• Question: how can you define conciousnes

    Asked by marcusw to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      With great difficulty!

    • Photo: Catherine Rix

      Catherine Rix answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      This is a really tricky (and good question) scientists and philosophers have been trying to do this for hundreds of years and many of them disagree with each other! In 1989 a psychologist called Stuart Sutherland wrote this about conciousness “it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it has evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it”.

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      In short, you could define conciousness as an interaction between an internal ‘mind’ and the external world.

      But what is conscious? We think we are, and maybe some animals are… philosophy takes over here and gets really complicated!

      Some experiments have tried to test whether animals can recognise themselves in a mirror, and used this as an idea of how aware animals are of themselves. Only apes (including us), dolphins, elephants and magpies can!

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      I don’t know. Fascinating question though. Ask a philosopher?

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      “I think, therefore I am”.

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