I call consciousness, the part of mental processes that is self-aware, makes decisions about what to do before it does it, and can remember having made them.
For example: Iāve just put on a t-shirt.
- I consciously decided that I would put on a t-shirt and which one.
- I noticed that my body got close to the t-shirt, extended an arm to grab it, went through the motions of putting on a t-shirt, used one hand to scratch an itch on the other elbow, spun around, and sat down.
At no moment did I decide to do any of those actions in particular, just witnessed them a moment after they happened. It was some other process(es) that executed them, and I only remember deciding to āput on a t-shirt and which oneā.
As I write this, I sound in my head what I could write next, consciously feel which of those sound better and feel more like what I want to transmit, then my finger moves across the phone keyboard to type or swipe the word, with flashes of conscious decisions about autocorrect, while mostly sitting idle and watching things happen. Then I read it back, sounding each word and feeling whether they sound right, while other words and sentences āget proposed to meā and I feel whether theyād feel better or worse.
So there is a lot of things going on āin the backgroundā, that I kind of have control about, but I consciously only watch and coast on, feeling whether I should step in. If I do step in, itās like a flash of conscious decision, and back to coasting.
I wonder if thereās people out there that make a decision and their body just does something entirely different? Like thereās a lower reliability.
But back to the topic: you mentioned itās the mental process thatās self aware. So my question shifts to what is self awareness and what is awareness to you?
Wellā¦ now that you mention it, yes there are: procrastinators, ADHD. Sometimes no matter how much Iād want to do something, I could only watch things happen. I got what I now realize was a suggested diagnosis 20+ years ago, but at this point itās too late to roll back time.
Self awareness to me, is the ability to think about thinking itself. Realizing that a thinking process is taking place, and being able to analyze and trace it from start to finish.
There are many other processes going on, that Iām only made aware a result that they yield, with no insight into the process itself. Strictly speaking, for all I know, they could also be self-aware, in some separate corner of my brainā¦ but they never contribute any of that awareness to the process thatās deciding to write this š¤·
