A phenomenon that the philosopher William James (1842-1910) likened to a ‘stream’ or process by which a sense of self is attained through a succession of experiences. The pragmatist John Dewey (1859-1952) added that consciousness is an emergent property of sentient creatures, which develops and enables discrimination and choice based on the satisfaction of needs and desires. He also argued that, while consciousness involves privately experienced states, categorical thinking must be communicable or based on shared meanings to sustain self-consciousness. Other pertinent features of consciousness have to do with the limited capacity of the brain to sustain perception and memory. Attention controls access to consciousness and memory establishes the extent to which on-going events can be re-categorized to include novel and unexpected situations. Some developmental psychologists (e.g., Myrtle B. McGraw; Jerome Kagan) have contended that infant sensitivity to balance, novelty and discrepancy paves the way for the emergence of consciousness by stimulating the neural mechanisms of arousal and attention. Neuroscientists, however, remain divided about the neural correlates of conscious states. Some contend (Michael Posner) that consciousness is strongly correlated with the firing patterns of neurons in specific brain regions, while others believe (Gerald Edelman) that consciousness involves the synchrony and coherence of widely distributed groups of neurons.
See Arousal, Attention, Behaviorism, Cognitive science, Mesencephalic reticular activating system, Mind-body problem, Self, Self-concept, Self-conscious emotions, Theory of neuronal group selection (TNGS)