Consciousness and awareness, how is it different?

Although they sound almost the same, consciousness and awareness do not have the same meaning. Saying “I have a clear conscience” is not the same as “being conscious after receiving a blow” or “being aware of each and every stimulus that surrounds me.” The first term is of great interest for the field of philosophy, the second is still a challenge for neuroscience.

The molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner 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 of them. They are tremendously complex entities, and in particular the second one, consciousness.

Likewise, as the Royal Spanish Academy of Language (RAE) tells us, sometimes we may encounter somewhat ambiguous situations that may lead us to misunderstandings. In fact, and although it may seem striking to us, it is very common to make mistakes and even see in many publications an author confusing terms. Therefore, let’s see what nuances and particularities define each of these dimensions.

Consciousness and awareness: 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 moral and socially acceptable manner.

Broadly speaking, it undoubtedly seems understandable and even easy 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 now enter a subjective plane where everything depends on what the sender wants to express.

What is consciousness?

The mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal said that conscience is the best moral book we have. He wasn’t wrong. This reality basically refers to the ability that people have to know which actions, 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 presents some small considerations that are worth taking into account.

Consciousness has nothing to do with processes such as attention or perception.Philosophers such as Descartes and Locke once tried to delve deeper into this concept to understand how, for example, consciousness is related to language, thought and intelligence. We must also take into account that One of the most notable differences between consciousness and conscience is that the second is for philosophers a “virtue.”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 according to basic rules of respect and balance. It’s more, Sometimes we also say that animals demonstrate “consciousness.” because they carry out certain moral or social acts.

What is consciousness?

Consciousness is more than just being awake, having our eyes open and feeling part of that sensitive reality that surrounds us. William James, father of North 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 one’s own thoughts, of one’s internal reality.It is related to thought, therefore, it is always constantly changing.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 put their attention on an 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 leading experts in the study of consciousness and its neuronal bases. In books like The search for consciousness: a neurobiological approach, points out that the main difference between consciousness and conscience 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 person for their own person and their actions.

This scientist points out to us, in turn, that there are two types of consciousness that we must take into account. They are the following:

The primary consciousness. It has to do with our perceptions, sensations, memory, thoughts, with what we dream, with what we desire… All of this allows us to also separate ourselves from what surrounds us to define our individuality.Reflective consciousness. This dimension is, perhaps, an area that is both interesting and 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 that are as complex as they are interesting at the same time. They are, in turn, more than mere products of the mind. It’s what makes us human. As Thomas Huxley said in his day, they are those entities that make us “aware” that We are more than just bones, muscles, cells and the skin that surrounds us.

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