What is consciousness?

That depends entirely on your definition of concious. Medically they are concious... But can they take responsibility for their actions? That's a question people still struggle with and the reason some of them end up in psychiatric establishments rather than jail. They gotta be locked up anyway.. For the sake of human life.

I believe they can. Even just logically it makes sense to make and obey laws. And the ones we have are in place for a reason. So I do believe that on some level they can be held accountable. Having said that, It is better to have them in a mental facility.

Xynox. You're confusing two different words. Consciousness ≠ a conscience. Having a conscience is what makes you feel guilty when doing wrong, it's what allows you to differentiate right from wrong. Jiminy Cricket is a visualization of a conscience.

Consciousness is simply what it is, awareness of your own environment, sensations, self acceptance. Probably, lots of definitions have been done but to me, consciousness does not only define us as humans but more like beings in this Earth. So we can't say it defines us because I think other concepts, alongside this definition, do. To me, consciousness is keeping us from seeing and experiencing new occurrences that humanity cannot comprehend. The true question here would be: What is unconsciousness?

Plants have a consciousness to live. Animals have a consciousness to live and awareness of life. Humans have a consciousness of all of the above and beyond.

Besides the stuff people here said already... I have my own idea of what is consciousness. To me, it is something we develop since we're born. However, it is something we can never really fully achieve, or at least not in our short lifetime. None of us is actually fully conscious. Let me explain... If you were seriously fully awake and conscious, you'd be on par with something like the God. The being that's said to be omnipresent and omnipotent, is everywhere and nowhere, and is aware of everything and nothing at the same time. Maria's question though: What is unconsciousness? Sis you just keep taking the words right out of my mind all the time aren't you? xD I was going to talk about that before I even read your post. *ehem* Anyway...let me share my theory then. As we all know, the things that mostly make the building material for our personality and make us "ourselves" and unique, are all the events that happened in our life so far, and all the information we have gathered over the years. That's why people can sometimes change completely, upon gaining valuable knowledge or having something with great impact happening to them (falling in love, death of somebody close etc.). Also that's the reason why we're all different no matter how similar to each other some of us seem, since there's nobody else in the world who lived the exact same life as you. We've already covered what consciousness is. Simply said...the awareness of yourself and your surroundings. However, most people believe that it is the only thing that you...or rather your "soul" consists of. I believe that we're not a single awareness in our mind, in fact we're beings that are shattered into several pieces, and consciousness is just one of those fragments, despite the fact we use that part most of our time. That being said, let's move one step further: the subconsciousness. Those who have the ability of lucid dreaming interact with it all the time, even if they don't realize it. The thing is, that we all have a photographic memory, and everything we've ever done, seen or know about is stored in your subconscious mind. Literally...ALL of it, even things like when you drank water for the first time in your life. However our conscious mind just cannot handle this much information, so when we are conscious we only have an access to a small part of it (usually only stuff that we need, or think about atm). For most people, their conscious mind allows them to hold only like 20% of the all the information they have at a time. The remaining 80% stays in your subconsicous mind. Those who have a "better" or "worse" memory, just have slightly lower or higher capacity than those 20%. If you've ever had a lucid dream, and talked to dream characters. You might have or have not noticed, that they can sometimes be A LOT smarter than you, and tend to have answers to stuff you never even knew about before. That's because they are manifestations of your subconscious mind. They are all a part of you, each one representing something specific. As for the regular dreams... Well that's usually just your subconscious mind processing and taking care of all the information you gained in one day. That's why you tend to dream about the people you've met or things you've done just recently. Now then... The thing that is the source of it all: the unconscious mind. In my opinion, that would be the most basic and simple part of ourselves. Because honestly... it is nothing more than an empty void, that only contains our pure instincts and the will that keeps us alive and going. For example: Simple life forms such as cells or a virus. Those are things that live unconsciously all the time. However, this part of us is the most important one. It's basically our core. Emotions such as love, fear, sadness, rage. They are all advanced forms of instincts, and originate from our unconscious mind. Without it, we cannot exist or stay alive. Well then...I seriously doubt anyone will even bother to read all of this shit, (Notice that "this" is actually an anagram of "shit", and "this" is one of the most used words ever by people. Does that mean that in reality everyone secretly loves to excessively curse like a sailor? Le mindfuck...DUN DUN DUN! *hardcore face close up* O_O) but if you did, then I hope it was at least a little bit interesting or fun for you lol.

It's been covered here, but the debate has been around as long as we have been able to conceive of it. Here's a helpful article... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201303/what-is-consciousness