Consciousness

Consciousness in a very general sense is thought to be merely the state of awareness. However, the definition of what consciousness is has received numerous contributions from many different fields of study. For example, psychology, psychiatry, neurophysiology, anthropology, behavioral science, and a new field called “cognitive science,” which is the study of the nature of various mental tasks and the processes that enable them to be performed, all have donated some variation to the growing definition of what consciousness is.

A steadfast definition of consciousness is that it is the totality of our awareness of bodily sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and recollections at a particular moment of time. This tends to be considered more of a psychological definition of what consciousness is. However, a biological definition, which has been subdivided by Gerald Edelman into what is called “primary consciousness” and “higher-order consciousness,” displays a difference in degrees of consciousness.

Primary consciousness is thought to be the state of being mentally aware of things in the world, of having mental images in the present, but is not accompanied by any sense of a person with a past or future tense. This type of consciousness is thought to be possessed by animals that are nonlinguistic and nonsemantic; it is referred to as “creature consciousness.”

Higher-order consciousness is different from primary consciousness in that it involves the actual recognition of an individual's own actions or affections (i.e., we are conscious of being conscious). It also embodies a model of the personal and of the past and the future as well as the present; this is also known as “mental state consciousness.” In addition, higher-order consciousness exhibits direct awareness, the noninferential or immediate awareness of mental episodes without the involvement of sense organs or receptors. According to Edelman, it is believed that humans possess both primary and higher-order consciousness and that the two coexist and couple the actions of each other.

Throughout the ages, there have always been “theories of consciousness” addressing who or what possesses consciousness. The “anthropistic theory” holds that consciousness is peculiar only to man; this is philosophically the opinion that Descartes upheld. Another theory known as the “neurological theory” or the “Darwinian theory” holds that consciousness is a result of “progressive evolution” (i.e., the centralization of the nervous system) and is therefore possessed only by man and higher mammals with this anatomical tendency.

Some theories hold that all animals, but not insects, plants, or other life forms, possess consciousness. This is known as the “animal theory.” Animal consciousness at the present is loosely defined. The reason for this is most likely because when the concept of animal consciousness is addressed, the following two questions remain unanswered: How can we definitively know which animals, besides humans, possess consciousness (this is known as “the distribution question”)? Is it possible for humans to understand what the conscious experience of other animals is like (this is known as “the phenomenological question”)? Also, due to the many varieties of species, it would be difficult to differentiate the different types of consciousness that may exist.

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