As with most definitions, it is important to understand all parts of the phrase that we are defining. In this case, let's start with consciousness vs awareness and define them separately. In 1927, early behavioral scientist E.C. Tolman defined consciousness as essentially when someone or something shifts from just a reaction to reacting in a "differentiated" way, or reacting in a way that requires thought and processing. In short, consciousness is the difference between a simple reaction, which even single cell organisms are capable of, to a thought through action, which takes a higher level of cognition.
Awareness is separately defined as the understanding that someone or something exists, and being able to convert that understanding to knowledge. When one combines these two definitions, adding the idea of responding in a differentiated way to the understanding that something is happening, we get the concept of understanding that we are responding in a differentiated way, and thus achieve the awareness of being aware, or conscious awareness.
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There are three different types of awareness:
- Peripheral awareness
- Sensory awareness
- Self-awareness
As one might guess from the names of the types themselves, they apply to different situations, and though they may co-exist and inform one another, they are distinct forms of awareness.
Peripheral Awareness
Peripheral awareness is the ability or part of the brain that takes in constant information about what's happening around us. Like a program on our computer that runs in order to make everything else work, peripheral awareness is constantly functioning in order to aid all other forms of cognition. One can't shut down peripheral awareness without shutting down the whole system (think a coma, the only time when we aren't at least peripherally aware of our surroundings, as one would be even in normal sleep).
We are all familiar with the concept of peripheral vision, or what we see even when we aren't focusing on it, like seeing the movement of a bird in the corner of the eye even though it's focused on the road. Peripheral awareness is more than just vision, and combines all of the senses into a full picture of what's happening around us even if we aren't focused on it. If one's peripheral awareness were to be reduced, the flow of information to the brain would be greatly reduced, and it's this information that aids in cognitive decision making.
Sensory Awareness
Sensory awareness is closely related closely to peripheral awareness, as it involves information gathered from stimuli. The main difference between peripheral awareness and sensory awareness is our response to those stimuli. Sensory awareness focuses directly on the experiences of the senses as opposed to just being vaguely aware of them- it's the difference between vague awareness and hyper awareness. You may be peripherally aware that it's warm outside due to context clues, but sensory awareness is our body's reaction to that warmth, such as sweating.
Self Awareness
Where peripheral awareness is more about what we are vaguely aware of happening around us and sensory awareness focuses in on how we physically feel about those things, self awareness is a more existential form of awareness. Harvard Business Review provides us with two different definitions or kinds of self awareness: first, there is internal self awareness, which how we understand our thoughts and personal values in a way that's related to the information we receive from our surroundings, and what informs our reaction to those surroundings. Second, there is external self awareness, which is when we understand how other people view us. For example, if one buys a new outfit, one will go through both steps; first by seeing how they personally feel in their new clothes, and second by understanding how others will see them. It's a combination of these factors that allow us to make decisions to aid us in functioning in society.
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Though parts of the brain and how they work together still remain a somewhat mystery that scientists are constantly discovering new things about, most agree that awareness exists in the working memory centers. Dr. Bruce Charlton explains this in his article "Evolution and the Cognitive Neuroscience of Awareness" by talking about how perception is attended to in the brain in the same place working memory is located, which is in the cerebrum. This is because perception must be interacted with in order to become an awareness, and working memory will hold that perception for long enough in the brain in order for that interaction to happen.
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One might already be familiar with the different functional levels of consciousness as the preconscious, conscious, and unconscious, but there are also different levels of consciousness as they relate to conscious awareness.
These levels include:
- Minimal consciousness
- Perceptual consciousness
- Introspective consciousness
Minimal Consciousness
Minimal consciousness is a form of consciousness that is totally or mostly absent of awareness. Earlier, we talked about how this might result from being in a coma, but this may also result from severe damage to the cerebrum, or being in an otherwise vegetative state for any reason. When in this state, responses extend essentially to following basic direct commands, including minimal responses and movements. In other words, minimal consciousness may result in the person being vaguely aware of things like basic commands, but the response doesn't require any true focus.
Perceptual Consciousness
To understand perceptual consciousness, we can look at the root definition of "perceptual", or "percept", which is defined as an impression of an object obtained by use of the senses. This means that perceptual consciousness is the way your brain processes the information given to it, and what it then does with that information. This also gets into the subjective, or, how we feel about something based on our brain's perception of it. For example, two people can see the exact same object, and have completely different feelings about it based on the way they each perceive things. This is closely related to peripheral awareness, where the things we are peripherally aware of inform how we go about our lives. We may be peripherally aware, or perceive, that it's cold outside, for example.
Introspective Consciousness
Like perceptual consciousness, we can understand the definition of introspective consciousness by first looking at the definition of introspection, which is the act of thinking and learning about our own thoughts and mind. This means that introspective consciousness is awareness of one's own thoughts or actions, or thinking about thinking. This is the level of consciousness that brings us to self-awareness, and therefore this third level of consciousness brings us all the way to conscious awareness, or the act of being aware of being aware. For example, someone with clinical depression may react to something negatively, but before verbalizing that negative feelings, may think to themselves that perhaps they are only reacting this way because of their diagnosed mental condition, and therefore revise their verbal reaction.
