A brief explanation of the concept of Consciousness Different definitions of consciousness have been given over time.

Here we will briefly analyze the different mainstream definitions of consciousness, and draw together potential links, or bring forth an underlying theme, in order to be able to reach a general and universal meaning of consciousness. This definition of consciousness will be vital, as it will carry deep implications regarding prevalent paradigms, as well as the ability to refute different explanations/ontological opinions due to virtue of its definition. entience! " creature can be deemed conscious if it displays the ability of sentience, to be able to sense and respond to the world. However, what exactly does the ability to sense mean# $s only the presence of a reactionary mechanism to external stimuli, or is it deeper than that, pertaining to an inner %&ualia', or sense conceptualization and feeling# However, generally sentience is interpreted as a subjectively defined experience or internal %feeling'. elf(conscious! )ot only must a creature display subjective awareness of stimuli, but it must also display a higher ability of seeing and being aware of the fact that it is aware. However, where is the cut(off line to self(awareness# *xplicit self(awareness can be said to be non(existant in very young children, alongside some animals, however, a bit of lenience can show that some non(linguistic animals and slightly matured children can display self(awareness. +hat(it(is(like! ,onsciousness is the presence of %something that it is like' to be for the creature. The presence of a subjective experience in the mental sphere of the creature pertaining to their way of viewing the world. "lthough humans, bats, pigs, etc share sense perception, the way the bat perceives the world cannot be solely explained through its sense perceptions, nor can the humans-, and unsurprisingly has a different way of viewing the world in its mental cognition. Common themes so far! "ll of these point back to an the same essential characteristic which is being expressed. The essence which is, the presence of a sub.ective, inner experience, characterized by a fundamental first(person awareness and viewpoint/perception of the self and the world. How matured this perception is / elf consciousness/introspection0 or what this perception is /what it is like0, is not important, it is the underlying theme that defines the phenomena so far.

"ccess ,onsciousness! ,onsciousness can be defined in a different and more functional sense, characterized by inter(mental relations. %In this respect, a state's being conscious is a matter of its availability to interact with other states and of the access that one has to its content. In this more functional sense, which corresponds to what Ned Block (1 !" calls access consciousness, a visual state's being conscious is not so much a matter of whether or not it has a

#ualitative $what it's likeness%, but of whether or not it and the visual information that it carries is generally available for use and guidance by the organism. In so far as the information in that state is richly and fle&ibly available to its containing organism, then it counts as a conscious state in the relevant respect, whether or not it has any #ualitative or phenomenal feel in the Nagel sense.% 'plato.stanford.edu (his e&planation can be very susceptible for argument. (he impression one gets from this e&planation, is that a creature's mind is only compartmentali)ed, and information is stored in a machinistic way. *nly when the creature displays the ability to freely roam through these compartments and utili)e the information freely and fle&ibly can it be deemed $conscious%. In my opinion, this e&planation has a gap. +aying the creature has the ability to freely access and fle&ibly guide the internal information it has stored has a hidden implication, that is the presence of a first'person conscious awareness in the cognition, that looks down onto the information in a sub,ective fashion. (o simply define consciousness as a creature accessing information internally, in a third person type of fashion is simplistic, and doesn't e&plain who does the $accessing%. Nonetheless, this is why I believe this opinion eventually reduces down to the same essence, the first'person sub,ective e&perience, and the presence of the inter'mental cognition is the same as the $self'conscious% definition, which we already deemed as irrelevant in defining what the essence of consciousness is. Narrative consciousness- +imilar to access consciousness. .onsciousness can be seen as a $stream% of perspectives that the virtual self undergoes. (he person's conscious mental states would be those in the stream. $consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up in bits ... it is nothing .oined1 it flows. " -river- or a -stream- are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, lets call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life' ' /andell +tevenson. .learly we can see the model of access consciousness here yet again, the $information% can be the different bits in the stream, however, +tevenson goes further than that, and does not define these bits as what makes consciousness, instead, he looks at the river from a wholistic view, and sees that the river is what constitutes consciousness in itself, similar to the underlying essence in the mind which was discussed in access consciousness as the gap, similarly, the view of consciousness being a collective stream and not simply divided bits put together, is similar to representing the underlying essence of the mind. 0et again we go back to the presence of a first'person conscious awareness that is only defined in a sub,ective fashion. +tate on is aware of being in- 1 mental state one is aware of being in. 2eta'mentality3cognition. 4ualitative states- 4ualia as defined by 5ennett is %an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us! the ways things seem to us '. 6ere, consciousness is defined in a #ualitative sense and involves the $raw sensory feel%. *ne's perception of the color yellow, or the taste od cheese, for e&ample, is a completely sub,ective one, and counts as a conscious mental state, stemming off from the senses. +imilarly, +chrodinger says %The sensation of color cannot be
accounted for by the physicist-s ob.ective picture of light(waves. ,ould the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and

the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain# $ do not think so.' Briefly, it is an intrinsic e&perience of the senses. *ne does not need to dig in to deep to

find the resemblance with previous definitions. (his definition is e&plaining the subjective experience one has of the senses. 1lthough the previous definitions do not narrow the e&perience down to ,ust the senses, they carry the same essence. 6owever, is conscious e&perience only comprised of the inner feeling and awareness of the senses7 (his can be debatable, as inner awareness of self' consciousness can be said to refute this, since they are not based off of any sensory stimuli, they are an intrinsic and inner meta'cognition that is present, which transcends mere sensory stimuli. (hus, this e&planation is very much the same thing, only giving the already present problem of whether a higher more refined form of self'consciousness needs to be present in order for a creature to be fully considered conscious. 8henomenal- $Phenomenal structure should not be conflated with #ualitative structure, despite the sometimes interchangeable use of $#ualia% and $phenomenal properties% in the literature. $8henomenal organi)ation% covers all the various kinds of order and structure found within the domain of e&perience, i.e., within the domain of the world as it appears to us. (here are obviously important links between the phenomenal and the #ualitative. Indeed #ualia might be best understood as properties of phenomenal or e&perienced ob,ects, but there is in fact far more to the phenomenal than raw feels. 1s 9ant (1:;:", 6usserl (1 1<", and generations of phenomenologists have shown, the phenomenal structure of e&perience is richly intentional and involves not only sensory ideas and #ualities but comple& representations of time, space, cause, body, self, world and the organi)ed structure of lived reality in all its conceptual and nonconceptual forms.% ' plato.stanford.eu No doubt, the #ualitative definition overlaps. 2ost probably, the further e&planation of consciousness also
involving inner conceptualizations of space, time and the self, can be another way of e&pressing the meta' cognition e&pressed earlier that goes further than mere sense awareness. (his meta-cognition can involve the self'conscious aspect. (hus, this e&planation yet again gives us the same conclusion. Consciousness is a subjective experience. No words can properly express this phenomena, simply for the reason given previously, however, we can mutually understand it, because we individually experience it. Consciousness is the presence of an inner essence in a creature that is characterized by metacognition/mentality, a subjective, first-person, inner awareness, of at least the world around it. ow matured this aspect of the creature must be in order to be deemed fully conscious is debatable. !t can fully develop into the capability of self-consciousness/awareness of its own awareness, with highly developed inter-mental relations, that can go further into conceptualizations of the self, time, space and further phenomena. "ndoubtedly, this is a phenomena which intrinsically transcends all material bounds, and can be the possible source of transcendental, existential speculation, and serves as the source of meta-physical in#uiry and our lin$ to that realm. %his can be utilized very well in the refutation of materialism and affirmation of meta-physical truths.