(A.1) Consciousness is difficult, if not impossible, to define with language. We all experience it daily but cannot categorize it as we would, say, a “chair” is a subset of the set of “furniture” which also contains the subsets of “tables”, “beds” and “cupboards” or “walking” is a subset of the set of “locomotion” which also contains “running” and “crawling”. Of what set is consciousness a subset? It gives us the appearance of a Ding an sich (thing-in-itself) for which our reach exceeds our grasp. Yet, just as it mysteriously rears its head upon waking, it equally mysteriously goes into hiding when we sleep. Perhaps the best we can do is to say that it is a phenomenon we experience in the course of living our lives and leave it as an effect in our material being for which strive to seek a cause. The what or why of consciousness is of dubious value to us as humans but the experience of consciousness has great value to us. Life goes on in our bliss state of ignorant.

Humans take themselves to be capable of awareness of the world in which we live. This awareness derives from the mental processes in our brains that create perceptions of what in everyday life we take to be truths of the reality of that world, based on sensory data collected from it and used by the brain to produce the sensations sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. Consciousness then can be taken to be the phenomenon of awareness of the brain of this state of awareness in whole or in part. That is, the awareness of the material world does not always result in consciousness of the material world, and thus does not always require awareness the mind of awareness of the world and the resulting sensation of consciousness in our mind. The concept of ​consciousness is itself a product of the processes brain of which we are conscious.

Numerous concepts of consciousness have been posited, none of which have, as of yet, been proven to be fact, and consciousness remains as perhaps the last great challenge of the natural philosophy that is science. The best that can be said presently is that consciousness is a phenomenon that we experience in the same way as we do the phenomenon of the color red through our eyes, the touch, smell and taste of food in our mouth and the sound of music in our ears. But consciousness we only experience in the wakeful brain in our head which itself is in and of the material world. For purposes of this philosophy we leave it as a yet-to-be solved mystery of the material world in which we live that may ultimately be revealed by ​the natural philosophy of science., just as it has revealed other great mysteries of our existence in time past. Indeed, our knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon of consciousness grows ever day. But, be that whatever it is, consciousness is the only window we have from which to take sneak a peek
of whatever reality might be.

For purposes of this philosophy we take consciousness to be a phenomenon of sensation in our mind resulting from an awareness of sensate things in our environment. One, some, or all our physical senses are taken to be the cause of the effect of consciousness in our mind as the result of action of mental processes in the material brain. We also take consciousness to be a subjective nimbus if the mind with no measurable material properties.

(A.1.1) Consciousness is a nimbus arising from deterministic electrochemical processes in the matter that comprises the brain that follow the inviolate laws of nature. That is, consciousness is subjective and not a material thing that could be kept in a jar.

(A.1.2) The root cause of consciousness is our experience in the material world that have the effect of producing the action of mental processes in the brain of a living corpus resulting in consciousness in the mind, which, in turn, may be the cause of action of the corpus initiating the effect of a physical response in the objective material world. The cause of what we will do and the effect of what we have done passes through our consciousness. But consciousness plays no role in deciding what we do. It is only plays the roll of a mailman carrying the mail. The real work of sustaining life is done unconsciously in the physical brain.

The subjective sensation of consciousness itself plays no role in the actions or things in the material world but the cause of objective electrochemical awareness of the things and actions of things in the material brain may result in the effect of the objective experience being stored in the physical brain as memory subject to recall and use in time future as the cause of the effect of some action in the material world​​. That is, memory story in the brain may be recalled as ​​consciousness in the mind in ​​time present as perception of actions or things in time past. This is also a form of delayed consciousness of actions and things that may no longer be reality, resulting in false knowledge in time present.

Consciousness of actions or things in time future is not possible. We can only be consciousness of the thought of the possibility of actions or things time future. We can only be conscious of actions or things we have experienced either directly or indirectly through some form of media such as language.

