Have I got a tough one for you

Anyone care to share hers or his opinion on what the heck consciousness is ?

Personal opinions only please, no cuts and pastes allowed. Lol. As if I've got anything to say around here.

Thanks so much in advance. Real curious about your opinions.

Peace and love to all.
2Da1
luminousinspirations.blogspot.com

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To get you started :

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

CONSCIOUSNESS

Not to be confused with conscience.

Consciousness has been defined loosely as a constellation of attributes of mind such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, and the ability to perceive a relationship between oneself and one's environment. It has been defined from a more biological and causal perspective as the act of autonomously modulating attentional and computational effort, usually with the goal of obtaining, retaining, or maximizing specific parameters (food, a safe environment, family, mates). Consciousness may involve thoughts, sensations, perceptions, moods, emotions, dreams, and an awareness of self, although not necessarily any particular one or combination of these.[1] Consciousness is a point of view, an I, or what Thomas Nagel called the existence of "something that it is like" to be something.[2] Julian Jaynes has emphasized that "consciousness is not the same as cognition and should be sharply distinguished from it. ... The most common error ... is to confuse consciousness with perception." [3] He says, "Mind-space I regard as the primary feature of consciousness". The exact definition of consciousness is still open to debate among academics.

The issue of what consciousness is, and to what extent and in what sense it exists, is the subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. Issues of practical concern include how the presence of consciousness can be assessed in severely ill individuals;[4] to what extent non-humans are conscious and self-conscious; at what point in fetal development consciousness begins; and whether computers can achieve conscious or self-conscious states.[5][6][7]

In common parlance, consciousness denotes being awake and responsive to the environment, in contrast to being asleep or in a coma.

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