Is conscious experience dependent on language?

Obviously language helps to shape consciousness (i.e., awareness of the content of consciousness). I once talked with an anthropological linguist about the merits of the Whorf-Sapir notion that the two are causallly inter-dependent. The linguist argued that while they are interdependent to a degree, there is also much slippage between them.

Best expressed later in some of Wilfrid Sellars' works and ideas, like psychological nominalism: "All awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in short, all awareness… is a linguistic affair."

Unfortunately, it's apparent that animal awareness and pattern-recognition can get by without propositional knowledge and conceptual processing grounded in language: "But in recent years it has become even more clear that monkeys without primary visual cortex can discriminate shapes, demonstrate contrast sensitivity functions over a range of spatial frequencies, have measurable acuity, although reduced from normal. " --Scholarpedia article on blindsight

Husserl's dismissal of empiricist views of "sense data" does not necessarily support "language" as an alternative substrate for "experience". Mearleau-Ponty extends Husserl's phenomenology into a concept of "embodied consciousness" such that "the body" and "its world" are two sides of the same coin which is constantly evolving. Language enters into the picture as both an aspect of "its world" (insofar as it predisposes embodied consciousness to differentially respond) and also a vehicle of "mutual response" (insofar that experience or "a world" can be said to be shared).

The issue is whether "getting by" constitutes "conscious experience".

Awareness is not dependent on language, but can the same be said for consciousness? Insofar as "consciousness" contains meaningful content there would seem to be an indispensable role for language. I recall coming to awareness after being knocked out. At first I could not discern any content other than lights and other content-empty (abstract) shapes. Then they became familiar or meaningful objects. When I look at an abstract painting, I no longer ask "What is it?" (what does it represent?) But that's mainly because I do abstract painting and appreciate the task of creating shapes, compositions, and color combinations for their purely aesthetic value, just as I undoubtedly would composing notes for an orchestral work.
On the other hand, consciousness can exist, albeit rarely, without language. In zen meditation, especially of the Soto Zen branch, one looks at his phenomenal field prereflectively. He cares not to add meaning to anything, his awareness is of things as they present themselves, as a primorically given world which is not separate, as object(s), from the meditator, as subject.
Language contributes--as critical functions--to the objectification and meaningfulness of that primordially given world (which, if I may add, is you, not just your surroundings)

How strange. I could have sworn the OP was referring to recognition in the last half, which is grounded in memory any way you cut it, with or without language and its concepts to represent those networks of underlying memories ( meanings): "Is it not through language, which allows for the “identification” of “reality” that essentially provides consciousness with its own awareness?"

Perhaps language is not the only way to make things "real." It is used no doubt to construct their identities in social reality. But if what I said above about zen perception is accurate pure "awareness" even in its emptiness provides its own kind of "conscious" fullness.

The problem is that we have four words: consciousness, experience, reality and language and there are incestuous relationships between them. Now the words of the OP "dependent on" inclines us to look for some logical necessity (language as a necessary condition for conscious experience) but evidence for that "necessity" is itself problematic because "experience" is inaccessible to observation by a third party. On the other hand "language" is predicated on "shared experience" so we are drawn into an ontological/epistemological loop involving "reality" as a shared construction within "consciousness" with language as the substrate. However this excludes "non verbal experience" from the realm of "consciousness" thereby specifying "animals experience" as outside considerations of "reality". The alternative to this is to take a deflationary view of both language and consciousness and to argue that such terms refer to peripheral epiphenomena of the "reality" of a more general life process outside the jurisdiction of "logical necessity".

From my own understanding of the subject - Language are 'words' and 'structures' that are associated with concepts / pictures / memories in our mind. This is the reason we sometimes struggle for words - because there may not be a word or phrase to express the concept in our mind. The simple fact that there is a concept in our mind which doesn't automatically equate to language shows that consciousness is not about language. This also shows that it is the 'concept' that forms first in the conscious brain, before the language is (usually) subconsciously applied to express the concept.

Many who study the subconscious think that you should use pictures rather than language to tell you mind what you want to achieve. For them, the clearer and more life like the 'picture' or 'movie' the more effective it is. On the other hand, I think that both 'envisioning' and 'language' is effective, because of the normally 'automatic' association between language and concept/memory/pictures.

Showing futher that language is not the foundation of conscious - the same word, which may have a very specific definition, can still have situational meaning in our mind, and can still call up different emotions in differing circumstances. The meanings of words can also change over time for us. This shows that 'language' isn't the definition, but rather, the association each word or phrase or structure has within our mind...to the specific time, understanding, emotion, and circumstance.

Thinking in 'words' is also quite cumbersome, and in emergencies, we can 'think' in a split second, so many 'thoughts' that it may take us hours to put those thoughts into words - to sort out what we actually did think. I like to call these thoughts 'semi-conscious thoughts' - because we think them so rapidly that we aren't truly aware of the process that goes on...but afterwards we can remember it, and put it into words. (So for me, there is the concscious, the semi-conscious, and the sub-conscious)

Envisioning is a conscious process, and it need not involve any language at all.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
- John 1:1 (KJV)
. . .

