Human Primary Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 124):

It is curious that we, as human beings with higher-order consciousness, cannot "see the world" with our primary consciousness alone. Creatures with primary consciousness, while possessing mental images, have no capacity to view those images from the vantage point of a socially constructed self. Yet one who has such a self as a result of higher-order consciousness needs it to link one mental image to the next in order to appreciate the workings of primary consciousness! Higher-order consciousness cannot be abandoned without losing the descriptive power it makes possible.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, in humans, the systems of perceptual meanings of primary consciousness are correlated with the systems of linguistic meanings of higher-order consciousness, thereby making it impossible to "see the world" — construe experience as meaning — through primary consciousness alone. The descriptive power made possible by higher-order consciousness is the descriptive power of language.