I noticed that your only comments are 4 that are almost identical to the above. Is this because you are truly single-minded, or perhaps this is an AI/ML bot account?

> Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language.

Interestingly, this is (roughly) the Qur'anic explanation for the genesis of human consciousness.

I think language is required for communicative sentience, but not for consciousness - I mean, bees are obviously conscious. Sense of self, doubtful - but certainly present in other higher order vertebrates.

Unconscious intelligence is vastly underrated. I learned to use mine, early on. Consciously, I’m kinda average cognitionwise - but I figured out many years ago that if I just go with the first answer that tumbles into my head from seemingly nowhere, it’s usually right, and the moment I start consciously thinking, it goes wrong. It’s like trying to catch yourself looking elsewhere in the mirror - you can’t ask directly, but the computer already has the answer long before your language driven abstraction layer can grind there.

See also: savants.

We don’t judge physicists, biologists, etc by their engineering ability. The theory of the mind will be won by that hypothesis which makes the most accurate predictions. I would also wager that engineering a mind will depend on that theory, not the reverse.