Word: consciousness Part of Speech: noun Etymology: Etymology tree English conscious Proto-Germanic *-in- Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ti Proto-Germanic *-ōną Proto-Germanic *-inōną Proto-Indo-European *-dyé- Proto-Germanic *-atjaną Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Germanic *-þuz Proto-Germanic *-assuz Proto-Germanic *-inassuz Proto-West Germanic *-nassī Old English -nes Middle English -nesse English -ness English consciousness From conscious + -ness. Pronunciation: /ˈkɒnʃəsnəs/, /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/, /ˈkɔnʃəsnəs/, [ˈkɔ̟nʃəsnəs] 1. The state of being conscious or aware; awareness. Labels: uncountable Example: Of course it’s natural to think twice about whether your cell phone truly “knows” a favorite number, your GPS is really “figuring out” the best route home, and your Roomba is genuinely “trying” to clean the floor. But as information-processing systems become more sophisticated—as their representations of the world become richer, their goals are arranged into hierarchies of subgoals within subgoals, and their actions for attaining the goals become more diverse and less predictable—it starts to look like hominid chauvinism to insist that they don’t. (Whether information and computation explain consciousness, in addition to knowledge, intelligence, and purpose, is a question I’ll turn to in the final chapter.) 2. The state of being conscious or aware; awareness. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: To lose consciousness after striking one's head Example: Consciousness is universal and precedes even the formation of our solar system. 3. The state of being conscious or aware; awareness. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: Although the Celebrity was almost impervious to sarcasm, he was now beginning to exhibit visible signs of uneasiness, the consciousness dawning upon him that his eccentricity was not receiving the ovation it merited. Example: The solitude and the savage freedom filled his heart with life and buoyancy. Again he was Tarzan of the Apes—every sense alert against the chance of surprise by some jungle enemy—yet treading lightly and with head erect, in proud consciousness of his might. 4. The state of being conscious or aware; awareness. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: the development of a feminist consciousness Example: 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. 5. A being with cognition. Labels: countable Example: 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.