what is conciesousness?

Question

how do you klnow

Answer 1

its the fact that you can ask that question, get it?

Answer 2

No one knows for sure all of what consciousness is. However, we are starting to chip away at this seemingly monolithic thing.

First of all we know that consciousness is not ONE thing. It is actually composite of components or layers, where the higher layers tend to dominate lower layers. There are several superficial layers at the top. These are the habitual layers of social customs and behaviors that have been learned and practiced for most of one's life. These layers may only exist in social animals like humans, chimps, apes, horses, wolves, etc.

Beneath you get into the part that is the "self". This goes by many different names: the personality, the persona, the ego, and perhaps even the "soul". Immediately below the self is the part of the consciousness that is involved in the creative process. Then there is the instinctive layer that drives the libido to mate. A few more layers and you get to the core of the consciousness where the "observer" is.

Almost all judgments, censoring, greed, and fear are done by the self. You know this layer is separate from the higher habitual layers as the self can be aware it is doing something out of habit that it might not have done otherwise. This part of the consciousness must have evolved to protect us from doing harm to ourselves. It seeks to protect the body, prevent us from doing things it thinks are dangerous, avoiding unnecessary risks, and in what is involved in beliefs, especially involved in beliefs of after lives. The self wants to perpetuate itself at all costs so it is very vulnerable to any belief that promises eternal life, a promise it is not able to resist in most people. Only people who have experienced the death of the self realize that the self is an illusion and has no reality beyond the life of the brain. In the dying process the self dies well before the rest of the body and since all fear of death resides in the self, once the self is gone, all fears of death are gone. At this point "you", the remaining part of your consciousness, don't care what happens to you, the entire body. Any animals with a brain that tend to have "personality" are exhibiting this process.

The creative process is varied and involves both logical and extrapolate functions. The scientists tend to emphasize the logical and the artists tends to emphasize the extrapolate functions but they are both part of the creative process. Humans have definitely developed this further than any other animal although it is clear that primates and some other higher level mammals have some creative processes. One of the things that a good scientist or artist has to learn how to do is to circumvent the self which tends to censor and suppress creative thought.

The instinctive process, or what Freud would have called the libido, is involved in several primitive processes below the self. One of the more important ones is the sexual urge. This is a fairly important part of the consciousness as it tends to color our perceptions and change our values without us being aware that we are being moved towards sexual goals. I'm sure all animals with brains have this process.

At the core is the "observer", for lack of a better description. This is probably the basic or fundamental form of consciousness that all animals with a brain have. It makes no judgments at all and simply observers wordlessly and is aware.

I know because I have experienced each of these layers I have described. When the self "died" it was a very liberating experience and more pleasurable than any sexual orgasm you have ever had. This occurs because a large amount of energy is consumed in maintaining the self. The self is probably the least efficient part of the mind or consciousness.

Answer 3

Spell check please -

CONSCIOUSNESS -
consciousness, in psychology, a term commonly used to indicate a state of awareness of self and environment. In Freudian psychology, conscious behavior largely includes cognitive processes of the ego, such as thinking, perception, and planning, as well as some aspects of the superego, such as moral conscience. Some psychologists deny the distinction between conscious and unconscious behavior; others use the term consciousness to indicate all the activities of an individual that constitute the personality. In recent years, neuropsychologists have begun to investigate the links between consciousness and memory, as well as altered states of consciousness such as the dream state. See also defense mechanism; psychoanalysis.-

Answer 4

True Consciousness is just the mental state of ''Being or Awareness" which is experienced in deep Meditation.One can know it only through practical Spiritual experience.

Answer 5

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, neuroscience, and cognitive science.

Mind and Brain Portal

Representation of consciousness from the 17th century.Some philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness, which is experience itself, and access consciousness, which is the processing of the things in experience [1] Phenomenal consciousness is the state of being conscious, such as when we say "I am conscious." Access consciousness is being conscious of something in relation to abstract concepts, such as when we say "I am conscious of these words." Various forms of access consciousness include awareness, self-awareness, conscience, stream of consciousness, Husserl's phenomenology, and intentionality. The concept of phenomenal consciousness is closely related to the concept of qualia.

An understanding of necessary preconditions for consciousness in the human brain may allow us to address important ethical questions. For instance, to what extent are non-human animals conscious? At what point in fetal development does consciousness begin? Can machines achieve conscious states? [2] Are todays autonome and intelligent machines already conscious? These issues are of great interest to those concerned with the ethical treatment of other beings, be they animals, fetuses, or, in the future, machines. [3]

In common parlance, consciousness denotes being awake and responsive to one's environment; this contrasts with being asleep or being in a coma. The term 'level of consciousness' denotes how consciousness seems to vary during anesthesia and during various states of mind, such as day dreaming, lucid dreaming, imagining, etc. Nonconsciousness exists when consciousness is not present. There is speculation, mostly among religious groups, that consciousness may exist after death or before birth.

Answer 6

It's a social phenomenon in which a living thing is aware of his/her own individual existence in the world.

Answer 7

I think you may have spelt that word incorrectly. The consciousness that i am thinking of is a state of being.

Answer 8

you are alive
You are aware of the world around you

If you are sleeping...you aren't conscious, If you get knocked out...you aren't conscious....