Final answer:
Consciousness is our awareness of internal and external stimuli, encompassing a spectrum of experiences and states. Despite being a fundamental aspect of our existence, it has proven challenging to define non-circularly as it is deeply rooted in biology and cognition and remains an active area of philosophical debate and inquiry.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question of what is consciousness has puzzled scholars, scientists, and philosophers for centuries. Christof Koch describes consciousness as everything we experience: from the most mundane to the most profound feelings. This includes simple experiences like a tune in our head to complex emotions like love. Consciousness is thus the awareness of internal and external stimuli, which can range from feeling pain or hunger to observing the sun or interacting with others.
Understanding consciousness, involves examining our biological rhythms and the various states we navigate daily, from wakefulness to deep sleep, daydreaming, and even states of unconsciousness induced by anesthesia. Our experience of consciousness is intimately tied to biological processes and cognition, which involve perception, knowledge, problem solving, and memory. Yet, the question remains: why does consciousness exist, and how did it come about?
Some approaches to consciousness explore its practical implications, like behaviorism, while others delve into philosophical questions about the reality of the mind and the existence of the self. Despite these extensive studies, a non-circular definition that fully encapsulates consciousness somehow remains elusive, rendering consciousness a concept we understand intuitively through our experiences, but one that is challenging to define exhaustively and objectively.