That's a weird one and heads up no absolute answer here. Science can't even tell if a dog is conscious, in fact they only have the patients word for it that anyone is conscious. I once spoke to someone with "Blindsight" who essentially blind. They could not see anything. And yet they knew what was in the room. As we spoke someone came in and they said: see I know there is someone over, there but I can't see them I don't know how I know.
In fact recalling this that includes a clue. They could see, but they "didn't know how they saw." And that suggests indeed that consciousness is a process of Daniel Dennett like self-knowing so that we don't just know there is someone there, but we have knowledge of "how we know". Of course a critic would say that this "how I know" is the brain damage that causes Blindsight rather than anything to do with consciousness. The question here then would be does the person lack consciousness of what they see, or does the person lack consciousness of the knowledge of seeing. Facts, thoughts and a model of the world occur to the person with Blindsight but there is no supporting evidence. Does that really suggest that consciousness is all that is missing from their "seeing", or that their seeing is in someway faulty. Now this is not the blog I wanted to do so I spun that off to chatgpt .
But if we think "when did consciousness start?" we have to admit that consciousness is not mine.
We may be conscious of our self, but the consciousness is not our self or even belongs to our self.
We can take that a step further by observing that knowing and being conscious are not the same. And that opens up the possibility of being conscious without knowing it. That seems a contradiction, but some of the most refined states of consciousness are awareness without knowledge.
Knowledge is usually of the type "oh wow this is cool, it is like XYZ, I must tell my friends." "Hey friends I just had an experience like XYZ" and they look at you puzzled and wonder what you are going on about. Knowledge only gets you do far! The experience is the rest.
And that usually collapses into it being "my" experience. Well if my friends have no idea what I'm going on about then it must be my experience to hold all by my self. Perhaps I am enlightened, "Oh the burdens of the enlightened" we ruefully think.
But of course this is all knowledge. Yes you "know" it was your experience now, but at the time you did not! You added all this "my" experience afterwards after your knowledge failed to share that experience with others. But all afterwards. I bet you thought you would share the knowledge and everyone would have the same experience... that problem of people coming back from amazing holidays to tell you all about it and forgetting that it was them who went not you, and all you can do is imagine what it was like... which is always a flawed process because are you wondering what it was like if you went (you may hate a beach holiday personally) or imagine what it was like for the person telling you. Anyway the knowledge and the experience and consciousness should not be confused... how could they what you know can only be what you know even if it is about things that themselves were experienced.. it is always just the knowledge.
And so yes you can be conscious without knowing it. Odd that that sounds! The moment you go "oh wow I am like just so totally in the moment right now, it is like there is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow, there is just what is right here, all vivid and bright: it is like pure consciousness" No it isn't it is jam packed fully of thoughts and in fact its attention has been turned towards those thoughts.
It is the stage before that when you are not writing your journal that counts.
This is where consciousness is a tricky thing for the thinking mind to tackle. It s like a slimy fish, the moment you go to grasp it it flops out into the water again and swims off. Much as you would like the know consciousness and trap it in a cage for viewing and to show other people it is behind you slamming you into the cage. It is just too tricky to think it.
So when did it start?
Now believe the right answer is "right now". That is the only answer for this question.
But if we roll our thoughts forward a bit into the "journal stage" where we are thinking about it all. The question raises this puzzle about who is conscious?
Did consciousness begin in our ancient ancestors? Were there ape like things pounding stones in Africa and being conscious of it. Is my dog conscious when it looks at me waiting for the ball to be thrown? Probably not actually, when we do an amazing thing on the playing field we only get to enjoy it in retrospect as we remember what happened, never at the time! So perhaps the question is more is my dog conscious when it is curled up in its basket thinking the day over.
But if a dog is conscious and that conscious is the same thing I have then it is not "my" conscious, it is not even "human" conscious it is something like "animal" conscious. So true my arm is my arm, but in another sense it is a human arm, and when we look at a chimpanzee we see an arm is an animal arm. When did arms start? If my arm was surgically replaced with a chimp arm would that be an animal arm or my arm now? That is a kind of remote question but what if "my" consciousness was like or could be replaced with a chimp consciousness.
And then the question of that consciousness who would be conscious? Like "whose arm is it?" after the transplant.
So this really starts to unseat the deeply engrained sense that consciousness is all about me.
The best we can do is step outside and say it is "my" consciousness like it is "my" arm. But when we do that they cease to be part of me, I am just carrying them like possessions. And then if I am just carrying my consciousness like a possession then what am "I" then, and also when did this consciousness start?
Crudely perhaps we will say, it all started when I was born. Consciousness flickered into existence as did "me" like booting up a computer. This is just the same answer as when did my "arm" begin? Well I was born with it.
Not actually true for the arm. It bears a strange resemblance to your parent's arms. And arms as discussed go back into the ape world and before. What happened at birth is a cell with human DNA grew and developed into an organism with an arm. Unrecognisable at first but gradually taking shape. It is your arm only in that it is an example of an arm, but the whole process of making arms is very very ancient, you are just the latest fruit of that tree.
And so why can't we say the same for consciousness? It is just the latest fruit of a very, very ancient tree.
There is one difference between the arm and consciousness but it is only quantitative. The arm takes they say 7 years to be replaced naturally through wear and tear and rebuilding. The blood goes round and gets replaced every minute, lymph perhaps every few days or so, cell contents are constantly being exchanged, and tissue regeneration at whatever speed. But it is all changing even the bones. Consciousness on the other hand exists in the region of a few seconds.
So we get to Buddhism. If we are conscious of our self, then it is not our self that is conscious. That is a simple piece of logic (discussed at great length in this blog). We can drop the phantom self from the whole picture. Which leaves only the arm and the consciousness being born and then undergoing constant change. To what extent consciousness feeds into new consciousness like the arm, or can grow from scratch I'll leave open.
But we should now be happy with the idea that consciousness is not mine, it is part of the much larger world of consciousnesses, and it is constantly changing.
That doesn't sit well because 99% chance we are still holding a view that "I am conscious." So we are still looking for an anchor in this whole process, and nail in the universe to hang our cloak. No such thing. Keep the cloak on until you discard it, don't try and put it anywhere safe outside the flow of change.
Unfortunately what is, is just what is, and that which is, is a stream of change. When did consciousness start?
We can answer in many ways now. Its a feature of many animals. At what point things became conscious is an open question. But I am one of those conscious things. And regarding the actual consciousness I experience now, that started round about now. No one preceded that consciousness, it was not switched on by "me" and it is not owned or held by "me" it just started all by itself round about now as it does in all other humans and animals.
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