Consciousness Definition and 232 Threads

Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience or awareness of internal and external existence. Despite millennia of analyses, definitions, explanations and debates by philosophers and scientists, consciousness remains puzzling and controversial, being "at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives". Perhaps the only widely agreed notion about the topic is the intuition that it exists. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied and explained as consciousness. Sometimes, 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. Today, it often includes some kind of experience, cognition, feeling or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, or self-awareness. There might be different levels or orders of consciousness, or different kinds of consciousness, or just one kind with different features. Other questions include whether only humans are conscious, all animals, or even the whole universe. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises doubts about whether the right questions are being asked.Examples of the range of descriptions, definitions or explanations are: 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; having phanera or qualia and subjectivity; being the 'something that it is like' to 'have' or 'be' it; being the "inner theatre" or the executive control system of the mind.

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  1. R

    What can metacognition in animals tell us about consciousness?

    What can "metacognition" in animals tell us about consciousness? Humans are able to feel uncertainty. They know when they know something and when they don't. This capacity for 'metacognition' (thinking about thinking), or cognitive self-awareness, is thought to be one of humans' most...
  2. T

    Can Thoughts Create Their Own Consciousness?

    because a though is an individual inside itself could itself create its own consiousness?
  3. O

    Quantum Mechanics & Universal Consciousness: Evidence?

    I was wondering if there is any real evidence within the field of quantum mechanics to support the idea of a universal collective consciousness? any ideas... :cool:
  4. C

    Can Different People Experience Colors Differently?

    Here is a link to some interesting ideas. I couldn't find the original, but the paper by Marion is very interesting. Just disregard the comments in red: http://home.jam.rr.com/dicksfiles/Marion/science.htm
  5. Loren Booda

    Is consciousness less than whole?

    If consciousness is divisible, can its parts be counted mathematically, be attributed to individual physical entities, depend upon physical parameters or be considered greater as a whole than separately?
  6. Les Sleeth

    Consciousness Studies: Misdirected and Conclusions Fated?

    Consciousness Studies: Priority Misdirected and Conclusions Fated? Consciousness seems to be at the heart of subjectivity. If so, then how can it be sufficiently externalized to observe in order to empirically "prove" what it is? The attempts to define consciousness in terms of how it...
  7. H

    Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference 2004: interest, questions?

    As some of you may know already, I am going to attend the Towards a Science of Consciousness 2004 conference this year from April 7-11 in Tuscon, Arizona. (More information http://consciousness.arizona.edu/conference/tucson2004/index.php .) I was already planning on posting a documentation...
  8. C

    Can Consciousness Be Defined or Explained Within Epistemological Limits?

    An admittedly sloppily expressed question to get a discussion going which comes at the problem of consciousness from a more epistemilogical angle. Goedel’s incompleteness theorems show that for any and every formal and systematic explanation of everything (in all possible universes) there...
  9. Ivan Seeking

    What is the purpose of consciousness?

    http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20040324-9999-news_lz1c24zombie.html
  10. Dissident Dan

    Brain Consciousness: Exploring Neurology

    What gives rise to what we call consiousness? As I can't think of a better definition of consciousness than subjective experience (emotion, feeling), we can use that unless someone comes up with something better. What functions and structures of brains yield or are associated with...
  11. M

    The Flaw in the Definition of Consciousness

    The state of being conscious has been defined as "a state in which it is 'like something' to be you". IOW, if it's like something to be you, you're conscious. However, this definition has recently presented itself to me as both fundamentally flawed, and extremely misleading in the attempt to...
  12. O

    Is our consciousness an attribute of self?

    Consciousness? is our consciousness an attribute of self or is it a better definition of our being?? this week, for whatever reason(s), i got the suspicion that 'consciousness' is our ability to focus our attention within a given experience. it is a part of me, not me. please opine...
  13. Loren Booda

    Mathematica Is consciousness at all mathematically describable?

    Does consciousness essentially embody structure, process, entity, logic or other physico-mathematical properties?
  14. M. Gaspar

    Consciousness Continuum: Exchange of Info as Universal Parameter

    If the standard for "consciousness" were -- for the purposes of this discussion -- reduced down to an "exchange of information", might then all things within the Universe have a "level of consciousness" based on the COMPLEXITY of the information being exchanged...
  15. Iacchus32

    Is Consciousness the Key to Understanding Our Existence?

    Anyone ever stop to think that the only thing that makes sense out of anything at all is consciousness? Hmm ... Perhaps our brains and bodies are merely receptacles, linked to this thing called Universal Consciousness? Think about it. How else could we ever possibly agree that 1 + 1 = 2? If...
  16. M

    Faulty expectations of a theory of consciousness.

