What is consciousness?

Davey Gaga

Davey Gaga

Under you like a G.U.Y.
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On another forum, there has been a large discussion on "what is consciousness?"

What are your views? Maybe I can use points here to report back and vice-versa.

If you need me to elaborate more, just ask.
 
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con/SCI/ous/ness

Etymologically speaking, it means "with knowledge". So with knowing something, you become "conscious". As long as you are able to know something and do know something, then you are conscious. Specifically, if you are able to perceive your surroundings, then you are conscious. According to this definition, there's nothing mysterious about it.

Was there something you wanted to tell us specifically about consciousness? So that we could work with it?
 
I think consciousness is our awareness of things. Whether it is our surroundings or knowledge.

We can be aware of what is around us like a chair we are near or a table in the middle of the room.

We can be aware of Knowledge in that we can know something and know we know something.

So I would say consciousness is our overall awareness of everything that you can be aware of.
 
These replies are almost identical :P

Something that was said was in regards to a toilet. There are some toilets now that can send a message to the CPU when it gets clogged, dirty or broken. Is this toilet conscious, because it is AWARE that it is broken, clogged or dirty? Is it aware, because it can tell there is something wrong? Also, what is necessary for something to be conscious, is it something that only humans possess?

Another thing was about a certain persons lady friend who is blind. Is she less conscious, because she is less aware? Is awareness and consciousness related and linked in this way? If a person/organism cannot perceive the world using the five senses that we humans have, is it less conscious?

Just to get us started :)
 
I guess consciousness in a person is if you cannot feel at all. Perhaps you can't see, but you can hear, smell and touch. Helen Keller couldn't see or hear, but she could smell and touch. So she was in some way, still connected to the phsyical world, as are all other blind and deaf people. If you are not connected to the world in at least one way and cannot perceive at all, then you are not conscious. I don't know about more conscious or less conscious, because I've only ever seen it being used as 100% conscious or 100% unconscious.
 
I think in this I would say that if you have at least one active sense then you are conscious. So someone who has lost all five senses is not conscious. Also it matters not how many senses you have active if you have one or five you are fully conscious.
 
I think there's a 6th sense, like a gut feeling. Like ever been in the complete dark in a place you don't know your way around but yet you know something's near like a wall? idk. consciousness is way too abstract, like the ability to think, or imagine things, memory, it's endless.
 
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