Language Relationships—Overview

Language Relationships discern connections, causal and other, between consciousness and language. Language obviously enriches the content of consciousness, perhaps provides a framework for human consciousness, but is there a deeper relationship? Does consciousness in some sense require language, in that if there is no language capability, there would be limited inner experience, or even none at all? Conversely, does language require consciousness, in that if there is no inner experience, there can be no language capability (e.g., think of AI/LLMs)?

Note that while it is generally (but not universally) accepted that language does not generate theories of consciousness per se, it features in some and is rejected in others, both of which are worth exploring.

Consciousness Requires Language?

Much depends on careful definitions. To take the consciousness-requires-language causal paradigm, if by consciousness we mean phenomenal consciousness, raw inner experience only, then if we claim that language is required, then our claim would limit phenomenal consciousness, inner experience, to human beings and would exclude all (or at least almost all) other animals. Argue this to a happy dog owner, and you will confront an angry dog owner.

To take the language-requires-consciousness causal paradigm, with a definition of language sufficiently loose to subsume computer languages or communications between paramecia or signals between embryonic stem cells, consciousness would not be required.

The philosophical debate regarding whether language is necessary for consciousness has a long and meandering history. Many argue that consciousness does not at all require language; others, that consciousness is facilitated by language or even is not possible without it. A contemporary consensus is building around the idea that increasing levels of consciousness, ranging from unconsciousness to highly conscious reflective self-awareness, requires increasing use of language. What follows would be that language is not needed for pure phenomenal consciousness, a general state of awareness, or in responding to external stimuli—such as in preverbal infants—but phenomenal consciousness would be needed for complex expressions of consciousness, like self-awareness, information integration, and metaconsciousness, which are based on language-powered capacities, especially inner speech (Ivory Research, 2019).

Because we sense that many animal species are conscious—much like we assume that other humans are conscious like we are conscious—and we know that language is much more restricted, to humans and, in a lesser sense, some other animals (e.g., primates, cetaceans, birds), this would seem to weaken the consciousness-language nexus. Moreover, language seems to be a much more recent evolutionary emergent than consciousness (Berwick and Chomsky, 2016).

Perspectives on Language and Consciousness

Philosopher Rebecca Goldstein maintains that language does not exhaust all that there is in consciousness. She calls as evidence infants prior to or in the early stages of acquiring language, where “it's clear how much consciousness goes on before there is language” (Goldstein, 2014).

Neuroscientist Colin Blakemore sees an intimate relationship between the structure of language and the high-level aspects of consciousness, especially consciousness of self, the consciousness of intention—“the concept that I am the helmsman of myself, carrying myself around the world, making decisions.” He calls the grammatical forms of language “intentional in their style” and argues that our conscious representation of self is a meta-representation of what's really doing the work down below and that the reason “our brains go to the trouble of building this false representation of how we really are is to implement and to support language” (Blakemore, 2012a).

Blakemore speculates that we don't come pre-programmed to be conscious; that we learn to be conscious and our consciousness develops and changes over time. Recognizing that the term “consciousness” can refer to diverse forms of subjectivity and that even a newborn baby has “a kind of brute awareness of the world, sensory experiences,” he suggests that the nature of subjectivity grows through individual experience and that the complexities of the internal representation of the self are mediated by language.

Experimental psychologist Jeremy Skipper hypothesizes that language, with an emphasis on inner speech, generates and sustains self-awareness, that is, higher-order consciousness. He develops a “HOLISTIC” model of the neurobiology of language, inner speech, and consciousness. It involves a “core” set of inner speech production regions that take on affective qualities, involving a largely unconscious dynamic “periphery” distributed throughout the whole brain. He claims that the “model constitutes a more parsimonious and complete account of the neural correlates of consciousness” (at least of self-consciousness) (Skipper, 2022).

Linguist/painter/inventor Rafael Pintos-López posits that human consciousness involves two discrete components: sentience (biological) and meta-cognition (metaphysical). They have different natures, different lifespans and different functions. He adds that there is no evolutionary continuum between the basic cognition in non-human animals and human cognition. The point of inflection is the acquisition of language, which results in complex meaning. Language is productive: from finite resources, it can produce infinite combinations. Without productive language, there can be no complex thought. Experience (i.e., sentience), on the other hand, is a fundamental, biological phenomenon that is subjective by nature. It precedes language and is ineffable. It cannot be explained by science or philosophy because both are cognitive and require language. The creation of language resulted in meaning. Complex meaning does not exist other than in human consciousness. Through language, human cognition developed beyond normal evolutionary laws. Human consciousness—a ‘black swan’ event—is meta-evolutionary (Pintos-López, 2025).

Philosopher Ned Block points to a related distinction between consciousness and cognition. Cognition doesn't have to be linguistic, he says, because non-linguistic animals have some cognition. But then there are animals that seem to have little or no cognition, just perception. Block concludes, “We can see consciousness at its purest in perceptual consciousness, and it has nothing to do, or little to do, with language” (Block, 2014).

While the overwhelming contemporary consensus is that consciousness does not require language, human consciousness is obviously and fundamentally affected or even framed by language. We explore several approaches to the consciousness-language nexus.

Note/RLK: In my first submission of the original Landscape of Consciousness paper to the journal, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, I deliberately did not include this subcategory of Language Relationships, because I did not consider language at all a requirement for the tight target of phenomenal consciousness. The excellent (anonymous) peer reviewer, along with important suggestions, thought that Language should be included. I took the advice, reluctantly at first, but then, over time, I came to appreciate the diverse theories of consciousness that prioritized language (in different ways). This has not changed my original judgment that language is not necessary for phenomenal consciousness, but these language-dominant theories did enrich understanding of the nature of human consciousness. For this reason, I titled this subcategory "Language Relationships"— "Relationships" signaling that while language is not necessary for phenomenal consciousness, it can contribute to our appreciation of it, at least in humans.