A slight aside - rather than language being the 'core of consciousness', it's the only tool available for one conscious entity to communicate the phenomenon of consciousness to another conscious entity.
If consciousness is the self-awareness that one is using sensory information to construct an internal model of reality, of the world surrounding one self, and that the internal model may be (or certainly is) an imperfect representation of that world, then language, symbolic concepts etc., are required to express that notion to others.
One other note - many if not most wild animals are highly socialized, just not in the sense that they'd obey instructions given by humans (but perhaps those given by a pack/herd leader, or a sentry on the lookout for predators, etc.)
I agree about Kant, though, and the failure of the rigid materialist viewpoint. Kant's materialism was based in an outmoded view of mathematical-physical rigor, which has been overturned everywhere, from non-Euclidean geometry to the decidability (Church-Turing) and incompleteness (Godel) issues, to quantum intederminancy and chaos/sensitive dependence - the rug was pulled out from under the Kantian materialists some time ago.
> it's the only tool available for one conscious entity to communicate the phenomenon of consciousness to another conscious entity.
While I appreciated your comment, on this item, I disagree. Though language is absolutely a tool evolved by consciousness(s) to act on others, it only passes the test of being sufficient or necessary to do so when we expand the definition of language to include all communications - which makes it a circular definition.
I routinely relate to other consciousnesses (advanced training of horses) without language. In fact, I do it because it is a way of relating without the filter of languge and its key artifact, ego. It could be said we develop an individual languge together, and that the logic I use is a language to communicate consistently with different horses, but whether the gestures I use is an invented language to affect responses, or a discovered communion to transmit the effect of my intentions is a pretty huge question.
By example, does the act of sex exist without language? Since simple organisms do it, I would say yes it does, and that there is a demonstrable way to relate physically without language, it shows language is not a necessary condition of either consciousness or of relating to other consciousness. Essentially, I don't think one can say that language is a necessary condition of consciousness without a circular definition where language incorporates everything that is evidence of consciousness.
What it means is that there is a substrate of being and consciousness below that of language, and that all things that are the artifacts of language are logically separate from those that are the artifacts of experience. You can use language to convince someone they are a dog, but they are not a dog, even if they think they are, because there is a reality beneath the artifacts of language that is both accessible and immutable. There is a real, and the consequences of apprehending that axiom are pretty profound.
If consciousness is the self-awareness that one is using sensory information to construct an internal model of reality, of the world surrounding one self, and that the internal model may be (or certainly is) an imperfect representation of that world, then language, symbolic concepts etc., are required to express that notion to others.
One other note - many if not most wild animals are highly socialized, just not in the sense that they'd obey instructions given by humans (but perhaps those given by a pack/herd leader, or a sentry on the lookout for predators, etc.)
I agree about Kant, though, and the failure of the rigid materialist viewpoint. Kant's materialism was based in an outmoded view of mathematical-physical rigor, which has been overturned everywhere, from non-Euclidean geometry to the decidability (Church-Turing) and incompleteness (Godel) issues, to quantum intederminancy and chaos/sensitive dependence - the rug was pulled out from under the Kantian materialists some time ago.