What is consciousness?

Answer 1

Note that there are many ways to look at what mind is.
My idea of mind is derived from my physicalist belief because I think physicalism is the most plausible doctrine.

I will go through some different ways to look at what mind is.

1. Dualism
Rene Descartes provides the classical statement of dualism.
Starting with the experience of his own mental existence, Descartes asks whether the idea of his mental existence is indistinguishable from the idea of his body. His answer is that it is not, concluding that the idea or essence of mind is different from the idea of body. Since two things that correspond to different ideas cannot be identical, the mind must be different from the body.

2. Idealism
George Berkeley argued that a thorough empiricist will be led to adopt idealism. According to Berkeley, if all our knowledge comes to us through sense impressions, then we can never have knowledge of material substance it self. We may posit material substance as the cause of these impressions, but there is no direct evidence for such such substance and positing such substance may lead us into contradiction. His conclusion is that there are only minds and sense impressions.

3. Logical behaviourism
Gilbert Ryle, who is a logical behaviorist, provides an influential criticism of dualism. According to Ryle, duelists are guilty of a category mistake. For example, it is perfectly legitimate to about the individual members of a football team, but it would surely be a blunder to think that the team is something that exists in addition to the members of the team. For example, if someone were introduced to the members of the team and then exclaimed "Now I'd like to meet the team, " we would say that the person was fundamentally confused. Talk of the team is really just talk of the members of the team at a certain level of abstraction. Likewise, according to Ryle, we can talk about mental states (like pain) and we can talk of certain behaviors (like holding damaged body parts and moaning), but it would be a mistake to suppose that the mental state of pain exists in addition to some relevant class of behavior.

4. Materialsim / Physicalism
Noam Chomsky sketches a radical approach to materialism. According to Chomsky, the notion of body is itself subject to revision by the sciences. For example, the concept of body employed by Descartes was soon superseded by the Newtonian notion of body, and research in particle physics during the last century has continually revised our understanding of the nature of physical bodies. This being the case, Chomsky argues that the very notion of the mind/ body problem is ill defined. It is ill defined because we have no clear conception of what the body is. Moreover, he suggests that if our understanding of mental phenomena seems incompatible with our understanding of the physical body, then our understanding of the physical body will have to change to accommodate the mental. Our ultimate understanding of body will be shaped by (among other things) our theories of the mental.

I hope that helped.

Answer 2

The bases of human consciousness....is the ability to plan

Answer 3

Consciousness? You mean self consciousness or the act of being conscious? When you're self conscious you're always thinking whether you're pretty enough or not or if you didn't put on enough make-up. The act of being conscious is when you're awake-ish. It's the opposite of a coma.

Answer 4

Awareness. You asked a question: that is one example.
If you feel, smell, taste, hear, or see, if you think thoughts, rationalize or conclude anything, you are using your consciousness.

Answer 5

Click on this link to get your answer from reference.com

http://www.reference.com/search?r=13&q=Conciousness

Answer 6

Like it is sensory input

Answer 7

the awareness of yourself as an individual