Can anyone define consciousness?

Question

Either scientifically or philosophically

Answer 1

Wake me up when somebody else answers.

Answer 2

con·scious·ness (kŏn'shəs-nĭs) pronunciation
n.

1. The state or condition of being conscious.
2. A sense of one's personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group: Love of freedom runs deep in the national consciousness.
3.
1. Special awareness or sensitivity: class consciousness; race consciousness.
2. Alertness to or concern for a particular issue or situation: a movement aimed at raising the general public's consciousness of social injustice.
4. In psychoanalysis, the conscious.

Answer 3

I'm neither a scientist nor a philosopher, but I think of consciousness as our awareness. Being aware of our existence and our actions is when we say "we are conscious" or "we did it consciously." It's the way we collect and retrieve memories, and it's the doorway to our feelings. It governs our own world but the rest of the world doesn't need for us to be conscious to exist.

Answer 4

Consciousness is merely a reflection in the mind of the material world we live in. I include in this mental constructions originating from life experiences especially from childhood. The most important point being, despite what the idealist of all persuasions(Especially people who believe in God and use this childish idea as a crutch) say,the mind is incapable of envisaging ANYTHING that is not somehow a reflection of the matter that exists independently of and separate to the human brain.Consciousness is determined by being!

Answer 5

Personally I feel that it is being aware of your surroundings and yourself!

Google define:

"Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. Philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness which is experience itself and access consciousness which is the processing of the things in experience " (Wikipedia)

Answer 6

The word "consciousness" has its roots in the Latin verb "scire" which means "to know". By its definition, one may presume that consciousness means to know, to be aware of one's own existence. We sometimes question some animals' or insects' capacity for consciousness, arguing that they might be experiencing existence without consciousness. When dreaming one might exist while being totally unaware of one's existence. One may experience intense feelings, for instance, fear in a nightmare, or one may move through space and time mechanically in a dream but one will "regain" consciousness, the absolute awareness of one's own self, only upon waking.

Answer 7

I'd say that consciousness is the state of being aware and the ability to make decisions, without it we'll be no more than materials moved by our surroundings.

Consciousness is what separates living beings from other matter.

Answer 8

They say that if there were only one electron in the entire universe its electric field would spread from the one edge of the universe to the other. Just like an electron, all other things are, in their essence, limitless. It is only that other things around them interrupt the continuity and cause physical limitations. The attributes of things are then determined by these limitations, and things become identifiably unique and distinct – physical limitations or constraints create for everything a specific identity. The mind, in its essence, is limitless as well. It is a single universal entity in which all realities, and ideas of reality exist.

As we are limited physically, our knowledge and understanding is therefore limited. There is only so much that we can learn and understand in our rational mind. Beyond the restraints of the rational, we are conscious of much wider regions of the mind. We hope, aspire, pray and yearn for things to be realised, to come in our lives as known realities. We expect the unexpected to happen. This is the essence of mind reflecting into our consciousness.

Or, you might like to imagine a candle illuminating the regions of its close immediacy with its light. If there were no other light around in the world one candle would be visible from all corners of the universe, as its light would gradually spread all around.

We are just like a candle - our rational mind like the body of the candle, and the flame our soul. We know with the light of our understanding and beliefs what is around us. We know the knowable and define the unknown – as in the concepts of heaven and hell, and after world. What we cannot reach or understand we address with our notions, concepts and ideas. This is the world of possibilities around a world of certainties of our relational mind – and extended consciousness, like as halo round the flame of a candle. Our rational mind is like a containment field in which we live with certainties but in the consciousness we also face possibilities as we further our knowledge and understanding.

It is the magic of our consciousness that we see what we actually do not perceive physically. Our consciousness extends far into a universal mind. In a metaphysical sense there is no reality that is be beyond the reach of the light of our consciousness, or is unknowable. Even the absence of existence can be recognised as the presence of its absence – nothingness. We can ask – what was in the world when there was nothing? In fact, with the power of our ability to believe in God we can illuminate and define all that is there, or can be there in the world. This is also the fact that we all are conscious of the existence of God one way are the other, because it is in our essence.

Answer 9

Consciousness is possessing the ability to exercise the attributes of sensation, perception and the making of choices.

Answer 10

Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is a subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neurology, and cognitive science.

Answer 11

Consciousness is the knowledge of one's own mortality.