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18 - Consciousness

from Part IV - The Runaway Brain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2023

Raymond Hickey
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
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Summary

Consciousness is the seamless inner subjective state which accompanies you in every moment of your wakeful life and which no-one else is privy to. It is a non-physical experience, which cannot be observed by examining the brain. In attempting to define consciousness, various scientists have strived to specify its necessary and sufficient properties or at least to narrow these down so as to get a handle on it. This is where the difficulties arise. While we all have consciousness and recognise it as an experience, it is difficult to pinpoint it in the form of a definition.1 And how would one go about doing this? One can give an operational definition: consciousness is when we show awareness and when we react to external stimuli. But it is much more than that, it is our inner world which we experience even when there are no external stimuli. Consciousness is where our thoughts are, where we get our ideas.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Consciousness
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.019
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  • Consciousness
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.019
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Consciousness
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.019
Available formats
×