anon, If you’re a non-materialist because of your Buddhist teachings, that puts you ‘apart’ from me, since I have no such background. I may end up saying any number of things with which you won’t agree.
If a baby was born without any of the five senses (btw, an impossibility,) would it be a blob? I think so. First of all, the fetus wouldn’t have been able to establish any neuronal pathways needed to transmit sensory data to the brain. As a result, there would be no continuation of those pathways within the brain, hence, no way to react to sensory stimulation.
If reaction to sensory stimulation leads to experience, and if experience leads to knowledge, and if knowledge leads to consciousness, how could something without a nervous system (reaction to sensory stimulation) ever achieve consciousness?
The syntax of our language doesn’t lend itself to simultaneousness. (If that’s not a word, tough–it is now.) Our language is linear–sense development isn’t. Please keep that in mind.
Among the many organs developing in the fetus is the skin. With skin, the fetus develops the sense of touch, motion, warmth, discomfort, etc., which, when repeated, is knowledge.
I think of this as the beginnings of consciousness. While it’s ‘awareness,’ it isn’t ‘self-awareness’ which is developed after birth.
A lot of what I think of as consciousness has to do with knowledge–acquisition, storage, and memory–which comes from reaction to sensory stimuli. Watch a baby in a high chair. She’ll do a lot of things in order to learn concepts. Now, dropping a pea off the tray and watching it fall may not teach her gravity, but it does start to teach her the concept of gravity. A young toddler will kick a large ball and be delighted when the ball is ‘magically’ transported to a different location.
There are certain things a baby can’t learn without parental intervention. Color differentiation, for example. The care giver has to teach the baby this is red, or blue, or green. But that’s just teaching the baby labels.
In summation, then, my definition of prenatal consciousness is the ability to respond to sensory data, to learn from that response, and to remember that response.