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Defining consciousness is challenging: about forty meanings are attributed to the term. The many uses of the term "Consciousness" can be identified and categorized based on functions and experiences, and prospects for reaching any single, agreed-upon, theory-independent definition appear remote.[1]
According to Merriam-Webster, consciousness is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment.[2] However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of it. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination, and volition.[3] Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling, or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, metacognition, or self-awareness, either continuously changing or not.[4][5] There is also a medical definition, helping for example to discern "coma" from other states. The disparate range of research, notions, and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked.[6]
Examples of the range of descriptions, definitions or explanations are: ordered distinction between self and environment, simple wakefulness, one's sense of selfhood or soul explored by "looking within"; being a metaphorical "stream" of contents, or being a mental state, mental event, or mental process of the brain.
- ^ Vimal RL, Sansthana DA (2010). "On the Quest of Defining Consciousness". Mind and Matter. 8 (1): 93–121.[dead link]
- ^ "consciousness". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved June 4, 2012.
- ^ Jaynes J (2000) [1976]. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-05707-2.
- ^ Rochat P (2003). "Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life" (PDF). Consciousness and Cognition. 12 (4): 717–731. doi:10.1016/s1053-8100(03)00081-3. PMID 14656513. S2CID 10241157. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09.
- ^ P.A. Guertin (2019). "A novel concept introducing the idea of continuously changing levels of consciousness". Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research. 10 (6): 406–412. Archived from the original on 2021-12-15. Retrieved 2021-08-19.
- ^ Hacker P (2012). "The Sad and Sorry History of Consciousness: being, among other things, a challenge to the "consciousness-studies community"" (PDF). Royal Institute of Philosophy. supplementary volume 70. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09.