Syntactic Structures and the Conscious Awareness of Language Experience. An Intermediate Level Hypothesis

Abstract

In this article we review the basic idea of the “intermediate level” hypothesis about consciousness as proposed by Ray Jackendoff, then developed by Crick and Koch and finally by Prinz. According to this hypothesis, consciousness arises only at an intermediate-level, which lies between rough sensory inputs and the more abstract representations used, e.g., in object recognition. We aim at formulating a more specific hypothesis about a suitable conception of consciousness relative to the experience of language. We claim that “linguistic consciousness”, namely an individual’s conscious experience engendered by the processing of linguistic information, cannot be identified only in the phenomenal role played by the phonological structure of language, contrary to what Jackendoff holds. Instead, we hypothesize that the top-down computational structure required for the very possibility of linguistic consciousness is determined by syntax (meaning generally by “syntax” the generative system that organizes linguistic information through transformational frames in cooperation with various interface components). This hypothesis, we believe, avoids two problems with Jackendoff’s original account.

Keywords

• Consciousness
• Language Experience
• Syntax; Ray Jackendoff; Jesse Prinz
• Syntax
• Ray Jackendoff
• Jesse Prinz