What Is The Difference Between One Consciousness And Another?

There are two types of consciousness. It is not the same thing to say “I have a clear conscience” and “to be aware after receiving a blow” or “to be aware of each one of the stimuli around us” . The first term is of great interest to the field of philosophy. The second, however, is still a challenge for neuroscience.

Biologist and Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick used to say that, although it is necessary to know how to differentiate one dimension from another, in reality there will always be a lack of words when trying to define each one of them. This is because they are tremendously complex entities, especially the second type of consciousness.

Sometimes we can find ourselves in ambiguous situations that can lead us to make mistakes. In fact, and even though it seems surprising, it is very common to fall into errors and even see such errors in many publications by some authors confusing the terms.

So let’s see what nuances and particularities define each of these dimensions.

The two types of consciousness: characteristics and singularities

If we had to use a basic and general definition to differentiate the two types of consciousness, it would be the following: one of them allows you to be part of your reality, to perceive every nuance, stimulus and internal process. The other, in turn, allows you to behave in a morally and socially acceptable way.

Overall, no doubt, it seems to be understandable and even simple to differentiate one from the other. However, if someone told us that “He is aware of his actions”, would that person be referring to the moral aspect, the perceptual aspect or perhaps both? In these cases, we enter a subjective plane in which everything depends on what the issuer wants to express.

What is consciousness?

The mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal said that conscience is the best moral book we have. And he wasn’t wrong. This reality basically refers to the capacity that people have to know which acts, thoughts, words and situations are correct and which are not.

It is a moral and ethical concept: however, it should be noted that it also presents some small considerations:

• Consciousness has nothing to do with processes like attention or awareness;
• Philosophers such as Descartes and Locke tried, in their time, to delve into this concept to understand, for example, how consciousness is related to language, thought and intelligence. Furthermore, we must bear in mind that one of the most notable differences between one consciousness and the other is that, for philosophers, one of them is a “virtue”.   

• Thus, when we say that someone “has a conscience”, we are saying that this person has moral values. In this case, we are referring to the conscience as someone who tries to live up to the basic norms of respect and balance. What’s more, sometimes we also say that animals demonstrate “awareness”, as they perform certain moral or “social” behaviors that refer to the most human virtues.

What is the other consciousness?

This awareness is more than being awake, having your eyes open and feeling part of the sensitive reality that surrounds us. William James, father of American psychology, was one of the first authors to address this difference between consciousness. As a philosopher, psychologist and scientist, he defined consciousness through a series of characteristics that will allow us to understand it much better:

• This awareness is subjective. It has nothing to do with ethics or morals. It is a personal process in which a person is aware of his own thoughts, of his inner reality.
• It is related to thought, therefore, it is always in constant change, it is something continuous that never stops, that is always processing information, responding to stimuli.
• Likewise, this awareness can also be selective. At a given moment, people can pay attention to it in one aspect (internal or external) to separate it from the rest of the stimuli and have contact with what interests them.

Consciousness is the greatest enigma of human beings

Christof Koch is an American neuroscientist and one of the leading experts in the study of consciousness and its neuronal bases. Books like In Search of Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach present the main difference between consciousnesses, although it is still an enigma.

One of them has to do with the sense of responsibility, with the values ​​and knowledge of each person for themselves and for their actions.

Consciousness is everything you experience.  It’s the song that stays in your head. It is the sweetness of chocolate mousse, the throbbing pain of toothache, love for children, and the assurance that one day we will leave this world.

This scientist, in turn, says that there are two types of consciousness:

• Primary consciousness. It has to do with our perceptions, sensations, memory, thoughts, what we dream, what we desire, etc. Everything that allows us to separate from our surroundings to define our individuality.
• Reflective awareness. This dimension is, perhaps, an area that is both very interesting and challenging. It has to do with “observing your own mind”, with knowing what we are, what we know, what happens in our “inner being”.

To conclude, as we have seen, the two types of consciousness are very complex terms and, at the same time, interesting. They are also more than just products of our mind. It’s what makes us human. As Thomas Huxley said in his time, they are entities that make us “aware” that we are more than bones, muscles, cells and a skin that surrounds us.