Consciousness can never be the direct cause of any action in the material world as it is not itself an objective part of the material world. Consciousness is but a shadow of the awareness of the brain of the reality cast on the cave wall of our mind. No awareness of matter, no nimbus of consciousness.

(A.1.3) The question of when we acquire the capability for consciousness in the course of life is a key to understanding Does consciousness beginning with union of male and female gametes? Almost certainly not. At that stage on the genetic codes for producing a brain with the capacity for conducting the mental processes necessary for the phenomenon of consciousness. Does the capacity for consciousness suddenly switch for “OFF” to “ON”? Almost certainly not.

• Before 9 weeks, all the limbs of the fetus move together, as the nerves are developing. The embryo arches its head and back.

• At 9 weeks the fetus yawns and stretches are visible on ultrasound.

• At 10 weeks from fertilization, the limbs moving separately and make and startle movements.

• At 11 weeks the baby can open its mouth and suck its fingers.

• By 12 weeks, it is possible to watch the baby swallowing amniotic fluid.

• By 13 weeks, the baby vigorously moves arms and legs, in kicks and jabs, and can also respond to skin touch.

• At the 14th – 20th week, the fetus shows the first perception of fetal movement by the mother.

• Around 18 weeks of pregnancy, the brain is sufficiently developed for the fetus to first respond to sound.

• From the 20th - 36 weeks, all types of fetal movements are motion – weak, strong and rolling movements. The baby moves all the joints and the spine. The pattern of movement changes, with weak movements becoming gradually reduced over time, while strong and rolling movements become more frequent.

• Around week 25 or 26, the fetus has been shown to respond to voices and noise.

• By 28 weeks, all babies show the startle reflex. Here the baby brings both arms and legs towards the chest when suddenly startled by a loud noise, sudden movement or sensation of falling.

• In the third trimester, the baby shows a bicycling movement of both feet, called stepping. This is important in helping to turn the baby upside down for a normal delivery. By this time, the movements are somewhat restricted by the confined space available to the now larger fetus.

But has consciousness yet developed? Indeed, the fetus can perform all these physical actions unconsciously. Most certainly the brain has developed the capacity for using sensory data for awareness from its environment and causing the effect of physical actions in response. But does that awareness yet have any meaning to the fetus? Is it used to create knowledge of its environment? Does it know what caused the effect of the sensory data? No, the fetus does that yet associate, say, the sound that it hears with its mother. Indeed, it does not even know it has a mother, much less that the mother is the source of the sensation of the sound it experiences. It has not yet developed the knowledge of the association of voice with mother. It is not yet conscious of the association.

To accommodate the learning necessary for the development of consciousness in its new world, the child’s brain doubles in size in the first year and keeps growing to about 80 percent of adult size by age three and 90 percent by age five. This occurs as they gain social, emotional, physical, cognitive and language skills through experience. They are born, in fact, with little capacity for consciousness and their earliest actions dictated by the inbred rooting, sucking, moro, tonic neck, infant, grasping and standing reflexes of infants. They learn none of these through conscious experience but they do eventually learn to walk, to talk and go to the potty through trial and error experience.

(A.1.4) The question arises of whether animals other than humans experience consciousness and the answer is almost certainly in the affirmative. The neural system including the brain are very nearly the same with the largest difference being brain size and number of neurons, especially in the cerebral cortex of the brain. Further, mental activity in the brain are also similar depending upon neuron capacity of their brains. But size is not everything because the brain of an elephant contains more total neurons and only about a third of the number in the cerebral cortex of the human brain. Their cognitive abilities, include “consciousness” are much inferior to that of humans, but with all those neurons in other parts of the brain, elephants really do have greater and longer lasting “memory” capacity than humans for a variety of reasons. They need not flush their brain of as much old brain memory as humans.

