Consciousness: Conscious, Subjective Experience

Abstract

Consciousness as a neuroscientific concept has been loosely employed to encompass several different meanings or aspects of cerebral function in human and nonhuman animals. The term is often applied to states of responsiveness to the environment-being conscious or in a coma, awake or asleep, and being alert or aroused within the waking state. These states can be described behaviorally by observing the human or animal. Here we restrict ourselves to the meaning of consciousness as one of subjective awareness and experience, whether it be sensory experiences of our environment, external and internal, or subjective experiences of our feelings and thoughts, or simply awareness of our own existing self and presence in the world. Our own subjective inner life, including sensory experiences, feelings, thoughts, volitional choices, and decisions, is what really matters to us as human beings. And it is the cerebral, neuronal basis of our subjective experiences that is at issue in the problem of the mind-brain relationship.