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Like all things relating to the brain and thinking, there are layers upon layers to how and why we think and feel the way we do. In the instance of conscious awareness, we must first understand all of the levels of awareness and then all the levels of consciousness in order to understand how all of the puzzle pieces fit together to achieve true consciousness. In this case specifically, conscious awareness cannot exist without all of the pieces that we discussed. One must have peripheral, sensory, and self awareness in order to perceive things in the way that would lead to introspective consciousness, which is the closest building block to conscious awareness. Peripheral awareness is the gathering of information, sensory awareness is our body responding to that information, and self awareness is how we feel about that information.
The levels of consciousness as they relate to conscious awareness include minimal consciousness, perceptual consciousness, and introspective consciousness. Minimal consciousness is a state in which an individual is totally or mostly absent of awareness. Perceptual consciousness is the way the brain processes and responds to information. Introspective consciousness is made possible by self-awareness.
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Video Transcript
Conscious Awareness: Definition
''I think, therefore I am.'' You've probably heard that phrase before, attributed to the French philosopher, René Descartes. It's an interesting idea, and the more you think about it, the more interesting it gets.
You see, while humans are not entirely unique in our ability to be self-aware, we are unique in the ability to be aware of our awareness. Think about that for a minute. The human mind is pretty fascinating and many psychologists have dedicated their careers to studying our conscious awareness, or the things we are aware of being aware of.
Minimal Consciousness
The mind operates at various levels of consciousness, ranging from the things it does that we are never aware of to those thoughts we can't ever seem to get out our heads. Today, we'll just focus on the levels of consciousness that we can perceive.
First is minimal consciousness. In psychological studies of awareness, this is the lowest level of conscious awareness. Though, we should note that the term should most definitely not be confused with the medical condition of minimal consciousness, indicating a near-vegetative state.
Minimal consciousness occurs when you are vaguely aware of something, but it's not a strong presence in your mind. This process is almost always functioning, but the degree to which you are actually aware of it varies.
A common example is a person on a long road trip through someplace really flat, like Kansas. After hours of driving, that person may suddenly realize that they have no memory of the past few hours. They weren't truly paying attention, yet they never drove off the road or stopped moving. Their mind was consciously aware of what they were doing, even if they didn't realize it.
Perceptual Consciousness
Moving further into consistent awareness, we arrive at perceptual consciousness. This is the state of being aware of what's happening in your environment and in your body. Are you hot, cold, tired, energetic, etc.? This level of consciousness is something your mind is actively aware of. You can be aware of being hot or cold or hungry or happy.
Introspective Consciousness
Finally, we get to the truest level of conscious awareness: introspective consciousness, which is a term that describes the ability to be aware of your own mental processes and your individual self. This is where that voice in your head comes into play that allows you to think through situations, critique your appearance in a mirror, or methodically determine a solution to a problem. This is the level of consciousness you are generally most aware of, and it can encompass a variety of elements.
For example, introspective consciousness allows our mind to directly focus on experiences in our environments or bodies. We call this phenomenon sensory awareness. While perceptual consciousness lets your mind become consciously aware of changes in the environment or body, it's your sensory awareness that lets you focus on that situation and evaluate what it means to you. Basically, it's the difference between being aware that you're cold, and thinking to yourself, ''I'm cold''.
The other major thing we get out of introspective consciousness is self-awareness and sense of self. To date, only about ten animals in the world have ever passed the mirror test of self-awareness, in which an animal is exposed to a mirror to evaluate whether they can recognize themselves.
Dolphins, elephants, and great apes are among the few animals able to pass this test, but as far as we can tell, only humans are able to develop a genuine sense of self. While these animals may be aware of themselves, humans are aware of our awareness, able to consciously understand and recognize consciousness. It is the introspective consciousness that allows this to happen.
This is highly significant since some researchers believe that our ability to remember events from our own lives is directly connected to introspective consciousness. The theory is that, without self-awareness on this scale, we could not form complex memories of our experiences and certainly not our understanding of those experiences.
There's a reason many of our strongest memories have strong emotions attached to them; our introspective consciousness is working hard during those moments to process all that information on a conscious level. That's something worth being aware of.
Lesson Summary
Okay, let's take a couple of moments to review what we've learned. In this lesson, we looked at the concept of conscious awareness, which essentially describes a mental state of being truly aware of the events and situations in one's life. We learned that this happens at three basic levels:
- Minimal consciousness, which is the lowest level of awareness, where your mind is vaguely aware of something but isn't truly focused on it.
- Perceptual consciousness, which is the mind's ability to be aware of your body and your environment, and
- Introspective consciousness, which describes the highest level of awareness, in which your mind is essentially aware of itself. It's responsible for several things, from self-awareness to sensory awareness, which involves the experiences in our environments or bodies, and the ability to focus on specific aspects of the environment or body, to possibly even memory formation.
If Descartes is right that being begins with awareness, perhaps we should amend his statement to ''I'm aware that I am, therefore I am.''
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