Consciousness

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So... I’m learning my favorite subject in psychology class now, and the first thing he says about it is: Consciousness is verbal. If you can’t tell me about it, you are not aware/conscious of it. If it’s not in words, it isn't consciousness.

No… Just no.

That just doesn't make sense. That'd mean that I'm going to spend a good deal of my waking life unconscious.

So..anyone who is non-verbal is unconscious? Animals are unconscious because they do not speak? That makes no sense at all.

Consciousness is self-awareness.

Exactly...

+1

Some people think in words SO MUCH that they just aren't AWARE that there's non-verbal consciousness! It's just amplified in AS people since they have trouble forming words for their thoughts (or they have way more thoughts than can be put into words!)

After all, WE ALL had purely non-verbal consciousness when we were born. We just don't remember it.

They give me so much trouble >.<
It's kind of hard for me to explain it, so they just ignore me in the end...

It doesn't make sense because it isn't true. Plus, people generally assume someone can't talk if they're refusing to talk. The medical and mental health industry doesn't even know that a person in a catatonic state (mute) is fully conscious of everything s/he hears.

That sounds so stupid... some people are really dumb.

That's a slight misinterpretation of the theory. It's not stating that one has to be vocal to be concious. The complexity of human thought is closely related to our understanding of natural languages. We express concepts and ideas verbally, even if entirely internally. Without that ability you would be left with sensory input and undefined emotional states, leaving ones capacity for thought far below what is agreed to be the human standard.

What about deaf people? Sign language is purely visual. Is this theory speculating that deaf people internally visualize the gestures when concieving of something?

It would also mean that people who are meditating are unconscious since meditation involves switching off those verablizations. But meditation is understood as a different form of consciousness, not unconsciousness. Perhaps the lecturer was talking about different conscious states and verbal was just one of them?

He went on to talk about different states of consciousness... but before that, when he was talking about trying to define consciousness, he said the best thing he could come up with was that it was verbal.

In other words there's no such thing as an ineffable experience?

Something tells me 'world class mystic' isn't in your future.

Um... what?

As I remember it, my consciousness was almost completely non-verbal up until I was about 13 or 14. I don't recall thinking in words at all, except for when I was speaking, reading, or writing. All of which were things that I hated doing, but was able to do reasonably well. I didn't really have much of a reason to think in words because I didn't talk very much or contemplate any abstract, hypothetical questions that I couldn't attach sensory or emotional based thoughts to instead. I don't recall being unconscious up until I was that age. I had less brainpower then, but I certainly wasn't unconscious.

Last edited by Mike1 on 08 Oct 2013, 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not sure how I was before... I'm definitely that way now, except that I often find myself trying to figure out how to explain certain things to people. It's very disrupting... I wish I never started doing that. There is still a very big chunk of my day where I am mostly nonverbal though.
Sometimes, it'll be a mix of it... Like I'll start a sentence with two or three words in my head and then finish it off with other things. I reach the conclusion a couple seconds after I've begun. If I tried to explain what that conclusion was to someone else, that'd take a lot more thinking to accomplish. That is not something I enjoy doing.

Oops, let me rephrase that. Being a world class mystic won't be in your teacher's future.