(A.2) Consciousness exists only in time present and is not persistent from time past or into time future. Rather consciousness is constantly being update with the latest sensory input. Sensations associated with of consciousness in time past, however, may be stored in the brain as brain memory as it occurs in past time and subsequently can be recalled as the in time present. We are conscious of the sensation of pain when stung by a bee in a in a state of consciousness. However, the memory of the pain associated with the sensation and its recall is not consciousness itself; it is then knowledge. When an objective cause resulting in consciousness no longer exists, the effect of consciousness no longer exists. Only the subjective knowledge that the string caused the effect of the ineffable sensation of painful persists.

(A.2.1) Consciousness persists only when the living brain is our corpus is acted upon by our senses. A rock has no brain and experiences no subjective consciousness of undergoing some cause for the effect of changes in response to change in its environment. The rock can undergo objective resultant and permanent physical changes. Similarly, one cell organisms have no brain but also undergo objective cause and effect change when its environment changes. They move toward food and away from dangerous chemicals in their environment. But only living organisms with brains experience consciousness and either take or not take deliberate actions associated with more than one environmental without the development ofconsciousness of their cause or causes. About 90% of all human actions are taken without any accompanying consciousness.

(A.2.3) Consciousness is possible only when the physical senses are active. Look at an object and you are conscious of it, but shut your eyes and you are not. With your eyes closed you are no longer conscious of the object which may or may not remain as it was or in the same places. Did someone take the apple from the table? Did someone replace it with a pear? You are left with only memory of the object on the table from “time past” and no longer have consciousness of it in time present nor in time future until you open your eyes.

(A.2.4) The loss of consciousness may be deliberate caused by physically impeding the senses (shut your eyes), chemically impeding the senses (anesthesia), by physical abuse or damage to the neural system, especially in the brain (coma). The loss of consciousness may be temporary or permanent.

(A.2.5) The degree of perception of “consciousness” varies from fully aware to completely unaware even when “sensory data” to the brain is present. Many actions occur with complete lack of consciousness of the sensory input. The “action” of walking or riding a bicycle, for example, usually occurs without consciousness of sensory inputs while performing the “action”. Similarly the action of sleep only partially reduces consciousness. The sensory input of a loud noise, for example, may have the effect of causing consciousness of it to spontaneously occur.

(A.3) The relative magnitude of consciousness being experienced is regulated by group of neurons called the reticular neural system that connects corpus to brain. This system operates operating independently of the neural systems of neurons that provides sensory information from the senses of sight, touch, smell, taste and sound that result in the production of sensations of qualia in the brain.

The neural systems that supply the sensory signals resulting in qualia were the last to evolve in animals. The reticular neural system, on the other hand, was the first to evolve in animals and provides sensory information as neural data that enables the brain to evaluate the relative importance of all sensory data the brain receives.

As an example, the brain receives sensory signals for the presence of light in the environment by way neural sensory cells for light in the eye producing electrochemical sensory signals and transmission of these signals though neurons to the brain which result in you experience the sensation of the qualia of light and color. Indeed, separate sensory signals are sent from cone cells for each blue, green, and red light which the brain processes to create the qualia of all the hues of colors that you experience in the state of consciousness. Additionally, “rod” cells send the presence of low levels of light of any and all colors producing the qualia of black, white and shades of gray devoid of signal for colors. But it is the signals sent through the reticular nervous system that results in both the unconscious action of iris of the eye adjusting to the intensity of all the light being sensed by the eye and in the conscious action of you turning your head away from the sources of the light when the intensity of the emotion of pain is unbearable. Even some legally blind people will turn away from bright lights. And so it is that the consciousness can be influenced by signals from the reticular nervous system in regulating the actions associated with consciousness.

A reticular nervous system can function with a complete absence of consciousness. The beating and regulation beating of the heart is an example. We can be conscious of the beating of our heart but we cannot consciously change the rate at which it beats. Sensory data resulting in, say, the sensation of fear acting in conjunction with sensory data from the recticular neural system regulate the heart rate, completely bypassing any conscious input in doing so. Our gastrointestinal system is regulated by a reticular nervous system that has no neural connection to our brain and therefore no consciousness of the functioning of our gastrointestinal system. (This system is sometime called the “stomach’s brain”.) Indeed, food passes through your gastrointestinal tract without an intervention, with consciousness or otherwise, of the function of the muscles in it. The gastrointestinal tract can continue to function even when the brain in our head no longer functions at all, when the body is “brain dead”. Further the "stomach brain" does not eliminate sensory data for the emotion of pain from a stomach ache by way of the larger neural system sending sensory data to our brain.

