Imagine you're born without the ability to see, hear, smell, taste or touch. Would you still have a consciousness? I was just thinking about this today and realized that everything my consciousness is seems to be based off the 5 senses, even my memory...so if I never had them, would I be self aware? Obviously if one has been born with senses, then the memories would allow you to be self aware, but if you never had them, would it be a timeless void of nothingness like death or would you be aware of the blackness?
The neuro-biologist folks would remind us that there is a fair ("high?") degree of co-determination between realized brain structure and the preceding (and predominant) patterns of thought. So, if you never had stimuli (including language, *or* -- prior to that, the concept of "self"), you couldn't have an "I" in there..... Still, there would be a "there" in there. De Cartes reduced and reduced and reduced to "Cogito, ergo *sum*" -- even he depended on an "I" in there somewhere. But if we just gave a slight nudge, maybe Quos ego cogito, ergo sum -- *That* I think, therefore I am -- might clarify things. *That* we think ("consciousness") is not dependent on being able to self-identify, or language, but merely a wired *brain* -- all set up (with no place to go), standing (as it were) *ready* to be hungry, to love, to trade idiot instruments for a wiggish market, get tired, to *sleep*....... It's just dependent on being *able* to think. I think. Where's my beer? {looks around}
Sensory deprivation tanks basis is to tune out senses. Than the brain itself generates sensations. Mix in peyote/mescaline, leads to crazy trips where subconscious creates stories out of preexisting thoughts.
There does seem to be a hierarchy. We evolve a nervous system, a brain with senses and emotions and memory and these seem to be a foundation that allows us to become self aware and conscious. But that might be just be one route to our current level of consciousness, there maybe other routes, although i doubt we will ever have the skills to do it ie. make machines that are self aware and conscious. I believe there is an infinite unified consciousness field that permeates the entire multiverse. Everything emerges from this including the multiverse itself. It is fundamental reality. As time passes humans evolve to higher levels of consciousness, ie. we are now able to perceive the consciousness that exists everywhere.
Thought I'd leave this here: Orch Or theory http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188
i agree with your first paragraph when we have the resources, it is very possible to make a machine that capable of self-awareness self awareness is a by-product of evolved neural network we can also observe them in non-human animals (in a lower degree) --- your third paragraph is too abstract what is your definition of consciousness? we need some context to talk about.. :]
Excellent question, old sock. Of course we're throwing in all the other senses too, like all those internal sensations, etc. so that there is absolutely no sensory means to physical awareness. Off the top of my head I would say that no, we could not have consciousness without any sensory experience. We might exist but not as conscious beings. Unless it's possible to be conscious of nothingness. Which I doubt.