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consciousness - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From conscious +‎ -ness.

consciousness (countable and uncountable, plural consciousnesses)

  1. (uncountable) The state of being conscious or aware; awareness.
    1. The state or trait of having cognition and sensation; cognition and sensation themselves.

      To lose consciousness after striking one's head

      • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 39:

        Consciousness is universal and precedes even the formation of our solar system.

      • 2013 August 3, “The machine of a new soul”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

        Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.

    2. The fact of having knowledge of a particular fact or matter; cognizance.
    3. (politics) Acute awareness (of something) and belief in its communal relevance.

      the development of a feminist consciousness

      • 1975 December 27, Neil Miller, “Anti-Military Backlash Surfaces”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 26, page 3:

        This new anti-military consciousness surfaced at the Gay Academic Union Conference held last month in New York, where two broadsides and a meeting were held to discuss the situation. And in San Francisco, after a stormy meeting of Bay Area Gay Liberation (BAGEL), the group refused to co-sponsor a fund-raising event for former T/Sgt. Leonard Matlovich.

  2. (countable) A being with cognition.

    • 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Asari: Religion Codex entry:

      The pantheistic mainstream asari religion is siari, which translates roughly as "All is one." The faithful agree on certain core truths: the universe is a consciousness, every life within it is an aspect of the greater whole, and death is a merging of one's spiritual energy back into the greater universal consciousness. Siarists don't specifically believe in reincarnation; they believe that spiritual energy returned to the universal consciousness upon death will eventually be used to fill new mortal vessels.

awareness