This is a really great discussion! See Toby on Four Dimensional Existential Angst and Annaka Harris and Michel Bitbol on Consciousness as a Condition . She considers whether consciousness can exist without content, and also suggests that being able to share direct experience is/would be a form of communication. My comment: 1:12:23 if that were the case then it would be a primitive instance of the kind of communication she refers to at 1:26:41 . The first two paragraphs of Book 1 of Aristotle's Physics : When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have principles, conditions, or elements, it is through acquaintance with these that knowledge, that is to say scientific knowledge, is attained. For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements. Plainly therefore in the science of Nature, as in other branches of study, our first task will be to try...