Consciousness And Consciousness, How Is It Different?

Although they sound almost the same, consciousness and awareness do not have the same meaning. It is not the same to say “I have a clear conscience” than “to be conscious after receiving a blow or to be aware of each and every one of the stimuli that surround me”. The first term is of great interest to the field of philosophy, the second is still a challenge for neuroscience.

The molecular biologist and Nobel laureate Francis Crick used to say that, although it is necessary to know how to differentiate one dimension from the other, in reality we will always fall short when trying to define each one of them. They are tremendously complex entities, and in particular the second, consciousness.

Likewise, as the Royal Spanish Academy of Language (RAE) indicates,  on occasions, we can find ourselves with somewhat ambiguous situations that can lead us to misunderstandings. In fact, and although it may seem striking to us, it is very common to fall into errors and even see an author confusing terms in many publications.

Therefore, let’s see what nuances and particularities define each of these dimensions.

Consciousness and consciousness: characteristics and singularities

If we had to use a basic and general definition to differentiate consciousness from consciousness, it would be the following: consciousness allows you to be part of your reality, to perceive every nuance, stimulus and internal process. Conscience, for its part, allows us to behave in a morally and socially acceptable way.

Broadly speaking, it certainly seems understandable and even simple to be able to differentiate one from the other. However, if someone told us that “I am aware of my actions” , would it perhaps refer to the moral aspect, the perceptual aspect or perhaps both? In these cases, we are already entering a subjective plane where everything depends on what the issuer wants to express.

What is consciousness?

The mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal used to say that conscience is the best moral book we have. He was not wrong. This reality basically refers to that capacity that people have to know which acts, thoughts, words and situations are correct and which are not.

It is a moral and ethical concept; however, it should be noted that it also has some small considerations that are worth keeping in mind.

• Consciousness has nothing to do with processes like attention or perception.
• Philosophers such as Descartes and Locke, tried in their day to delve into this concept to understand how it is related, for example, consciousness with language, with thought and intelligence. We must also bear in mind that one of the most notable differences between consciousness and consciousness is that the latter is a “virtue” for philosophers.
• In this way, when we say that someone “has a conscience,” we are assessing that that person has moral values. We refer to her as someone who tries to live up to basic standards of respect and balance. Moreover, sometimes we also say that animals demonstrate “conscience” because they carry out certain moral or “social” acts that remind us of those more human virtues.

What is consciousness?

Consciousness is more than just being awake, than having our eyes open and feeling part of that sensitive reality that surrounds us.  William James, father of American psychology, was one of the first authors to address the understanding of this difference between consciousness and consciousness. As a philosopher, psychologist and scientist, he defined consciousness through a series of characteristics that will allow us to understand it much better:

• Consciousness is subjective. It has nothing to do with ethics or morals. It is a personal process where one is aware of their own thoughts, of their internal reality.

• It is related to thought, therefore it is always in constant change, it is a continuum that never stops, that is always processing information, attending to stimuli.
• Likewise, consciousness can also be selective. At a given moment, people can pay attention to one aspect (internal or external) to separate it from the rest of the stimuli and make contact with what interests us.

Consciousness is the greatest enigma of the human being

Christof Koch is an American neuroscientist and one of the greatest experts in the study of consciousness and its neural bases. In books like  The Search for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach , he points out that the main difference between consciousness and consciousness is that the former is still an enigma.

The second has to do with the sense of responsibility, with the values ​​and knowledge of each one for their own person and their actions.

This scientist, in turn, points out that there are two types of consciousness that we must take into account:

• The primary consciousness. It has to do with our perceptions, sensations, memory, thoughts, with what we dream, with what we want … All this allows us to also separate ourselves from what surrounds us to define our individuality.
• Reflective consciousness. This dimension is perhaps an area as interesting as it is challenging at the same time. It has to do with “observing one’s own mind”, with knowing what we are, what we know, what happens in our inner being.

To conclude, as we see consciousness and consciousness are two terms as complex as they are interesting at the same time. They are, in turn, more than mere products of the mind. It is what makes us human. As Thomas Huxley said in his day, they are those entities that make us “aware” that we are more than bones, muscles, cells and a skin that surrounds us.