The Hydra organism has no brain whatsoever but does have both a sensory system for touch and taste and a reticular nervous system located around its mouth for response to touch and taste. But it seeks, finds and consumes food without any experience of the sensation of consciousness.

All scientific evidence points to the sensation of consciousness being present only in organism with a brain capable of processing sensory data that is receive from contact the environment outside the brain itself through one or more neural systems. Further, all animals showing indications of consciousness and reasoned actions of choice in response to it, have a brain consisting (a) a group of neurons called the cerebellum (“little brain”) which constitutes only 10% of the volume of the brain but 50% of its neurons. (b) the larger and more evolutionary ancient cerebrum with (c) a evolutionary more recent thin and folded layer of neurons called the cerebral cortex or mantle surrounding the main body of the cerebrum.

While the adult human brain constitutes only about 2% of total body weight and while being incapable of any motor activity itself, the brain consumes about 20% of all the energy used by the body. As a result, a disproportionate amount of blood circulates through the blood vessels coursing through and about the brain to supply energy used by the brain. Indeed, the brain constantly and unconsciously undergoes a great deal of energy intense electrical and chemical activity in the neurons that comprise it to process the incoming sensory data as well as neural data stored in memory. Further, about 70% of the neural connections in the brain are "rewired" daily. And one or more of those processes produces the sensation of consciousness.

In effect, the brain is the processor of huge amounts of information in the form of electrochemical data. In addition to the energy necessary to drive the electrochemical processes and the physical changes in the neural networks doing the processing, changing the state of each binary bit of information has a finite amount of energy associated with the change. The human brain has a limit of how much energy it can supply daily. Our brain processes about 70,000 thoughts per day, imports about 250 billions bit of sensory data per day for its environment. ​In accomplishing this, the brain performs about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 neural actions of information processing per second.

Despite the constant neural activity in the living brain, the phenomena of sensation that we call consciousness is not always present in our mind. It comes and goes with varying degrees of awareness of the physical input of sensory data for sight, sound, touch, feel and smell to the brain through the neural sensory system. What we know from observation is that, while the various neural system provide the flow of any sensory data of qualia resulting in consciousness, the reticular neural system provides the data used in the measure and control of the presence and degree of presence of consciousness.

As an example, consider the startled response to a loud sound. The transmission of auditory sensory signal for physical awareness to the brain, results in consciousness of the sound and the reticular neural system evaluates the intensity of awareness of the noise to affect intensity of the emotions the noise elicits. Did the noise trigger your “fight or fight” reflex? But do you run away and, if so, in what direction? So you wait to determine if the noise will be repeated and if it does at regular “interval of time”? But no sign of threat is elicited in the mind and the intensity of the emotions it elicited begin to diminish. You recall from memory that sound is that of a jack hammer and not that of gunfire from an automatic firearm. Your emotions associated with fear are soon replaced by the emotions associated with annoyance which prompts you to take the action of complaining about the noise from the jackhammer. And after a day or so the sounds fades into the background and you lose complete consciousness of it despite the same intensity sensory data being received and processed. The awareness of the sound remains but the consciousness of it and the emotions elicited by it greatly diminished. The only change in reality is that of the consciousness, emotions and memory in your brain. And it was the system of reticular neurons in the cerebral cortex of your brain that facilitated these changes Indeed, those with damage to the reticular neural system in the brain are unable filter incoming stimuli to discriminate irrelevant background stimuli from what they want or need to retain. In humans it is called sensory discrimination disorder by health professionals.