    Several of the members here have mentioned some of the problems that stand in the way of a scientific theory of consciousness. I've been thinking about them quite a bit, but it seems that some of these problems can be gotten rid of simply by understanding what a scientific theory does and does...
  17. Jeebus

    Neural correlates of visual consciousness

    Are there some particular types of neurons, distributed over the visual neocortex, whose firing directly symbolizes the content of visual awareness? One very simplistic hypothesis is that the activities in the upper layers of the cortex are largely unconscious ones, whereas the activities in the...
  18. H

    Why reductive explanations of consciousness must fail

    "At the end of the day, the same criticism applies to any purely physical account of consciousness. For any physical process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give rise to experience? Given any such process, it is conceptually coherent that it could be...
  19. phoenixthoth

    Is consciousness a measurable scale?

    this is as provable that there is a matrix as depicted in the movie. i was trying to visualize how we might actually all might be a part of the same consciousness. i don't know if this is what some call the christ-consciousness grid. suppose that hawkins is right and consciousness can...
  20. A

    Consciousness and quantum theory

    I have just finished reading the ghost in the atom by P Davis and was intrigued by John Wheeler's interpretation of quantum theory where the wave function collapses when it enters the conciousness of an observer. I was wondering if since the book was published any progress has been made on this...
  21. S

    Exploring the Phenomenon of Consciousness: A Scientific Discussion

    i would like to begin a discussion on consciousness. some important questions about it are: 1)what is consciousness? 2)is it unique in humans or do other animals have it? if they do, upto what degree? 3)how and why did it arise? 4)how are humans(and other conscious animals)different from...
  22. T

    The Central Role of Consciousness in Physics

    this is a very nice forum, though I'm slightly disappointed that there's no neuroscience or philosophy of mind board, given the central role of consciousness underlying all theories of physics.
  23. M

    The Implications of Materialist Consciousness on Telepathy

    This is something I've been struggling with. You see, in the materialistic framework (which I've gone through great pains to explain in previous threads) there is no real "narrative" of consciousness, merely the different processings and re-processings that occur in different parts of the brain...
  24. K

    Can the physics of consciousness transcend space-time?

    While reading an article on time travel I came across a section titled 'Is Time an Illusion?'. Immediately I was drawn to a conversation I shared with a good friend of mine a few months prior. We had been talking all night about different subjects that are unexplained but interested us to look...
  25. M

    What do you think consciousness is?

    I didn't make this into a poll, because I don't want to limit your options. I want everyone to post what they believe consciousness is. There will probably be a lot of debate on the different ideas, but that's what's supposed to happen (may the best theory win ). This will help in a number...
  26. Iacchus32

    Consciousness And What Constitutes Proof?

    Just some excerpts from Zero's thread, about the nature of consciousness and what constitutes proof. For example, without consciousness, how can we establish the nature of anything, let alone the fact that we exist? Or how else would it be possible to establish this thing called science then...
  27. R

    Consciousness the Source of gravity

    Hi science folks. As conversed from the previous topic "WHAT IF there is no God..", and due to 'insistent demand' ,here is my postulation. It occurred during a candid discussion we once had about 2 years ago at a physics chatroom when someone inquired what gravity is, but then I noticed that...
  28. Iacchus32

    Is there a connection between God and the material world?

    From the thread, https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2079&perpage=15&pagenumber=4" ... Where does purpose originate? Does the universe have purpose? If not, then why is man endowed with a sense of purpose? How could that be? That would be tantamount to saying the Universe...
  29. Iacchus32

    Where is our seat of consciousness located?

    From the thread, https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1649&perpage=15&pagenumber=3" ... So wherein do you think our seat of consciousness lies? Or, through what faculty is it best perceived?
  30. S

    What it's like to vanish-QM and the nature of consciousness

    What it's like to vanish--QM and the nature of consciousness I’ve recently been thinking about the familiar Schrödinger’s Cat thought-experiment. Uncertainty at the quantum level essentially dictates that the rhetorical cat considered in the experiment ‘exists’ in a superposition of states. The...
  31. R

    Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics

    On pf 2.0, (i believe it was Lurch) posted a thread on biophotons. He just wanted to know what they were, but I would like to know your thoughts on how biophotons are of any importance to us. IOW, how it is that they can be incorporated with consciousness, and basically our neural network. [/b]
  32. E

    How Are Consciousness and Intelligence Related?

    What is the relationship between consciousness and intelligence? This is an open ended question
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