On 'gaining' consciousness, and: How does one become self-conscious?

In recent years, I have listened to many an individual give thought as to when, in terms of age into lifespan, they remember “becoming conscious” or otherwise “gaining consciousness” from out of the blue, as if there were a glass ceiling to be broken for adolescent development which, for whatever reason, accounts for some people being “conscious” as set apart from however which percentage of the world is supposed to be devoid of an inner monologue (which, for that matter: how do you even go about recording who and who hasn’t got an inner monologue? It’s in the person’s head, for Pete’s sake…). And yet, it’s not unreasonable to measure the world’s intelligence, and so forth. In this context, the ‘consciousness’ in question is actually self-consciousness. If there is any true indicator of being “self-conscious,” where does that lie: in the heart, as Aristotle would have proclaimed the center of the intellect, the brain, as characterized encephalocentrist (encephalo-, from Grk. enkephalos, meaning “in head,” or en kephalē) thinkers such as Alcmaeon of Croton (c. 520 – 450 B.C.E.) or, in all spite of being confined by the limits of our human perception so as to face what we call the after-life through what is but one end of the looking glass—which runs down a narrow barrel, representing the most unforgiving, unrelenting passage of time: from the comforts of the world that you grew up to live in, to being taught of the concept of life, and later death, until eventually, the threat of death seems no less concerning nor ubiquitous to nature as life itself, at least for the plurality of well-minded adults. The minority of the well-minded population, on the other hand, will not treat death as ‘ubiquitous’ but instead as something unique to the constraints placed upon our temporal plane of existence; something that must be preceded by a state other than life or death before it.

Instead of the fate of death serving as the purveyor of misery that lie in the metaphysical uncertainty of eternal darkness or absolute paradise, we should instead approach death not as the conclusory “author’s note” to the story of life, but perhaps instead as that which separates the soul from the flesh, thereby leaving physical remnants in order to transition into ‘true being,’ however the nature of such being may truly exist, because we are incapable of perceiving our true selves without the obfuscation brought about by the limits of the senses, and the constraints of language as a form of communication, and so forth. From the psychological perspective, the soul itself has traditionally been divided into three parts (e.g. Plato’s tripartite soul theory) and further affirmed by the Freudian school of thought as the three parts of the psyche (from Grk. psyche, meaning ‘to live’ or ‘soul’ as we know it; see the myth of Psykhē): the id, ego and superego. Interestingly, the god Psyche (Lat. form) is the Romanized form of the name for what we call ‘Cupid’ (Grk. Eros, meaning “love” or “desire”; cog. to ‘erotic’, ‘erogenous’), eventually Latinized into Amor (cog. to ‘amorous,’ Iat. amore; see Ovid’s Fasti, Virgil’s Aenid, e.g.), a mythology which has obviously survived into modernity through Valentine’s Day (14 February). That all being said, what do the tripartite soul and linguistic references to the myths have in-way of knowing one’s own consciousness? Well, it is precisely that division between flesh and spirit which serves to illumine the true nature of consciousness. If bodily life is at least one degree of separation from the true nature of existence then it cannot possibly come to fully represent the sum of one’s nature as they truly exist, because our very ability to analyze the reliability of such perceptions is itself a mental faculty derived a conscious mind made aware of the limits of its mode of perception (in knowing that the biological senses do not afford us precision).

The natural step after acknowledging that any ‘true’ form of existence must occur separate from the body is therefore to conclude that, because your conscious Self necessarily predates the body in which it is grounded because it is impossible for conscious thing to be the result of that which already lies beyond a degree of abstraction from the true nature. Besides, the material sum of the material self contains the biological components necessary to sustain one’s physical health and yet does not capture the consciousness, an immaterial thing. The philosophy of the ‘unmoved mover’ further dictates that consciousness, which is unmoved by our material nature (but rather vice-versa) and yet the material nature must be ‘moved’ by something in order for the immaterial thing within it to perish. Eventually, the individual psyche becomes anticipatory of the constraints of the reality being perceived, but these constraints do not necessarily mark the beginning of “consciousness,” especially considering that the psyche begins learning from its surrounding nature from the moments in between childbirth and post-infancy. Even though humans are all born in a conscious state of being, the beginning of ‘consciousness’ may often go represented by scholars as being part of mental development. Indeed, infant neurological development occurs at a staggering pace, but to suggest that they are born without the capacity for consciousness and that it is ‘instilled’ purely by a developing mind would thereby draw the line for ‘consciousness’ to thoroughly exclude those with developmental disabilities or other abnormal conditions which inhibit cognitive development. Instead, I propose a very simple definition for what it means to be ‘self-conscious,’

Consciousness. “The state of being presently aware of one’s surroundings.”

Self-consciousness. “The conscious state of realizing oneself as having a separate psyche from the rest of the external world, of which one is part in-person but separated the Self.”

This sets the self-* apart from mere consciousness, which is widely defined as “the ability to be aware.” In the sense of ‘conscious’ and nothing more, human beings are born conscious because they are born aware to surrounding stimuli. Self-consciousness is an extension of that; this definition, in my opinion, is more greatly rooted in the established psychology for encompassing all conscious living beings. A being may be regarded living but without consciousness if shown to be devoid of any recordable brain activity. As such, every human being that is born with a brain is considered ‘conscious,’ and this is based on the capacity for consciousness within not-yet-developed brains (physical cognitive development affects consciousness, but does not create it, and furthermore, any currently-undeveloped brain with the capacity to be sufficiently developed is changing only the organic structure; it does not take away the amount of physical matter. As a child is born, it considers itself to be part of the same whole as with the mother figure, and so, when the mother leaves sight of the child, it is a natural response for the child to begin crying. Going into these fragile few months, the child eventually learns that the mother’s presence is separate to its own self-existence, and from thereon will begin to distinguish between its Self and external things. From this, the cycle of life continues: the Self discovers its existence, to be followed by its mortal fate and will ultimately fade away out of material existence, c’est la vie—the end of the beginning, the start of beginning anew.

In conclusion, there is no point wherein a child suddenly gains their consciousness, and even if that were to be the case, it would likely begin during a 6 month developmental period in which the child further develops many of the faculties needed to receive external stimuli. I do not remember this period of my life, nor can I reasonably expect anyone else to, however, knowing that there are periods in life which I cannot remember should go to show full well that human beings should not be taken at face-value when speaking of their life at infancy. Over time, memories become unreliable and more and more bound to misrepresent crucial details, though it can be said, most thankfully, that it’s far from being impossible to accurately remember one’s own childhood. If more people had a eureka moment at such a young age, I suspect that the phenomenon of “gaining consciousness” would have produced more literature on the subject and its nature. Instead, I am willing to propose that it represents a common misconception among those few who still have (at least some) early memories as children, but cannot remember back enough to recall the most crucial stages of development in their lives. Recalling one’s earliest childhood memories only feels like the beginning of consciousness because of the truly disillusioning nature of those old memories! Perhaps dementia-ridden patients experience the same frustration in trying to source their own histories (except imagine remembering yesterday with no greater level of detail than from your memories at adolescence).

After all, ‘self-consciousness’ fundamentally depends on being conscious of the Self - who would’ve thunk it?! A human being is conscious from birth, and its brain typically progresses towards self-conscious thought by around the 6 month mark. However, since the attainment of self-conscious thought is something which continues developing in most humans at least until young adulthood, it is best to say that consciousness is already had at birth and persists into self-consciousness from that point onward.