The reticular nervous system is also known to control sleep and waking and fight-or-flight responses. It also helps us respond to the world around us. For example, strong stimuli activates signals to the cortex and cause arousal and activate neural signals to the spinal cord, resulting in postural changes in muscle tone resulting from the startle response, as well as trigger locomotor events in fight-or-flight responses. During sleep, the same system is responsible for the relative lack of sensory awareness resulting in consciousness during light sleep, as well as the decrease in muscle tone during deep sleep. And while this system also modulates the activity of virtually every other system in the brain, it can be said that sleep is an expression of the degree of consciousness ranging from the awareness of consciousness during full wakefulness to a prolonged or permanent total lack of consciousness with a complete absence of wakefulness and inability to feel, speak or move in a mental state of what we call a coma. Indeed, a permanent state of coma often results from damage to that portion of the cortex despite continuing to receive reticular sensory data.

All that is known of consciousness links it directly to all components of the physical system, including all the neurons to and from the brain and the brain and to their electrochemical processes that is called the sensorium. No evidence exists that consciousness is an entity or process separate from, apart from, or outside the sensorium. As such this philosophy holds that consciousness is the creation of a physical process within the brain itself with the neurons sensing themselves as a circular “thing in itself” with no material attributes or properties that can be measured. Further it is the same processes that result in the equally ethereal sensations of consciousness that we know as emotions on which the brain can respond to with cause and effect conscious actions. That is, we are ultimately the slaves of the sensations of emotion held in our physical brains, directly resulting from consciousness states, which are, in turn, are the result of the effects of awareness sent to our physical brains by means of experience with our physical environment.

It also follows that “consciousness” of any and all that might exist outside the sensate physical world is impossible. Examples of this include such things as the electric and magnetic force fields surrounding electric currents in conductors and around magnets in such things as electric motors; the quantum Higgs field from which subatomic particles called Higgs boson constantly pop out of and into; the mass or matter of which things are made; and the four fundamental forces of nature. We cannot feel, see, hear, taste or smell any of these but we do feel, see, hear, taste and smell the effects they have on us. Indeed, these are the cause of the effects that we ultimately experience as sensations in the brain as feel, see, hear, taste and smell. And so it is that all we can ever really know of reality by direct experience itself is what we can sense in our brain. Pity the poor rock and amoeba that have no brain and thus no consciousness of the physical world in which they exist and thereby no knowledge of their existence in it.

The exact nature of consciousness and its formation is still largely unknown even as science is daily bringing us closer and closer to full knowledge of it. Could it be that, in the end, consciousness is but the brain’s awareness of itself by way of the very neural system of which it is composed? Indeed, the brain has about 86 billion neurons doing something and not a single one of them is a sensory neuron for detection the sensations of feel, sight, sound, taste or smell. And for the sensation of consciousness the brain need not have knowledge need of what is conscious off, only that the sensorium is transmitting sensory data to the brain of something for which it is experiencing physically awareness. What the something might be is of no consequence to consciousness of it. Who has not observed an object and wondered what it and its purpose for being was?

And what of dreams? They appear to produce exactly the same sensation as wakeful consciousness without time present sensory data from the outside world. Indeed some would posit it a philosophical problem of knowing whether we are experiencing a sleepful dream or wakeful consciousness.

Lacking little, if any, sensory input from the time present environment, dreams can only be formed from time past experiences of consciousness stored as memory in the brain. But, being only the product of memory, dreams need not be accurate reconstructions or even reconstructions at all of events in time past. They need not be reflective of reality. Who has not had the wakeful consciousness of a dream only to find the event either didn't happen, the facts in the dream are not true, or the dream is so completely irrational as to be impossible?

The states of sleep are not binary but vary by degree of deepness and may indeed result in some degree of action in response to them, varying from, say, the twitching of limbs to actual “sleep walking”. Who has not experienced the sight of a sleeping dog making muffled barks and truncated running motions with the feet and legs?

