Per Aage Brandt

Abstract

On Consciousness and Semiosis I will here sketch out, using a basic intuitive model, the contours of a theory of the elementary content of animal and human consciousness. This model targets consciousness as it evolved from mammals to primates to Cro-Magnons, and develops accounts of content structure in basic consciousness from simple being-awake to higher and more specifically human notions of self and reflexiv-ity. It postulates a primordial, grounding narrative structure and suggests a gradual complexification through increasing supply from memory and empathie information from other subjects. The complex result offers an architecture of canonical levels of consciousness and self; this tentative stratification spans from consti-tutive semiotic structures to aesthetic and linguistic forms of 'be-ing conscious'. Five such strata are described; somewhere midway Cro-Magnons are abandoned by other species, primates or mammals , however domesticated or trained.