In psychology & philosophy, awareness is the perception or knowledge of something. The concept is often synonymous with consciousness; however, one can be aware of something without being explicitly conscious of it (e.g., blindsight).
The states of awareness are also associated with the states of experience, so that the structure represented in awareness is mirrored in the structure of experience.
Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of states or objects either internal to one's self or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of explanations, analyses, and debate among philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied, or can even be considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with mind, and at other times, an aspect of it.
In the past, consciousness meant one's "inner life": the world of introspection, private thought, imagination, and volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling, or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, metacognition, or self-awareness, either continuously changing or not. There is also a medical definition that helps, for example, to discern "coma" from other states. The disparate range of research, notions, and speculations raises some curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked.
Declarative knowledge is an awareness of facts that can be expressed using declarative sentences. It is also called theoretical knowledge, descriptive knowledge, propositional knowledge, and knowledge-that. It is not restricted to one specific use or purpose and can be stored in books or on computers.
Epistemology is the main discipline studying declarative knowledge. Among other things, it studies the essential components of declarative knowledge. According to a traditionally influential view, it has three elements: it is a belief that is true and justified. As a belief, it is a subjective commitment to the accuracy of the believed claim while truth is an objective aspect. To be justified, a belief has to be rational by being based on good reasons. This means that mere guesses do not amount to knowledge even if they are true. In contemporary epistemology, additional or alternative components have been suggested. One proposal is that no contradicting evidence is present. Other suggestions are that the belief was caused by a reliable cognitive process and that the belief is infallible.
Safety is the state of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk.
The metaphor "stream of consciousness" suggests how thoughts seem to flow through the conscious mind. Research studies have shown that humans only experience one mental event at a time, as a fast-moving mind-stream. The full range of thoughts one can be aware of forms the content of this "stream".
The term was coined by Alexander Bain in 1855, when he wrote in The Senses and the Intellect, "The concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of consciousness (on the same cerebral highway) enables those of different senses to be associated as readily as the sensations of the same sense". But the man who popularized it is commonly credited instead: William James, often considered the father of American psychology, used it in 1890 in The Principles of Psychology.
Wu (Chinese: 悟; pinyin: Wù) is a concept of awareness, consciousness, or spiritual enlightenment in the Chinese folk religion and Chinese Buddhism.
The cerebral cortex, also known as the cerebral mantle, is the outer layer of neural tissue of the cerebrum of the brain in humans and other mammals. It is the largest site of neural integration in the central nervous system, and plays a key role in attention, perception, awareness, thought, memory, language, and consciousness.
The six-layered neocortex makes up approximately 90% of the cortex, with the allocortex making up the remainder. The cortex is divided into left and right parts by the longitudinal fissure, which separates the two cerebral hemispheres that are joined beneath the cortex by the corpus callosum and other commissural fibers. In most mammals, apart from small mammals that have small brains, the cerebral cortex is folded, providing a greater surface area in the confined volume of the cranium. Apart from minimising brain and cranial volume, cortical folding is crucial for the brain circuitry and its functional organisation. In mammals with small brains, there is no folding and the cortex is smooth.
Attention is the concentration of awareness directed at some phenomenon and excluding others. The nature of that directedness has been conceptualized differently in various disciplines, ranging from philosophy to advertising. In cognitive psychology, attention has been described as the allocation of cognitive resources. In neuropsychology, attention involves a mechanism from sensory cues to neuronal tuning that orients behavioral and cognitive processes.
Attention varies across cultures.