• What is consciousness?
• Consciousness or consciousness?
• Social conscience
• Moral conscience
• Environmental awareness
• Class consciousness

We explain what consciousness is and the differences with consciousness. In addition, social, moral, environmental and class conscience.

Consciousness is the ability to perceive and judge one's existence.

What is consciousness?

The word consciousness (and, in some cases, consciousness) has different meanings, all related to the human mind and lucidity, that is, the ability to perceive our environment. It is not a simple term to define, and disciplines as different as the philosophy and the psychology.

Originally, both consciousness and consciousness come from the Latin word conscientia, fruit of the prefix with- ("Union", "together") and the verb scire ("Discern" or "mentally separate one thing from another"), and that came from the adjective conscius ("confident").

Around the 1st century BC. C. this word was used to refer to shared knowledge, to the knowledge general and, therefore, to the self-knowledge of the human being, that is, to the knowledge that had to do with his existence, his thought and your actions.

In that same century, however, the term was used for the first time with the sense of "remorse", by the Latin poet Horace (65-8 BC), to translate the Greek term syneidesis (roughly equivalent to "imaginative ability"). From then on it began to be used in the sense of "having something in consciousness."

As we can see, the word has had a history of changes and nuances that have been increasing its meaning. Today we attribute almost all those meanings to it from Latin, especially those related to self-knowledge (as in “being aware") And the moral judgment of one's actions (as in" having clean the awareness”).

Therefore, when we speak of conscience we are referring to:

• The ability to know our environment and locate ourselves in it, that is, lucidity.
• The ability to reflect on the reality and assume a posture in front of her.
• The ability to judge our actions from a perspective moral (good or bad).

The same meanings apply when we classify someone as conscious or unconscious, and for much more specific uses of the word, such as those that we will see later.

Finally, we must say that consciousness, understood as the ability to perceive, understand and judge one's own existence, is a capacity, that we know, exclusive to human beings.

Furthermore, it constitutes, paradoxically, one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of our existence: where does consciousness reside? What exactly is it? In what way is it generated? These are questions that many religions They tried to answer with the notion of "soul" or "spirit", and that they still do not have a definitive scientific answer.

Consciousness or consciousness?

According to the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts of the Royal Spanish Academy, consciousness and consciousness are interchangeable in most contexts in which we refer in general to the perception or knowledge of reality, although it is common to choose the spelling simpler, the one that does not have "s" between consonants.

But the term conscience is preferred when referring to morality, that is, to the evaluation of one's own or other people's actions in terms of good and evil.

Thus, we will say that "So-and-so regained consciousness" (that is, he woke up from a faint), but later "his conscience judged him" (that is, he felt remorse).

However, in the case of adjectives Derivatives are always used consciously or unconsciously, that is, the formula with "s" between consonants is used. The "conscious" and "unconscious" forms are not correct.

Social conscience

When we use the term "social conscience", we are referring to the capacity or interest that an individual has regarding the living conditions of the other members of his community.

So a person socially conscious, thus, is one that recognizes itself as part of a human collective, understands and accepts the responsibilities that this implies.

On the other hand, people who live without caring for their community, or getting involved in it, or feeling in any way responsible for what takes place in it, are individuals devoid of social conscience.

Moral conscience

The term "moral conscience" can be redundant in certain contexts, since the exercise of conscience is usually an exercise of morality, that is, of discernment between what is considered good, appropriate, consistent, and what is considered bad , inappropriate or out of place.

Morality, however, changes according to the cultural framework in which it is found, that is, from a culture to another, or from one era to another in the same culture. Therefore, moral conscience is also changing, and in general it has to do with public opinion, and with the notion of ethics: the responsibility towards others that we hold when we exercise a position, an office or an authority.

Thus, moral conscience is the ability to judge one's actions according to the cultural framework to which we belong. It is precisely to this type of conscience that we appeal when we perceive that our actions could be harmful or offensive to another, or when they imply values contrary to those we would like to see reign in the world, if only it depended on us.

Environmental awareness

Similarly, we speak of "environmental awareness" or "ecological awareness" to refer to the degree of lucidity and knowledge of an individual regarding the environmental impact their actions, their way of life and their habits everyday.

A person endowed with environmental awareness is expected to live taking into consideration the pollution and the degrees of environmental damage that can be prevented on a daily basis, through small actions or habits: Recycle and reuse, save Energy, do not consume certain brands of products, etc.

Class consciousness

The term "class consciousness" comes from Marxism, and is used to refer to the degree of knowledge that a person possesses regarding their own location within the socioeconomic and power relations that exist in the society.

Put more simply, a class-conscious person knows to which socioeconomic stratum he belongs, and therefore knows which sectors are opposed to the development and improvement of the living conditions of his / her life. social class, and which sectors, on the contrary, are favorable to its cause.

This concept makes sense within the logic of “class struggle”Proposed by Marxist philosophy as an explanation for historical change: social classes would compete with each other for control of the means of production, as some try exploit the others to generate wealth ("The exploitation of man by man").