Consciousness cannot be reduced to cognition, which is problem-solving ability and lacks subjectivity, emotion, and free choice. Drawing on Edelman, consciousness is an evolutionary leap present from higher vertebrates onward. Words and narrative are vehicles for consciousness, but it originates not in grammar or syntax but when an individual, shaped by personal experience, accesses the metaphorical meaning of perceptions. This marks a new evolutionary path: individual psychological development, whose consequences we embody and observe.
Drawing on the Christian concept of incarnation to frame the relationship between primary and higher consciousness, the authors connect it to infant research by Sanders and Tronick that reveals the richness of procedural, prelogical, and bodily communication. Edelman's idea of the remembered present and Bateson's relational dance are used to propose a new ontology where emptiness—influenced by Raimon Panikkar and Peter Brook's theater—plays a fundamental role as the opposite of nothingness. The dialogue concludes with Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible, arguing that keeping primary and secondary consciousness, linguistic and bodily logos, connected is essential; their separation generates individual pathologies and contributes to a broader civilizational crisis.