The amazing thing about words is how, when we have used them a lot or thought about them a lot, we assume their meaning and seem to think that they are somehow real. Or, at least, signify something real. "Real?" - I hear you ask.
Outside our consciousness, apparently.
And they are also sometimes our obstacles. Take the word consciousness for instance. This little term proves stubbornly difficult to define. And whatever angle you take - and this is not a review of semiotics - the question ultimately comes along: does consciousness really exist? Oi, like we have access to dormant but pressing truths that suggest it has a reality that must be proven.
I recently happened upon information (it seems so much more though) that knocks a lot of assumptions. Read here about Koko the gorilla. Koko has a vocabulary of more than 1000 signs and understands around 2000 words in spoken English. Her IQ, on the human scale, has been measured in the range 70 to 95. That is smarter than a fair number of humans!! Many traits that we humans have, such as feelings, imagination, and thought, we've assumed to be our own. Only humans have these. No longer! Project Koko has demonstrated the intelligence of gorillas, and evidence for an abundance of behaviours we normally think of as "human behavior" ...
So does Koko have consciousness?
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