I was having a discussion with my girlfriend the other day, and it's got me thinking--- when do we become conscious? In the womb? Once we're born? A year old?

Our inability to remember things prior to 2 or 3 years old initially led me to think that consciousness doesn't really develop until that time- but then again, children who are very young become familiary with things/people/places... So is memory a reliable indicator of consciousness? Are babies conscious? Are they conscious in the womb? Do they recognize themselves in anyway, or become aware of their surroundings at all? Just because they don't remember it, doesn't mean they weren't conscious, I suppose...

Maybe language has something to do with consciousness? Or at least with memory? Can someone with no language have any solid memories? Or is it something as simple as development of parts of our brain that are able to assimilate pieces of data into something understandable?

Any reading suggestions on this topic would be really apprecaited- and any feedback would be fun too.

Thanks!

Consciousness is being awake, being aware. You seem to be confusing consciousness with memory.

I'm not sure what you are looking for here.

I one day old infant is conscious. A person does not remember being 1 day old.

Again, I think you are confusing terms and meanings of words.

Mostly it is based on your definition of the term. There is awareness in the womb. Pain and other things can be felt. Noises are heard even though its through the filter of fluid. 2 hearts beat as one.
The reason for not remembering back so far is the amount of information we take in is enormous when you think of the world we live in and it may take a time before our brains develop long term memory. But if you watch a baby sleep they dream. Its part of the process that we go through. As a whole we really don't become "conscious" before we reach a much older age. Most of our young lives are spent on self before looking to the outside world. That usually doesn't happen until around 8-12 years old. When we can grasp the broader scale of our lives. So again its back to the definition of what you believe the word means and how broad of a brush you want to use in its definition.

What is the most common definition of the word? How has it been defined most recently?

I may be confusing the two... but are they connected in anyway?

Ref:

Consciousness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Excerpt:

"Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."
—Schneider and Velmans, 2007[4]

Hi Margog,

Maybe a good way of looking and consciousness and memory is to look at them in terms of 'Self'. In other words, what does it mean to be a unified being which is conscious over time? This definition should include the idea of memory.

Indeed, memory is an important aspect of the any self theory because people such as Hume argue that there really is no such thing as, 'Self'.
In other words, the idea of self is is a well founded illusion.

Others disagree and would argue that we are a 'doer' or 'agent' that remains constant and exists as the same 'entity' over time. In other words, there is a 'Self'.

So I guess the answer to your question is these two concepts are very much connected. We can have consciousness without awareness (no memory of something), but we can't have awareness without consciousness.

Regards

Tut

Consciousness too undergoes the life cycle of development and maturity, beginning with recognising self
Then relating self to peculiar things around and finally at maturity it resembles it self with others and even in rarest and very high one with non living things...

The first time you are conscious is not consciousness itself you are conscious of your needs only
And your desires only

Hi margog,

Consciousness refers to awareness of thoughts,memories,feelings,sensations and your environment etc.

Your consciousness is constantly shifting and changing e.g.. One minute you can be reading a book,the next thinking of a conversation that happened earlier, this takes place many times during a day without us even thinking about it... it goes unnoticed.

You can be conscious but unaware e.g.. How many times do we find ourselves doing or saying something and then we suddenly come to our senses and say... "why did i do that?,i have no idea". We then kind of shake ourselves back to reality... to our awareness.

In pregnancy by the 24th... 28th week, it is thought that all the nerve endings etc. are to be in place,so by the third part of pregnancy all the elements are there for consciousness.

Although a newborn lacks self awareness a baby processes visual stimuli, sounds and sights in the world,preferentially looking at faces.

A babies capacity for awareness is shaped by the environment they grow up in.

I would say therefore that you are conscious within the womb but not aware.

It has been proven that babies whilst in the womb, can recognise their mothers voice and that they respond to various things out side of the womb.

When they are born they are conscious ( awake ) but learn awareness as they grow.

Margog,
Purely from a belief point of view, we as muslims believe that new borns are aware of the existence of God/Creator.

Maybe babies are more sensitive to the purer things in life than adults, who get involved with the physical world and tend to ignore/disregard/forget/ and are not consciously aware of a spiritual side to life.

Sometimes when I see babies stare and chatter while looking into a blank space/wall, I wonder if they can actually see things we as adults cannot.

Something about fetal hearing and memory-
Fetal memory: Does it exist? What does it do?






.

Na tu evahim netu jasam, na tveim neme janahdipah. Na caiva na bavisyamah, sarve vatam ahta param. -Bhagavad-gita 2.12

"Never was there a time when we didn't exist, nor will there ever be a time when we cease to exist."

I think it also has something to do with having no frame of reference to anything. Conciseness is having a awarness of self, but if you have no concept of what your looking at in terms of the outside world do you really see it? I believe this is why we only perceive a fraction of what true reality is even as adults.

Having awareness doesn't mean your conscious.
Animals are unconscious beings, able to dream, feel, and react to their environment. Yet they are unconscious as as human would be during sleepwalking. When a person sleepwAlks they can see analyze and even have a conversation, yet they don't remember anything due to the fact they were in an unconscious state of mind.
So anyone saying that a person hypnotized can remember birth, doesn't support that babies are conscious just because they have repressed memories. Well you get the idea right. To be conscious you must be self aware. Self awareness requires you to be aware of other people in the first place. But it takes babies a while to go through this process...

Oh yeah and by the way humans are semi conscious only. People saying that you can be unaware but conscious, such as the times we do something unawred, I disagree. Prove me wrong but, the reason why we are unaware is because we are only semi conscious, meaning we can onl process one thought at a time. This would be like when you are doing something and someone talks to you and you and you respond until your done with your task because you can't do both sat the same time. Also we as semi conscious we are not conscious of most of the. Things we say or do for the most part we rely on our unconscious background processes, Orr what people call subconscious, which also reflects to intuition, or simply instincts.. an example would be when somebody indirectly says they are right and they are wrong. We automatically switch to defense mode and are not conscious about it. Example:
Mary: girls are better than boys.
Peter: no! Boys are better.
Can you tell what I meant now. Any conscious smart being who is self aware of his emotions on a non animalistic level but rather on a rational level state of mind wouldve maybe answer the following:
Boys and girls are not better than each other, they are different, and both have different talents than the other might not have.


Well anyway enough said... You figure it out!

Hi Arregnelle,


Bit of a tall order since to date no one has been able to figure it out.

The problem with consciousness is that some people don't believe it actually exists. In other words, being consciousness is a well founded illusion created by the brain. No one denies that we exhibit awareness. But some scientists would explain this awareness in terms of billions of neurons firing in the brain. This complicated process just makes us think we have something special called consciousness. If we can make a robot complicated enough then it will become conscious.

Opposed to this view are those who support dualism. In other words, they say that no amount of complicated technology will ever create a conscious robot. This is because there are two types of things that exist. The physical and the non-physical conscious. I guess we could say that the brain exists in the head and the other(consciousness) exists outside of the head. On that basis consciousness must be non-physical.

I wouldn't say there is no progress in this area. The knowledge argument attempts show there is something special or unique about our conscious experiences. From my point of view I think the knowledge arguments proves there is something special about consciousness that the physical process of the brain can't explain. Others would disagree.

Tut