Define Consciousness in a sentence: [abridged, from a form]
Consciousness has multiple aspects and dimensions that should be both separated so that we can study their "synthesis" and interplay. It is partly what is synthesised by the brain as a generative process, that has multiple aspects such as multi-modal sensory and perceptual aspects (including interoception and verbal), perceptual qualia, attention, memory & permanence, agency, predictive-generative perception that is active, and perception that is orchestrated carefully with actions as exchanges with external world, that feels as-if a seamless and unified experience. This unified experience is endogenously generated, but also projected into the external world. It is hard to fit in one sentence, because it is not only all these multitudes, but also very inter-subjective, and even self, agency in that. The interplay of theory-of-mind, and various meta-cognition functions are in place. There are even other aspects, such as "affective" and elements, ...
Subjective phenomenological experiencing: In theory, if we could alter the brain partially even by direct stimulation (electrical, using implants, during surgery, MEG, etc), it can potentially inform a scientific approach, uses subjective psychophysics, and also neuro-feedback, would give us great insights; although that would be first felt as "subjective" experience and reported, and the report can be recorded and used for developing it and abstracting it to models, causal structures or determining principles, perhaps in a nested and recursive complex composition of boundaries.
Another aspect, inspired by (continental) tradition of philosophy and phenomenology, the feedback-like self-referring, self-reflecting, and self-awareness loops, inside and outside the boundaries of body, with environment and levels of niches.
Subjective experience of the researcher, e.g. in psychedelic experience, or in directly electrical stimulation of the brain, may have potentials to be used as sources of ideas for psychedelic experience, but eventually, need to be translated into rigorous testable hypotheses in scientific framework.
Multiple meanings of consciousness: Many theorists focus on one aspect (e.g. IIT emphasise on consciousness as levels of opposite of anaesthesia). Multiple dimensions should considering accommodating various modes of consciousness: sleep (various states: dreaming, including vivid etc, twilight/ pre-sleep, 3-dimensional AIM mode ), psychedelic (multiple types), anaesthesia, coma (of various GCS scales), default-mode awareness, in-the-zone, altered such as psychedelic experience, and some perceptual aberrations in conditions such as schizophrenia, clouded brain, anxiety and mindfulness, ... even multiple states or pain, anxiety, and more subjective states and qualia such as alienation, etc.
Consciousness is deeply inter-subjective. A spectrum of egoless to ego-shielded (almost an immune system to an otherwise open and boundary-less merged system) exist. Even perception of self is perhaps via the inter-subjective mechanisms ( involves the mirror system, language, meta-cognition, etc ).
Eventually, we need to develop such theories using scientific rigor, using scientific and mathematical tools can be used to serve, as tools at service of such understanding, that is deeply philosophical as well as analytical and physicalist-ic.
Unfortunately, I could not fit consciousness into one sentence, as it has many factors, but there must be ways to unify these into elegant multi-dimensional and multi-aspect theories.
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