What Is Consciousness?

Consciousness, at its simplest, is "sentience or awareness of internal or external existence."  Despite millennia of analyses, definitions, explanations and debates by philosophers and scientists, consciousness remains puzzling and controversial, being "at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."  Perhaps the only widely agreed notion about the topic is the intuition that it exists.  

Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied and explained as consciousness. Sometimes, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of it. In the past, it was one's "inner life," the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination and volition.  

Today, it often includes some kind of experience, cognition, feeling or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, or self-awareness.  There might be different levels or orders of consciousness, or different kinds of consciousness, or just one kind with different features.  

Other questions include whether only humans are conscious, all animals, or even the whole universe. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises doubts about whether the right questions are being asked.

Examples of the range of descriptions, definitions or explanations are: simple wakefulness, one's sense of selfhood or soul explored by "looking within"; being a metaphorical "stream" of contents, or being a mental state, mental event or mental process of the brain; having phanera or qualia and subjectivity; being the 'something that it is like' to 'have' or 'be' it; being the "inner theatre" or the executive control system of the mind.  SOURCE:  Wikipedia

HOWEVER, the fact remains that whatever the CONSCIOUSNESS is...  we all have one and we all use our consciousness in different ways at different times based upon the external stimuli that is impacting or influencing or trying to impact and influence our behavior.  

Consciousness means simply that we are aware that we are aware (self-awareness) and because we have that awareness about ourselves, we are unique creatures...  and perception makes us even more unique...

Animals have instinct and intuition based upon previous experiences that has been imprinted upon them at birth...  but, human beings develop their own instinct and intuition as they develop and grow and experience...  nothing has been imprinted on humans except the free will to survive...  and, it is quite possibly that free will to survive that has caused our consciousness to develop.