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The internet encyclopedia of philosophy also has a good entry on “Consciousness”. They talk about higher order representation – which is basically a person being aware of their own consciousness at any given time, or aware of anything at any given time. For instance, if I am aware of my feelings on a certain matter, then I am more conscious of that matter. That seems fairly obvious, I mean if you think about something more you are going to be more conscious of it. This relates to the two different levels of thought and feeling – the lower level is more unconscious and immediate and less under control, and the higher level of consciousness is part of conscious experience and people are more aware of because it isn’t ‘unconscious’ it is ‘conscious’. So what separates out the two different levels of consciousness is one is mostly beneath awareness and would be defined as being unconscious, and the other is largely in awareness and would be defined as being conscious. There is clearly an overlap between conscious thoughts and feelings and unconscious thoughts and feelings, however – there are degrees that someone’s awareness is ‘awake’ and ‘clear’. Have I presented here a theory of consciousness? It is obvious that there are degrees to awareness, and all I have said is that consciousness is basically a combination of feelings and thoughts - that is a rather simple explanation of consciousness. Is there more explanation that is needed in order to answer what consciousness really is?:
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