In the worlds of philosophy, linguistics, and communications theory, a view has developed which understands conscious experience as experience that is “reflected” back upon itself through language. This indicates that the consciousness we experience is possible only because we have culturally invented language and subsequently evolved to accommodate it. This accords with the conclusions of Daniel Dennett (1991), but the “hermeneutic objection” would go further and deny that the objective sciences themselves have escaped the hermeneutic circle. The consciousness we humans experience is developed only within the context of crossing the “symbolic threshold” into language (Percy 1975; Deacon 1997) and one of the earliest and most important symbols we acquire is that of the self, or “the subject of experience.” It is only when we achieve self-awareness that the world, as such, comes to exist for us as an object (which contains categories and sub-categories of objects). Any consciousness imputed to prelinguistic stages of development is based on projection and guesswork, since we can know nothing directly of it. It can be said that any experience which does not separate an inner subject from an outer world is probably a continuum of sensation in which environmental stimulus and instinctive response are experienced as a unity; it may be “lived experience” but it is experience “lived” non-consciously. Relevance: Language as a cultural creation, thus human consciousness is culturally constructed.

Key words: consciousness, cultural construction, self-consciousness, experience, language, hermeneutics, phenomenology, introspection, meditation

At the point when cultural evolution comes largely to replace biological evolution, we may find our quarry. “Man must be defined by his mind” (Gans, 1990, p. 2). What we seek here is the origin of the human mind, that is, the abstract space of subjectivity that creates knowledge and divides self from world through the binary structures of symbolic communication. What is learned is knowledge, and knowledge is always and only a symbolic construction (however successful its practical application may be). It is only with self-reflective subjectivity that conscious learning (as opposed to unconsciously reactive behavioral modification) begins. Relevance: Language led to mortal knowledge, which led to the radical constructivism of the human mind.

Key words: language, cultural construction, consciousness, experience, evolution, mortality, knowledge

When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience – from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness – can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium.

This essay is divided into two parts, deeply intermingled. Part I examines not only the origin of conscious experience but also how it is possible to ask of our own consciousness how it came to be. Part II examines the origin of experience itself, which soon reveals itself as the ontological question of Being. The chief premise of Part I chapter is that symbolic communion and the cat-egorizations of language have enabled human organisms to distinguish between themselves as actually existing entities and their own immediate experience of themselves and their world. This enables them to reflect upon abstract concepts, including “self,” “experience,” and “world.” Looking beyond human self-consciousness to investigate the origin and nature of awareness itself in Part 2, reductive objective materialism is found to be of little use. Awareness in itself must thus be considered ultimately unexplainable, but this may more indicate its inexpressible transcendence of all symbolic qualifiers than its nonexistence. Our underlying symbolic worldviews are found to be autopoietic: they limit or open our conscious experience, which, in turn, confirms those worldview expectations. As we explore a future of unforeseeable technological breakthroughs on an ailing planet who patiently copes with our “success,” truly vital decisions about the nature, meaning, and future of conscious experience will have to be made. Can we transcend our conditioned selves? Relevance: Human self-construction – autopoiesis – begins in awareness-in-itself, which may be universal.

Key words: experience, awareness, language, self-consciousness, awareness-in-itself, autopoiesis

In this condensed survey, I look to recent perspectives on evolution suggesting that cultural change may alter the genome. Since theories of development are nested within assumptions about evolution (evo-devo), I next review some oft-cited developmental theories and other psychological theories of the 20th century to see if any match the emerging perspectives in evolutionary theory. I seek theories based neither in nature (genetics) nor nurture (the environment) but in the creative play of human communication responding to necessity. This survey finally looks to more recent work to do with the appearance of independent self-consciousness in the individual following empathic group awareness. The result of such self-created group awareness and symbolic communication is seen to be cultural consciousness, unique to humanity, from which individual consciousness and personhood derive. I conclude by noting the general implications for these approaches in our schools, politics, and in ultimate ontological questions. Relevance: The paper shows how evo-devo is ultimately connected to cultural constructivism.

Key words: cultural construction, autopoiesis, evolutionary theory, child development, consciousness, co-consciousness, self-consciousness, evo-devo, shared intentionality

Open peer commentary on the article “The Tangled Dialectic of Body and Consciousness: A Metaphysical Counterpart of Radical Neurophenomenology” by Michel Bitbol. Abstract: A summary of the major metaphysical positions reveals them to be variable enough that they do not deny experience to the researcher. Further, Merleau-Ponty’s intra-ontology and related terms are fleshed out.