Hickey’s Language and Consciousness

Linguist Raymond Hickey describes “an intimate relationship between language and consciousness.” He says, “The phenomenon of thought and that of sensation form the two main aspects of conscious experience. Thought is a collective term encompassing individual thoughts, cognitive phenomena with which we organize the rational flow of consciousness. Language is a means by which we express our thoughts, convey our feelings to others, record our past, and plan our future. Hence, language is used externally for communication with others and internally to organize and structure our thoughts. However, as cases of severe aphasia have shown, thought and logical thinking can survive the complete loss of language“ (Hickey, 2023, 2025).

Thus, while language provides content for consciousness, it is not necessary for consciousness awareness, i.e., phenomenal consciousness. Nonetheless, it is worth exploring language as a sophisticated communication system in the context of human consciousness.

The Structure and Evolution of Language

As Hickey describes it, “Language has a physical component: its articulation through the vocal apparatus. Language also has a non-physical component: the generation of language within the brain, the realm of syntax (sentence structure), and the lexicon (vocabulary). Syntax in human language is chiefly characterized by compositionality, the ability of humans to organize the elements of language (words and parts of words) in different combinations to express different meanings.

In the scholarship on the origin of language, there are basically two camps: one which believes that syntax arose slowly, in tandem with pronunciation and vocabulary. This view sees syntax as proceeding from a basic initial form of linear language, in which the sequence of words corresponded one-to-one to the sequence of events being referred to. The second view sees syntax, in our modern sense, as arising suddenly due to a chance mutation in a single individual (a notion associated with Noam Chomsky). The two views are traded under the labels (1) the continuity hypothesis and (2) the discontinuity hypothesis, respectively.

There exists a minority view that in evolutionary terms, language evolved in order to formulate thoughts. Such a view sees thoughts as consisting of concepts which are causally connected to words in the sentences of language. This would mean that we think by using the language of thought; spoken language is then viewed as secondary and derivative.

Language, Brain, and Consciousness

According to Hickey, across the animal world, there is an approximate correlation between brain size and cognition, with the ratio to body mass being crucial. Throughout the development of the genus Homo we can recognize an increase in brain size:

The development of brain size advanced more or less parallel to anatomical developments, which are the prerequisites for language:

1. A lowered larynx with vocal folds that produce enough volume of sound for it to easily carry several meters through air.
2. A flexible tongue that can change its configuration many times a second to produce both vowels and consonants (the latter in combination with a further passive articulator like the teeth, alveolar ridge, palate, or velum).

While (1) can be determined by examining hominin fossil remains, (2) is much more difficult, but the size of the foramen magnum, the oval-shaped opening at the base of the skull through which the hypoglossal nerve (connected to the base of the tongue) passes, can provide some clues.

As Hickey puts it, “We have no concrete data about how consciousness developed during the evolution of the Homo species. At what stage did human primates develop a clear notion of past and future, and engage in complex, abstract thought? We can get at least a partial handle on the latter development: by the earliest attestation of art, for instance, on the walls of caves. Here, the earliest examples date to about 50,000 years ago, if not even further back. This art contains animal representations, hand stencils, as well as abstract representations documenting the capability of the artists for symbolic thought.”

In the sense of communicating with acoustic signals, language was likely present with the various species of Homo; early chimpanzees probably also used simple sounds for communication, panting and hooting as do their conspecifics today. As a structured symbolic system using words strung together into grammatical units, free from the here and now and ordered hierarchically (not linearly), human language developed much later. By 50,000 years ago, language had probably attained the range of structure and function that we know from present-day languages.

The rise of predation during the Cambrian expansion (c. 540 mya) probably necessitated a degree of abstract thought, at least the notion of object permanence for animals when hunting prey. This means that abstract thought is deeply rooted in animal evolution, leading over long periods of time to the ability to form concepts and the notion of classes of objects (much later, as with higher primates). This ability rendered the use of symbolic rather than direct reference to objects possible in language when it began to develop and gave impetus to the use of language to organize thoughts.

Consciousness Without Language?

Hickey concludes by speculating about “ascertaining consciousness” for life forms without language. He says, “There are certain behavioral indications of higher consciousness, such as extended social interaction (including with other species), playfulness, and curiosity, all of which are characteristic of cetaceans like dolphins, for instance. Ultimately, to tell to what extent a being is conscious, one needs language: it would need to describe to a hearer its experience of consciousness. In our world, only humans are in a position to do that” (Hickey, 2023, 2025).