1. Connaissance. Étendu sans conscience.
2. Sens moral. J'en appelle ŕ votre conscience.
Množina: awarenesses
1. Having knowledge of; SYN. consciousness, cognizance, knowingness.
2. State of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness; SYN. sentience.
Množina: cognizances
ETYM Old Fren. conissance, conoissance, French connaissance, Late Lat. cognoscentia, from Latin cognoscere to know. Related to.
1. Range of what one can know or understand; SYN. ken.
2. Range or scope of what is perceived.
3. Extent of knowledge; notice, especially judicial; awareness; distinctive badge.
Množina: consciences
ETYM French conscience, from Latin conscientia, from consciens, p. pr. of conscire to know, to be conscious; con- + scire to know. Related to Science.
1. A feeling of shame when one does something immoral.
2. Conformity to one's own sense of right conduct.
3. Motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles that govern a person's thoughts and actions; SYN. scruples, moral sense, sense of right and wrong.
Inner sense of what is morally right and wrong. Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud held that conscience is the superego.
English theologian Joseph Butler, the leading conscience theorist in ethics, saw the voice of conscience as “the candle of the Lord”. He argued that conscience is the part of human nature that guides us toward the moral integration of the self. Critics of conscience theories argue that conscience is an unreliable guide.
Množina: conscientiousnesses
1. The quality of being in accord with the dictates of conscience.
2. The trait of being painstaking and careful; SYN. painstakingness.
Množina: consciousnesses
The state of being aware of oneself and one's surroundings, without hindrance from sleep, illness, drugs, or hypnotism. This awareness is not purely of external events or phenomena, but also of one's own feelings, beliefs, and mental events.
Such introspective self-awareness, as opposed to merely responding to external stimuli, is generally taken to be a prerequisite for consciousness. This sidesteps the question of animal consciousness, which is largely believed to be very different or even nonexistent.
Consciousness is poorly understood but it is often linked to our capacity for language. According to the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, consciousness differs from unconsciousness in that it recognizes distinctions of space and time and is consistent. The unconscious frequently switches the meaning of symbols or events, as in dreams, and regularly accepts contradictions. Psychologists and neurologists have attempted to establish what processes are involved in consciousness, but with limited success.
One hotly contended issue in the ascription of conscious thought processes to animals. Many people wish to exclude animals from the category of conscious beings, but would admit that higher-order animals do exhibit a degree of self-awareness in addition to their responses to the outside world. However, there is generally considered to be a definite difference between the kind of self-examination and contemplation stemming from our consciousness of ourselves, and the level of self-awareness generally admitted to exist in, for example, a chimpanzee. The difference is often felt to lie in our additional capacity to reason and discuss, although whether this is an inherent part of our consciousness or a faculty additional to it is unclear.
An alert cognitive state in which one is aware of oneself and one's situation.