I think the Hindus got it right. An interesting definition of
consciousness (courtesy of the neurologist Antonio Damasio), which allows
other animals the possession of things like feelings, is that
consciousness is a state of _knowing_ that one is feeling something.
This _knowing_ rather than simply being is quite probably a uniquely
human characteristic, (with the retractable thumb, I suppose) and perhaps
accounts for our peculiar kind of destructiveness as well as phenomena
like poems. Of course we can't know what an animal without speech knows,
and this opacity pertains to our relationships with other human beings,
inner lives being notoriously difficult to quantify and communicate. I
can't help thinking of language as a symptom of an alienation (and here
all sorts of associations rush in - The Fall, Enkidu etc - which take
this division of ourselves into knowing as a separation from the being
world.)
Best
Alison
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