Reply To: Language and consciencous

[PopeBeanie]

Welcome, Gerard!

I think it would vary depending on kind and amount of language, and the species’ social interactions. Even birds have “language”, and I believe even dogs have a consciousness and rudimentary understanding of body language, at least. Body language is built into almost every animal… even insects (plus the pheromones).

Human language has been around perhaps 10s of (if not 100) thousand years. And millions of years before that we evolved basic communications and social interaction. Some primates have learned sign language, and have been able to make up sentences that describe a current feeling they’re having, or something they’re watching. But they had to be trained by humans to sign it, first.

First imagine everything we can communicate with each other about, and then imagine most of that not possible without learning from interactions with each other, books, and so on.