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{{note|This page has not yet reached minimally viable contentis an initial draft and needs to be improved and extended. Please You're cordially invited to help improve the page and remove this note when appropriatedoing so.}}This page lists various connotations of the term "consciousness" in use in scientific research today. The fact that so many different conceptions of this term are being applied highlights the striking contrast between the conceptual exposition and the familiarity of consciousness.<ref name="MetzingerLexikon">Metzinger, Encyclopedia entry ''Bewusstsein'', 2008</ref>

The fact that so many different conceptions of this term are being applied highlights the striking contrast between the conceptual exposition and the familiarity of consciousness.<ref name="MetzingerLexikon">Metzinger, Encyclopedia entry ''Bewusstsein'', 2009, in H.-J. Sandkühler (Editor), ''Enzyklopädie der Philosophie''. Hamburg: Meiner. </ref> Some of the distinctions below are from inspired by (Metzinger, 20082009).<ref name="MetzingerLexikon"/>

''Example:'' Consciousness in this sense could refer to whether a person is in a state of [[consciousness#wakefullnessWakefulness|wakefulness]], cf. below.

This is closely related to [[consciousness#Access consciousness|access consciousness]], cf. below.

According to a second general variant of the unary predicate of mental states connotation of consciousnessconception, mental states are conscious ''if we experience'' [[consciousness#'What it is like to be' consciousness|what it is like to be]] in the respective state, or ''alternatively'' if ''there is something'' [[what consciousness#'What it is like to be' consciousness|it is like to be]] in that state. A third, closely related but distinct notion would be to define a mental state as conscious if we ''know '' of the mental state's qualitative features.

The term "conscious" is also being used as a binary predicate, i.e. a predicate which takes two "variables". In one way of using the term, one of the variables refers to individual beings such as persons or organisms, and the other refers to objects of perception or thinking, cf. [[add LINKconsciousness#Consciousness in the intentional sense|consciousness in the intentional sense]]below.

This is the case, e.g., if "consciousness" is taken to denote the [[attention]] of a person on his/her own mental states. Cf. [[add LINKconsciousness#Introspective consciousness|introspective consciousness]]or [[consciousness#Attentive consciousness|attentive consciousness]] below.

Consciousness sometimes refer refers to the conceptually structured and reflexive awareness of one as a single, persistent person with certain beliefs, intentions, etc.<ref name="MetzingerLexikon" />

This conception of consciousness is utilized in formal model building, such as [[Integrated Information Theory]]. There are at least two different conceptions thereof. === Of ... of an individual being === The first conception is a further development of the [[consciousness#wakefulness|wakefulness]] conception of conscious experience. Whereas the latter is a predicate, i.e. a function symbol which takes values <math>0</math> or <math>1</math>, depending on whether an individual being is conscious in this sense or not, the level of consciousness conception of consciousness attempts to introduce more fine-grained distinctions. It describes various different states of consciousness (of an individual being as a whole), including coma, sleep, drowsiness and full wakefulness, among many others. The individual being conception of the level of consciousness is often modeled as a real number, with a lower number indicating a lower state of consciousness of the person/organism/system ===in question. However, it is questionable whether this mathematical structure is appropriate. If one demands a operational grounding of the mathematical structure, a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preorder preorder] might be more appropriate.

=== Of The level of consciousness conception can arguably also be applied to constituents of, or aspects of, conscious experience in order to describe how intense a part particular constituent or aspect of experience is being experienced within the whole of conscious experience ===. This is being done, e.g., in IIT 3.0, where the constituents are called 'concepts' and where the <math>\varphi(M)</math> of a mechanism <math>M</math> that constitutes a concept is a real number which arguably serves this purpose.