Consciousness isn’t a sophisticated capability that emerges after learning, but rather a fundamental prerequisite for learning itself. This insight emerges from a simple but powerful observation: no human has ever achieved significant cognitive development without first being conscious.
Before a baby can master even basic tasks like tracking a moving finger, they must already possess consciousness. This suggests that consciousness isn’t a complex achievement that comes after mastering perception and motor skills, but rather the very mechanism that enables such learning to occur.
if a baby is not conscious, it is not going to learn how to track a finger because it needs to pay attention and organize its mind.
- Joscha Bach
This perspective reframes consciousness as a basic training algorithm for self-organizing systems. Rather than being more complex than perception, consciousness may actually be simpler — it’s the foundation that makes sophisticated perception possible.
Without consciousness, human development stalls completely.
if you’re not being conscious at the baby stage you remain a vegetable. There is no other trick that nature came up with to get you to this level of performance.
- Joscha Bach
This suggests that consciousness might be surprisingly simple in its basic form, since it must emerge early in development, while still being fundamental to all higher cognitive capabilities.