What is consciousness?

Islam does not define its mechanics — it says awareness belongs to the soul, and admits the soul's full nature is beyond what we were given to know (Qur'an 17:85).

An activity of the brain — what billions of neurons do, not a separate substance. Naturalists admit the explanation is unfinished: how physical processes produce felt experience (the 'hard problem') is still openly debated among them.

Unknown — and agnostics are unusually comfortable saying so. Huxley called the emergence of consciousness from nerve tissue as unaccountable as anything in the old wonder tales; a century and a half later, agnostics note, philosophers still call it the 'hard problem'.

Scripture offers no definition; Christian thinkers treat consciousness as the life of the rational soul, part of being made in God's image. Most hold it cannot be fully reduced to brain chemistry, though Christian philosophers today debate dualism against more body-centered views.

There is no single dogma about the mechanics of consciousness; the sources speak of a God-given soul that knows, chooses, and is answerable. Medieval thinkers like Maimonides tied the soul's highest part to the intellect, and beyond that Judaism leaves the question to philosophy and science.

Consciousness (vinnana) is one of the five processes that make up a person: a flow of moments of awareness, each arising from conditions — a sense meets an object, and knowing occurs. The Buddha rebuked a monk who took consciousness to be a single thing that wanders through lives unchanged.

The self's very nature, not a product of the brain: the Upanishads call Brahman-atman being, consciousness, and bliss (sat-chit-ananda), and describe consciousness as the inner witness that knows waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. Mind (manas), in most schools, is a subtle instrument the conscious self uses — itself closer to matter than to spirit.

The scripture offers devotion rather than a theory: awareness at its root is the divine light present in every creature, and the restless mind (man) becomes truly conscious of what it is through remembrance of the Name.

It has no doctrine of consciousness, and defers the question entirely to science and philosophy — inquiries a secular state is bound to leave free.

A natural capacity of the evolved brain. Humanists defer to science on how it works and admit openly that the full explanation is not yet in hand.

It offers no theory of consciousness, deferring to science and philosophy. Its one firm commitment is moral: every conscious person counts as one, and none as more than one.

It offers no theory of consciousness. The movement's famous 'consciousness-raising' was a political practice — women comparing experiences to see shared patterns — not a claim about the mind.

It has no theory of consciousness. Its texts speak only of 'national consciousness' — a people's shared awareness of being one — which historians and sociologists study as a social fact, not a claim about the mind.