not from the brain and nervous system of the human being, which is not very distant from that of the animal, and certainly possesses no very great anatomical structure specialized for language, but rather devolves from the unique combination of upright posture, binocular vision and finely prehensile forelimbs. These, together with a sort of Davidsonian mysticism, in which the surfaces of objects are brought into three dimensional focus through a tripartite system of physical causation, social reference and internal interpretation, are the difference between human self-consciousness, which is fully conceptual, and animal self-consciousness, which is not.

Certainly the animal is on the way to language. It (he, she), however low or high on the evolutionary scale, possesses propositionality (idealism), self-reference (self-consciousness) and intentionality (satisfiability). But the same thing can be said of us human beings. We are also on the way to language. When we begin to hold ourselves to the standards of ideal conversation, the next stage of language and consciousness, and even the origins of language and consciousness, will become intuitable, and ultimately, because we will remain profoundly social beings, institutional. Under these conditions, time will become suspended and space, and even the world itself, will exhibit an additional dimension of supernal harmony and beauty. This dimension will be installed there by our material and self-conscious comportment. To accustom ourselves to this future form of consciousness and language, we might familiarize ourselves systematically with psychoactive substances, and even try to use them a little in well-formed conversation. But ultimately, the only thing that will be effective in the evolutionary program of pure conversation will be spiritual exercise, consensually decided and institutionalized, because spiritual exercise is what all forms of life are, in actual reality, of or about.