Consciousness

Generally, a state of awareness. This is the most general usage of the term and is that intended in phrases like "he lost consciousness." It is also a domain of mind that contains the sensations, perceptions, and memories of which one is momentarily aware, that is, those aspects of present mental life to which one is attending. The term has a distinctly checkered history. It has sometimes represented the central focus of pychology (structuralism) and at others been banned from the psychologist's lexicon as representing nothing more then the flotsam of bodily activity

The ongoing fascination with it, however, stems from the compelling sense that consciousness is one of the fundamental defining features of our species: that to be human is to possess not only self-awareness but the even more remarkable capacity to scan and review mentally that of which we are aware.