Awareness is the
state
State may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State
* ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States
* ''Our S ...
of being
conscious
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
of something. More specifically, it is the ability to directly know and
perceive
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
, to
feel
Feel may refer to:
*Feeling
Music Bands
* Feel (New York band), a dance and R&B band
* Feel (Polish band), a pop rock band
Songs
* "Feel" (Kendrick Lamar song), 2017
* "Feel", by Phora, 2018
*"Feel", by Mahmut Orhan, 2016
* "Feel" (Kumi Koda so ...
, or to be cognizant of events. Another definition describes it as a state wherein a subject is aware of some information when that information is directly available to bring to bear in the direction of a wide range of
behavioral actions.
The concept is often synonymous to consciousness and is also understood as being
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
itself.
The states of awareness are also associated with the states of
experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
so that the structure represented in awareness is
mirrored in the structure of experience.
Concept
Awareness is a relative
concept
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs.
They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by ...
. It may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception.
It is analogous to sensing something, a process distinguished from observing and perceiving (which involves a basic process of acquainting with the items we perceive).
Awareness or "to sense" can be described as something that occurs when the brain is activated in certain ways, such as when the color red is what is seen once the
retina
The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which then ...
is stimulated by
light waves
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 terahe ...
.
This conceptualization is posited amid the difficulty in developing an analytic definition of awareness or sensory awareness.
Awareness is also associated with consciousness in the sense that this concept denotes a fundamental experience such as a feeling or intuition that accompanies the experience of phenomena. Specifically, this is referred to as awareness of experience. As for consciousness, it has been postulated to undergo continuously changing levels.
Peripheral awareness
Peripheral awareness refers to the human ability to process information at the periphery of attention, such as when we acknowledge the distant sounds of people outside while we sit indoors and concentrate on writing a report.
Self-awareness
Popular ideas about
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
suggest the phenomenon describes a condition of being aware of oneself (self-awareness). Modern
systems theory
Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...
, which offers insights into how the world works through an understanding that all systems follow system rules, approach self-awareness within its understanding of how large complex living systems work. According to
Gregory Bateson, the mind is the dynamics of
self-organization
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suff ...
and that awareness is crucial in the existence of this process. Modern systems theory maintains that humans, as living systems, have not only awareness of their environment but also self-awareness particularly with their capability for
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...
and curiosity.
Efforts to describe consciousness in
neurological
Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...
terms have focused on describing networks in the
brain
A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a ve ...
that develop awareness of the
qualia
In philosophy of mind, qualia ( or ; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () ...
developed by other networks.
As awareness provides the materials from which one develops subjective ideas about their experience, it is said that one is aware of one's own awareness state.
This organization of awareness of one's own inner experience is given a central role in
self-regulation.
Neuroscience
Neural systems that regulate
attention serve to attenuate awareness among complex animals whose
central and
peripheral nervous system
The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is one of two components that make up the nervous system of bilateral animals, with the other part being the central nervous system (CNS). The PNS consists of nerves and ganglia, which lie outside the brain ...
s provide more information than
cognitive areas of the brain can assimilate. Within an attenuated system of awareness, a
mind might be aware of much more than is being contemplated in a focused
extended consciousness
Developed in his (1999) book, "The Feeling of What Happens", Antonio Damasio's theory of consciousness proposes that consciousness arises from the interactions between the brain, the body, and the environment. According to this theory, consciousne ...
.
Basic awareness
Basic awareness of one's internal and external world depends on the
brain stem
The brainstem (or brain stem) is the posterior stalk-like part of the brain that connects the cerebrum with the spinal cord. In the human brain the brainstem is composed of the midbrain, the pons, and the medulla oblongata. The midbrain is co ...
.
Bjorn Merker, an independent neuroscientist in Stockholm, Sweden, argues that the brain stem supports an elementary form of conscious thought in infants with
hydranencephaly
Hydranencephaly is a condition in which the brain's cerebral hemispheres are absent to a great degree and the remaining cranial cavity is filled with cerebrospinal fluid. "Cephalic" is the scientific term for "head" or "head end of body".
Hydrane ...
