human consciousness
Subjective mental life
Human consciousness is the subjective experience of being aware—of perceiving, thinking, and feeling from a first-person perspective.
It encompasses everything from sensing pain to contemplating abstract ideas, unified by the quality of "what it's like" to have these experiences.
Philosophers and scientists debate whether consciousness arises purely from brain activity or involves something more.
The term often appears in discussions of artificial intelligence: Can machines ever achieve human consciousness?
Related concepts include self-awareness, sentience, and the "hard problem" of explaining why physical processes produce subjective experience at all.
- thoughtMental concept or reflection
- inner lifeOne's private mental world
- empathySharing another's emotions
- sensationPerceived stimulus or phenomenon
- qualiaSubjective character of experiences
self-concept · reasoning · dualism · mood · perception · ego · materialism · affect · phenomenology · first person · mindfulness · attention · memory · individuality · self-reflection · personality · observation · emotional intelligence
- human originsHomo sapiens, hominins, hominids, Cro-Magnon, Neanderthals
human consciousnessunconsciousness
Complete lack of awareness
oblivion · coma · brain death · death · dreamless sleep
human, humans, humane, humanely, humanity, humanities, inhumane, inhumanely, inhuman