Without language, you cannot know what you feel. Language is the symbolic representation by which the mind interprets sensual perception. Language is the synapse, metaphorically speaking, through which we make sense of external stimuli. In this sense, language is critical to thinking; for without language, we have no means of distinguishing what our senses perceive. See S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action (1939). Without language, you would have no way of knowing what you see when you look at the sun; it would have no meaning for you at all. You can picture a stick, picture a stone, mentally turn them around, and conceive an axe, only through perceptual process, which is a function of language. Alfred Korzybski, “The Nature of Language in the Perceptual Processes,” reprinted from Perception: An Approach to Personality (1951). Likewise, without the “Word” there can be no conception of “God.”

That sounds like foundationalism. Wifrid Sellars and others tried to undermine it with linguistic concepts being the basis for awareness (the discerning and identifying of objects and circumstances). But one problem with this myth of the given attack is that language (representational marks, sounds, etc.) is just another one of the contents of experience reliably found in conjunction with other manifested phenomena. The same is the case with reducing linguistic processes to "hidden" neural processes also dependent upon memory. They can be perceived in brain scans and measurements, thus making them part of the content of experience as well, even if one infers the explanation that they are circularly the cause of such appearances. So the legs can never be completely kicked-out from underneath this supposed epistemological foundation of classical empiricism, even though it's necessary to make inferences beyond "experience being so fundamental" for the sake of progress (predicting, controlling, manipulating, etc.).

What is meant by "OP"?

Original poster--the thread's author.

Thanks, Set.

Thanks, Set.

This isn’t true. It would however be true to say that without language we couldn’t name what we feel.

This isn’t quite true. It is true to say that language is a symbolic representation, but not true to say that it is the symbolic representation by which the mind interprets sensual perception – perception comes first, and then language, otherwise we would never struggle for words to describe our perception.

Language is how we name and explain our experience of external stimuli.

Again incorrect. It would be correct to say that we have no name for what we are looking at. It would be very incorrect that it would have no meaning, for we would feel the sensation of heat, and the experience of light, and it would have meaning to us. I doubt that a reptile names the sun, and yet it clearly has meaning to them.
Really? A picture is a word? What does a baby see? What about a person deaf from birth?

Rather than accepting convoluted explanations that others give, such that you get lost in it - why not work it out for yourself.

Language does play a large part in helping us make ‘sense’ of the world, because it provides a structure in which to sort our world into a ‘logical’ place, and it can lead to very refined logic, greater learning, mental stimulation etc...but it is not in and of itself, consciousness.

“There is no ‘redness’ in nature, only different wave lengths of radiation.”
- Alfred Korzybski, “The Nature of Language in the Perceptual Processes,” reprinted from Perception: An Approach to Personality (1951).

. . .

Working it out for oneself is not very objective, much less scientific. Science has shown that much of what we believe to be true is structurally false to fact. It is a defect of human nature that has to do with the fallacy of perception that is rooted in language, which was first observed by David Hume, and, more recently, Alfred Korzybski. See David Hume, Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals (1777); and Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (1933). The fallacy operates similarly in every sphere of inquiry where the issue is in doubt; it is a form of mental blindness that is inextricably bound in the human psyche. The truth, which is generally seen, will nevertheless not be recognized unless one is able, at least for a moment, to suspend belief. It is the difference between sight and perception - the difference between what the eye sees and the mind’s eye perceives - the difference between what is true and what we perceive as true, though false. Still, we persist in believing that things are ordered as we perceive them; when in truth what is perceived to be the cause may not necessarily produce the effect. Do you see red? If you believe that you see red, then, as Korzybski points out, you are mistaken. Language has many forms of expression; and it is the critical distinction between autonomic and cognitive response to external stimuli. Moreover, language is the key to changing our perception of the world.

“Experience”, as opposed to “conscious experience”, does not identify itself as such, and therefore “experience” lacks consciousness-you would say that a lower animal “lacks consciousness” in this respect, inasmuch as it has no “consciousness” of its experience; that is not to say that other animals are not conscious however. Humans, on the other hand, “experience” as lower animals do, but humans also have “conscious experience”, they can “refer” to their own experience of the world. How is that possible? Not only are humans conscious of the content of experience, but they are also conscious of experience itself-
Sensory organs facilitate a human’s experience of the world, but they do not facilitate the “conscious experience” of the world. That requires something else, because “conscious experience” is not directly based on sensory-experience.
This is rambling a bit, I’m not sure if I’ve got my point across.

It seems to me many people define consciousness as "awareness of awareness". I would call that self-awareness, or self-consciousness.

I would say that awareness of awareness requires a categorization or subdivision of all the elements of this awareness that is perhaps synonymous to language, while plain awareness may not be dependent on language...