Consciousness refers to several phenomena at once, which can act as a manifestation of a special human activity. It is through consciousness that people in many ways perceive the world around them.
The term "consciousness" is difficult enough to define, as the word is used in many different ways. In medicine and psychology, consciousness is the mental state of an individual, which is expressed in the subjective perception of the external world, life, as well as a report on these events. In addition, consciousness is also called the state of wakefulness, as well as the reaction to the outside world as opposed to the state of sleep or coma.
The basis of consciousness is formed by thoughts, imagination, perception, self-awareness and other factors. In this regard, it is interpreted somewhat differently in philosophy and other sciences, which consider consciousness to be a category that denotes a person's mental activity in relation to its physical manifestation. As a result, many philosophers viewed consciousness as the most important phenomenon in the world. However, some scientists consider this word too vague in meaning to use it to describe specific phenomena.
One way or another, the concept of consciousness and its framework, as well as the meaning of the term's existence, act as one of the main problems of scientific thought. The study of the problem is engaged in such areas as the philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience and disciplines that study the problems of artificial intelligence. Among the problems of practical consideration, one can single out such as determining the presence of consciousness in seriously ill and in a coma people, the existence of inhuman consciousness and its measurement, the process of the emergence of human consciousness, the ability of computers to achieve conscious states, etc.
Consciousness can act as an ability and as thinking. Thinking as opposed to consciousness is the ability to think, to fix the world in certain concepts, to draw certain conclusions based on them.
The simplest consciousness is the feeling of the state of oneself and one's own "sense organs", of being in general. Consciousness can be observed only by the subject himself, it cannot be determined by objective means.
There is a debate about whether consciousness is required for intelligent behavior. In this case, the subject and the object, consciousness and the world are related. Some believe that mentally handicapped people develop distorted ideas about the world around them, which makes intelligent behavior a key factor in the formation of consciousness. However, one way or another, a person perceives the phenomena around him, therefore, one cannot talk about the complete absence of consciousness in any individual.