. "Higher" forms of awareness including
self-awareness require cortical contributions, but "primary consciousness" or "basic awareness" as an ability to integrate sensations from the environment with one's immediate goals and feelings in order to guide behavior, springs from the brain stem which human beings share with most of the
vertebrates
Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with c ...
. Psychologist
Carroll Izard
Carroll Ellis Izard (October 8, 1923 – February 5, 2017) was an American research psychologist known for his contributions to differential emotions theory (DET), and the Maximally Discriminative Affect Coding System (MAX) on which he worked wi ...
emphasizes that this form of primary
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
consists of the capacity to generate emotions and awareness of one's surroundings, but not an ability to talk about what one has experienced. In the same way, people can become conscious of a feeling that they cannot label or describe, a phenomenon that is especially common in pre-verbal infants.
Due to this discovery medical definitions of
brain death as a lack of
cortical activity face a serious challenge.
Basic interests
Throughout the brain stem, there are interconnected regions that regulate eye movement that are also involved in organizing information about what to do next, such as reaching for a piece of food or pursuing a potential mate.
Changes in awareness
The ability to consciously detect an image when presented at near-threshold stimulus varies across presentations. One factor is "baseline shifts" due to top down attention that modulates ongoing brain activity in sensory cortex areas that affects the neural processing of subsequent perceptual judgments. Such top down biasing can occur through two distinct processes: an attention driven baseline shift in the
alpha wave
Alpha waves, or the alpha rhythm, are neural oscillations in the frequency range of 8–12 Hz likely originating from the synchronous and coherent (in phase or constructive) electrical activity of thalamic pacemaker cells in humans. Historica ...
s, and a decision bias reflected in
gamma wave
A gamma wave or gamma Rhythm is a pattern of neural oscillation in humans with a frequency between 25 and 140 Hz, the 40- Hz point being of particular interest. Gamma rhythms are correlated with large scale brain network activity and cognitive ...
s.
Living systems view
Outside of
neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developme ...
biologists,
Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana Romesín (September 14, 1928 – May 6, 2021) was a Chilean biologist and philosopher. Many consider him a member of a group of second-order cybernetics theoreticians such as Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün ...
and
Francisco Varela
Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a Chilean biologist, philosopher, cybernetician, and neuroscientist who, together with his mentor Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesi ...
contributed their
Santiago theory of cognition in which they wrote:
This theory contributes a perspective that cognition is a process present at organic levels that we do not usually consider to be aware. Given the possible relationship between awareness and
cognition, and
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
, this theory contributes an interesting perspective in the
philosophical
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
and
scientific
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
dialogue of awareness and
living systems theory
Living systems are open self-organizing life forms that interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy and matter.
In the last few decades, some scientists have proposed that a general living sys ...
.
Communications and information systems
In cooperative settings, awareness is a term used to denote "knowledge created through the interaction of an agent and its environment — in simple terms 'knowing what is going on'". In this setting, awareness is meant to convey how individuals monitor and perceive the information surrounding their colleagues and the environment they are in. This information is incredibly useful and critical to the performance and success of collaborations. Awareness can be further defined by breaking it down into a set of characteristics:
* It is knowledge about the state of some environment
* Environments are continually changing, therefore awareness knowledge must be constantly maintained
* Individuals interact with the environment, and maintenance of awareness is accomplished through this interaction.
* It is generally part of some other activity – generally making it a secondary goal to the primary goal of the activity.
Different categories of awareness have been suggested based on the type of information being obtained or maintained:
* Informal awareness is the sense of who's around and what are they up to. E.g. Information you might know from being collocated with an individual
* Social awareness is the information you maintain about a social or conversational context. This is a subtle awareness maintained through non-verbal cues, such as eye contact, facial express, etc.
* Group-structural awareness is the knowledge of others roles, responsibilities, status in a group. It is an understanding of group dynamics and the relationship another individual has to the group.
* Workspace awareness – this is a focus on the workspace's influence and mediation of awareness information, particularly the location, activity, and changes of elements within the workspace.
These categories are not mutually exclusive, as there can be significant overlap in what a particular type of awareness might be considered. Rather, these categories serve to help understand what knowledge might be conveyed by a particular type of awareness or how that knowledge might be conveyed. Workspace awareness is of particular interest to the
CSCW community, due to the transition of workspaces from physical to virtual environments.
