Consciousness Defined

 It is important that I define the word “consciousness” so you know what I am talking about. It is the opposite of unconsciousness, being awake rather than asleep, or under general anaesthesia. One could use the word “sentient” but a strict meaning of that word is the ability to experience sensations without necessarily including self-awareness or the ability to think which I think is important.

The consciousness I refer to is something that I personally know very well and I am certain you do too. There are two parts to it:

First: That which I will call the conscious mind, which Julian Jaynes describes here so beautifully:

0, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet nothing at all - what is it?

And where did it come from?

And why? (1)

The second part is Conscious sensory awareness, that is everything that the individual is aware of; all of their conscious mental activity, as above, together with all the perceptions they are aware of at that moment.

There are problems with what to include here. For example, you are reading a book and you become aware that a clock is chiming and it is up to the third chime. You were not consciously aware of the chimes but know that two chimes have already happened.  So were the previous chimes in consciousness or not? Susan Blackwell(2) describes this and other problems of trying to define consciousness.

It is of course partly about what you are paying attention to. While reading you pay attention to the book but all your senses are still functioning including your hearing. We could presume the chiming of the clock is heard at some level below consciousness but is remembered once your attention has shifted from reading to hearing the clock. Then one wonders how much of the sensations the individual is experiencing (but is not paying attention to) is stored in memory and can be recalled later.

So, should conscious awareness include only what the individual is paying attention to at that moment or should we also include all the sensations that the individual is having at that moment. I don’t have an answer to that right now.

We know even less about consciousness than you might think. No one knows how general anaesthetic drugs work. We know which drugs will cause unconsciousness and are safe to use. And drugs which can be used to reverse an anaesthetic. But these have all been found by trial and error, without knowing how the anaesthetic actually does it. One other thing, the change from consciousness to unconsciousness is fairly sudden. You might possibly remember feeling drowsy before you drop off (!) to sleep but not the actual transition. Similarly a patient on the operating table that is asked to count down from ten to one just stops suddenly.

 One important thing about consciousness is that is always conscious of something, of sounds or smells or sights or our own thoughts. To be conscious of only nothing is to be unconscious.

 To conclude we may know very well what we experience as our consciousness but there are serious problems when to try to define exactly what it is and where its edges are. This may appear to make any further discussion difficult if not impossible. But there is still much to be said.

 

Ref 1 - Jaynes, J. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Penguin (1991)

 

Ref 2 - Blackmore, S.J. The Grand Illusion.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

            http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/ns02.htm

Please see my website steveconscious.com