consciousness

I’ve been mentioning consciousness quite a lot on this blog. But what is it?

Annaka Harris is a editor and consultant for science writers and the author of a lucid introduction to the nature of consciousness research called Conscious: a brief guide to the fundamental mystery of the mind (2019). She writes:

And even though, as mentioned earlier, Thomas Nagel’s definition of the word “consciousness” (i.e., being like something) is the most accurate way to talk about subjective experience, there are a variety of ways people use the word (the capacity for self-reflection, wakefulness, alertness, etc.), which causes additional confusion.

– Annaka Harris

Nagel’s definition is from a 1974 article called What Is It Like to Be a Bat? and his perspective on consciousness as subjective experience is now known simply as the “what it’s like” thought experiment. It boils down to this:

An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism – something that it is like for the organism.

– Thomas Nagel

Anil Seth describes the importance of this idea as follows:

Without consciousness, it may hardly matter whether you live for another five years or another five hundred. In all that time there would be nothing it would be like to be you.

– Anil Seth

Yet, how consciousness relates to awareness, perception, attention, sensation and feeling (and how to disambiguate these different terms which are often used interchangeably in dance research) is for another time.