While the type of awareness above refers to knowledge a ''person'' might need in a particular situation, ''
context awareness
Context awareness refers, in information and communication technologies, to a capability to take into account the ''situation'' of ''entities'', which may be users or devices, but are not limited to those. ''Location'' is only the most obvious el ...
'' and ''
location awareness
Location awareness refers to devices that can passively or actively determine their location. Navigational instruments provide location coordinates for vessels and vehicles. Surveying equipment identifies location with respect to a well-known loca ...
'' refer to information a ''computer system'' might need in a particular situation. These concepts of large importance especially for AAA (
authentication
Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicatin ...
,
authorization
Authorization or authorisation (see spelling differences) is the function of specifying access rights/privileges to resources, which is related to general information security and computer security, and to access control in particular. More fo ...
,
accounting) applications.
The term of location awareness still is gaining momentum with the growth of ubiquitous computing. First defined by networked work positions (
network location awareness
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics ...
), it has been extended to mobile phones and other mobile communicable entities. The term covers a common interest in whereabouts of remote entities, especially individuals and their cohesion in operation. The term of context awareness is a superset including the concept of location awareness. It extends the awareness to context features of an operational target as well as to the context of an operational area.
Covert awareness
Covert awareness is the knowledge of something without knowing it. Some patients with specific
brain damage are for example unable to tell if a pencil is horizontal or vertical.
Awareness and attention
Some scientists have proposed that awareness is closely related and in some ways synonymous with
attention while others have argued that they are different.There is evidence to demonstrate that awareness and attention have distinct neural correlates, though the majority of research analyses the attention, awareness, and perception of only visual stimuli.
[Wyart V, Tallon-Baudry C (2008) Neural dissociation between visual awareness and spatial attention. J Neurosci 28:2667–2679.]
See also
*
Choiceless awareness
is posited in philosophy, psychology, and spirituality to be the state of unpremeditated, complete awareness of the present without preference, effort, or compulsion. The term was popularized in mid-20th century by Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishn ...
*
Consciousness raising
Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or ...
*
Ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
*
Indefinite monism
Indefinite Monism is a philosophical conception of reality that asserts that only Awareness is real and that the wholeness of Reality can be conceptually thought of in terms of immanent and transcendent aspects. The immanent aspect is denominate ...
*
List of awareness ribbons
This is a partial list of awareness ribbons. The meaning behind an awareness ribbon depends on its colors and pattern. Since many advocacy groups have adopted ribbons as symbols of support or awareness, ribbons, particularly those of a single col ...
*
Mental Health Awareness Month Mental Health Awareness Month (also referred to as "Mental Health Month") has been observed in May in the United States since 1949. The month is observed with media, local events, and film screenings.
Mental Health Awareness Month began in the Unit ...
*
Mental Illness Awareness Week
Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW) was established in the U.S. in 1990 recognition of efforts by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to educate and increase awareness about mental illness. It takes place every year during the first ful ...
*
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are add ...
*
Presence of mind
''Presence of Mind'' is a 1999 Spanish-American drama film directed by Antoni Aloy and starring Sadie Frost, Lauren Bacall, Harvey Keitel, and Jude Law. The film is based on the 1898 novella ''The Turn of the Screw'' by Henry James.
Synopsis
...
*
Public awareness of climate change
file:20210126 Peoples' Climate Vote - Public belief in climate emergency - United Nations Development Programme.svg, upright=1.3, ''Perception of seriousness:'' Results of a survey overseen by the United Nations Development Programme on belief ...
*
Public awareness of science
Public awareness of science (PAwS) is everything relating to the awareness, attitudes, behaviors, opinions, and activities that comprise the relations between the general public or lay society as a whole to scientific knowledge and organization. ...
*
Suicide awareness
*
Values
In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of di ...
References
External links
*
*
Cornell University Recent findings in the awareness of brain damaged people.
{{Consciousness
Cognition
Consciousness
Systems psychology
Unsolved problems in neuroscience
Mindfulness (psychology)
Concepts in epistemology