1st Order Consciousness

     1st-order consciousness is what separates humans from most animals. It is our ability to be self-conscious and experience all the intricate pieces of life. It's not well understood though.

    1st-order consciousness, or specific consciousness, is the active integration of the world around us (the outer world) into our experience (the inner world). General consciousness is what makes a thing aware (we'll call this 2nd-order). There is currently debate on a 3rd-order. We'll talk about it all.

Endlessly Curious

    There are a couple different prominent theories of consciousness that float around. These ideas have their founding in ideas that pre-date Ancient Greek Philosophers. We can find traces of them in The Book of the Dead, the Popul Vuh, the Bible, and essentially all religious texts. From the Zoroastrains, to the Toa and Confusionists, and the Ancient Americans. 

    We are fascinated by the mind and how it works, but the two (currently) most prominent theories of the mind are the 1st-order theory and the Higher Order Theory (often called HOT). We'll talk about 1st-order theory first. 

1st Order

    This theory centers around the idea that humans are special among the animal kingdom and have two steps of experience instead of just one. We get to relate things to ourselves. Basically, how this works is that most (not all) animals don't have the capacity to actually experience phenomena in a way that they can relate it to themselves. For example, when it wolf gets hungry it does not say to itself "There is hunger in my stomach" or "I am hungry." It merely experiences the sensation of hunger and is compelled by that sensation to fix it. 

    The wolf will eat whether or not it wants to (baring outside forces) because it lacks to capacity to relate hunger to itself. In another word, it cannot even have wants because it has no sense of self. This is a watered-down version of what General Consciousness is. A human, other the other hand, has the ability to choose whether it wants to eat or not. 

    This ability to choose is what 1st-order consciousness is. Also known as Specific Consciousness. It is what allows us to form phenomena into specific experiences that we can then break down into meaningful ideas for ourselves. You can learn more about these two here. This link is to General and specific consciousness: a first-order representationalist approach. This article was written by Neil Mehta and George A. Mashour and published in Frontiers in Psychology in July of 2013. This is a premier Psychology journal. While the ideas on this site are purely my own, I want to give credit where it is due. I have used this article as research for my own ideas and am using it to cross-reference my ideas with accepted views. 

    With that in mind, it is this 1st-order consciousness that gives humans their ability to say "I am hungry, there is hunger in my stomach, but I don't want to eat because I'm trying to lose weight." We can relate experiences to ourselves, whereas most animals cannot. 

    Digging deeper into that, we can find that this is a very complex thing that is happening, and it's very special in the animal kingdom. Few animals ever develop the ability to relate things to themselves. (This is what self-awareness is by the way.) Human babies develop this remarkably fast. 

    

    For example, it's generally accepted that the smartest of chimpanzees has the cognitive capacity of about a 3-year-old. Well, in a study done on the development of chimpanzees' cognitive capacities, it was found that they develop self-awareness between years 4 and 8. (Hetch et al, 2016) What this means is that the smartest of chimps (comparable to a 3-year-old baby) won't develop 1st-order consciousness until 4 years old at the earliest. 

    

    Well, human babies develop it between 15 and 18 months old. That should illustrate how special of an ability this is in the animal kingdom. 

    The way 1st-order consciousness works in simple terms is this: Our bodies experience something, our minds interpret that something and alter it to have a relation to ourselves. then this something and its perceived relation are pushed into our minds for all of their individual parts to be separated down into base components and stored in the brain in whichever part is most pertinent (frontal cortex, hippocampus, etc.) After the information is stored (either in short-term of long-term) we can act on it in a way where our own person is unquestionably considered as part of the equation (even though that's not necessarily true). This is my point mentioned in the Subjectivism article.

    I believe I have summarized 1st-order consciousness fairly well. I'm going to move on to HOT.

Higher Order Theory

    Higher Order Theory adds another to consciousness. Its main idea is that after all of their individual parts are separated into base components and stored properly, the information is then re-evaluated to have meaning to our senses, and then we are free to act on it. 

    

    Basically, it's stating that 1st-order theory ignores the very prominent fact that humans are not separate from their senses and brings that out for consideration in a very explicit way.

    My personal thoughts on the theory are that, while making an important point, this is something that could go unstated because it is implied implicitly in the 1st-order theory. So, I believe that this is an unnecessary, though thoughtful, addition.