Likewise, dreams can result in the creation of emotions. What child has not been wakened by the emotion of shear terror of an imaginary boogie man hiding under the bed?

These observations beg the question of whether dreams are not only consciousness of different origins producing the same phenomenal experience in brain. This philosophy holds that they are, varying only the extent of false consciousness they produce. Indeed, dreams are a common source of both irrational myths and unconscious rational discovery of fact.

And there you have it. Every aspect of our living and life is the stepchild of consciousness, save a few unconscious primitive instincts, some permanent and some not, encoded in the DNA of our genes in our pre-cortex from our evolutionary past. Indeed, like the amoeba and hydra, we still recoil from certain disagreeable chemical in our environment while being attracted to certain other agreeable chemicals. As an example, some retail stores use aromatics to subconsciously prompt you to make purchases of items associated the smell. Movies may imbed a fame depicting a product sold at the concessions counter to unconsciously prompt their purchase.

The newborn baby is attracted to it mother’s breast milk and engages the instinctive reflex of crawling toward it mother’s nipple to acquire it. Only with experience does it gain consciousness of the source the agreeable chemical that is mother’s milk and the conscious actions necessary to acquire it. But sometimes the suckling instinct does not kick in and the baby will die of starvation unless it gains knowledge by being taught by its mother through conscious experience of how to suckle breast milk. That is, unconscious instinctive actions precede the development of consciousness and thoughtful actions in humans and other living things with brains. The capacity for consciousness developed late in the evolution of humans, coinciding with the development of the cerebral cortex of the brain. No cerebral cortex, no consciousness.

Those in a coma must be force fed to survive. And those left without consciousness in a diving accident must be rescued by someone to sustain life by avoiding death by drowning in the water into which they dove. Even then, Cconsciousness does not ensure sustenance of life in humans as conscious quadriplegics require the intervention in others for feeding and health care.

Unlike that of the amoeba and the hydra, consciousness has become essential to the very survival of our species and is as necessary to that end as nourishment and reproduction of the species.

(A.4) Death of the brain results in the complete and permanent lack of perception of and subsequent lack of consciousness.

(A.5) While the sensory perceptions of a things may be correct, the consciousness of it may or may be incorrect. The brain may incorrectly interpret sensory inputs in the mind as false perception and memory. A common example of this is eyewitness testimony in court cases that contradicts not only that of other eyewitnesses but also that of direct objective physical evidence in photographs, video graphs and sound recordings. As such, consciousness is not an absolute reflection of reality and human experience of it.

(A.1.7) False consciousness give a false interpretation of what is is. A false interpretation from false consciousness and store as memory we shall call myth. As an example, the false interpretation of the consciousness of a white sheet blowing in the wind but falsely interpreted as a ghost and subsequently stored in the brain as false “memory is an example of a myth. Myths are a nimbus of the mind.

(A.5) When a cause of consciousness no longer exist, the effect of consciousness no longer exists except that imprinted in memory of the cause and effect.

(A.5) Complete sensory deprivation of an environment in which unus exists does not preclude consciousness of unus. Consciousness of unus we shall call self consciousness. As an example, we can feel our body in a room devoid of physical contact, light, sound, smell or taste. Such a condition can exist, for example, when floating in a space capsule while experiencing weightlessness. As such, self consciousness is always present to some extent except while in a coma or when dead.

(A.8 ) Consciousness always lags actions of corpus being experienced. The brain requires a “time interval” of between 10 milliseconds and 100 milliseconds before any “consciousness” of them in present time. As an example, consciousness resulting from sight presents us with an image representing an average of what we saw in the past 15 seconds. Accordingly, consciousness never reflects the reality of what is in time present. Only the sensation of consciousness in the brain is reflective of reality in time present. This leaves us with the conclusion that we can never experience reality in time present but only in some time pas” with time intervals varying from a few milliseconds to the extent of physical memory of time past. And that leads to the conclusion that we can only have an understanding of reality of is in time present that is, at best, probabilistic in nature.

