> When people generally talk about consciousness, they're talking about the phenomenology of awareness in the present moment. It's not really hard to define. P

> When people generally talk about consciousness, they're talking about the phenomenology of awareness in the present moment. It's not really hard to define. People often find this line much harder to draw after they have experienced qualia that is radically different from from what they have experienced before. The most common avenues for such an experience are psychedelics or deep meditation, and the experience is often called ego death. There is much written on people's subjective experiences, but many people would say that they have experienced qualia which was not based on either awareness or the present moment. Of course, the experience still happened within a human brain, which is known to exhibit awareness of the present moment - but the subjective experience can feel as if neither of those concepts matter, or even exist, while still feeling very real. These experiences often cause people to start thinking a lot more about the distinctions between consciousness, awareness, and qualia. I get that most people use 'awareness' to mean 'experiencing qualia', but I think most people using 'awareness' in that way have not experienced qualia that is bafflingly different from normal human qualia.