Have An Example of My Craptastic Essay Writing

For an online Philosophy/Mythology class:

For me, consciousness is the ability to think basic emotional and logical thoughts and have internal dialogue with onself.

The first definition of consciousness, which is being aware of one's own existence, sensations and thoughts, sounds promising at first sight. However, consider this. A robot is being programmed to walk in a basic direction for an experiment. It knows that its battery life is on, it can sense whether to go to the left or the right and it can process and analyse directional data. Would you define that as consciousness? Almost certainly not.

The third consciousness definition is being aware of the things around oneself. Not only is this too vague and simple for me, I'm puzzled at the possible loopholes. If a blind person is in a room alone, and he is standing in the center of it without touching anything with his hands, does that mean he is not conscious? If this definition of consciousness is true, it would be borderline dehumanising.

The fourth possible meaning of consciousness is it being the ability to think of oneself as a being in time. This could mean that to be conscious, you would have to know about yours past, present and future. So, does that mean a person who has just had amnesia is not conscious as he or she cannot think about him or herself in the past?

The concept of internal dialogue is a bit challenging to explain in full, but for me, anything can be internal dialogue just so as long as emotions and feelings are involved and a response is made. Anything as simple as 'I'm hungry-that means I need food' or 'I feel drowsy and frustrated-not good' can be internal dialogue to me.

This would mean sleeping beings as well as beings in a comma are not conscious either, but the only reason why this is hard to think about is that in pop culture and literature consciousness usually refers to being alive. However, as I explained, I find multiple problems with this definition. Conscious does not always or necessarily mean alive. When you are conscious, you are certainly alive, but when you are alive, you may not always be conscious.

A functioning brain does not mean the person is always conscious either. When you sleep, your body is still at work, but you are not thinking about anything exactly, unless you are dreaming, and even then, this tends to be based on previously stored emotions and scenarios.

Aside from the above rationalisation, the reason why I believe that internal dialogue is the best concept of consciousness is this. For me, being conscious is the ability to think. Not necessarily about your surroundings or your past, present and future, but it is the ability to feel, to experience. Whether you recognise this feeling or not, that is consciousness for me.