Further, different sensory inputs are not synchronous. Visual sensory inputs require 10 to 100 seconds for consciousness to develop An auditory stimulus takes only 8–10 ms to reach the brain and result in consciousness”. The touch sensory input of pain can take up to a full 1 second to reach your brain when you stub your toe. Accordingly you are first aware and gain a degree of consciousness of the sound of stubbing your toe, followed by the sight and “consciousness” of stubbing your toe and lastly the feel and consciousness of stubbing your toe. But consciousness of actually stubbing your toe in not full formed until all three sensory inputs are processed in your brain for a full second after the action of stubbing your toe and developing a composite consciousness of the three. Indeed, consciousness of stubbing your toe can only occur after your brain receives sensory inputs and processes them over some time interval. And should you stub your toe badly enough the consciousness of the action may be impressed in your memory for a very long time interval. And, lastly, consciousness of reality can take a time interval of billions of years since the effect of the action that enabled it. As an example, light from of a distant blue star called “Icarus” takes a time interval of 9 billion years to reach earth and cause “consciousness of it through input of the sensory data of light to be created and experienced. That that was the reality of Icarus 9 billion years ago we have no idea of what the state of it being is in time present. We can only speculate with a great deal of uncertainty. To know with near certainty we must wait another 9 billion years.

The time interval between consciousness and actions means that we literally live our lives in a world of the time past with actions in the time present resulting from the world as it was in time past and not in time present. That is, we are never truly conscious of reality in time present and, as such, can never have absolute knowledge of it in time present. Further, new knowledge stored as brain memory requires the passage of time. This cause of the delay is the time interval required for the brain to physically process the information present in the brain the form of electrochemical states of its neurons. As an example, the apple was on the table in time past but is it now? We physically sensed the apple in “time past” and process the sensory data in the brain that results in consciousness into time present as knowledge of the existence of the apple on the table in time past but are no longer know that it is in time present. Subsequently we stored this knowledge as memory in the physical brain. But did someone remove the apple from the table since you saw it and the knowledge of it stored in time past is false knowledge in time present? And, so, the process continually repeats itself while in the mind is in a state of consciousness as knowledge chases the reality of time past with an uncertainty of what it might be in time present. We can only know the world as it was, not as it is. Indeed, all knowledge is historical knowledge and we live in a world absent of absolute certainty. Actions experienced by humans in time present may be unexpected and unpredicted .

(A.10) All experiences of consciousness are capable of being store in the brain as memory with varying duration of retention.

(A.11) Consciousness is a nimbus of the mind and does not exist apart mental processes in the brain.

(A.12) Arguments can be made that consciousness is a part of the physical world in the same sense as the quantum fields like those from which quantum particles (like the Higgs (bosom) emerge. In this, it is posited that a consciousness for each material entity, animate and inanimate alike, pops out of the field when the entity comes into physical existence and pops back in when the entity ceases to exist as a form of “quantum consciousness”. Others postulate that consciousness is the only thing that exists at all. That is, the sensate world we know is a product of consciousness itself rather than the other way around. Further, many posit that consciousness exists apart from the corpus as a thing in itself. Because lack of proof is not proof on nonexistence, that consciousness could possibly exist in these forms cannot be entirely dismiss, This philosophy discounts them as false knowledge until proven otherwise.

(A.13) The what or why of what we perceive as consciousness, we leave as an unknown in the same sense that we the leave what and why of that we perceive to be our very existence, with only its effects it triggers being of importance to the development of this philosophy.

Summation

(A) The phenomenon of consciousness is a subjective experience of sensations in the mind resulting from mental processes in the brain using inputs of sensory data obtained from the objective material world in which we live. While consciousness is necessary for knowledge of the reality of objective material world, it is not absolute and is subject to errors, uncertainties, incompleteness and asynchrony of objective reality. Yet, flawed as it may be, consciousness and consciousness alone enables the human experience of existence of whatever might be and of whatever of it might be know.

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