How to Define Consciousness?

George Miller wrote in 1962, "Consciousness is a word worn smooth by a million tongues."

I would like to address Prof. Oliver Carter's observations about my comments, specifically,

 "But I remain unconvinced for the most part that we are on the road that will lead us to a definition of consciousness.  A metaphor might be this: we are traveling down a road facing backward, conjecturing about where we are headed by describing where we have been.

Prof Carter is correct in questioning whether or not I intended to add the word, scientific, in front of "definition."  Upon further reflection, the statement I intended is," in our search for a scientific definition of consciousness I am convinced that we are  traveling down a road facing backward, conjecturing about where we are headed by describing where we have been." 

It's been pointed out that the dictionary is full of definitions, and many have evolved over time.  The definition of a word often adapts to mean whatever it is understood to mean through its usage.

I offer up the word "happiness" as an example.  It has been said that as it turns out, the word "happiness" is just not a useful word anymore, because we apply it to too many different things.

Isn't this true of the word "consciousness?"  The word "unconsciousness" is even a better example perhaps ( which there was some agreement on).

So let's ask then, "How is the word "consciousness" being used in scientific references?"

"When it comes to consciousness, a fundamental distinction is made between its contents and its levels. The contents of consciousness are our subjective experiences, such as the sound of a violin. "Levels of consciousness, on the other hand, have to do with outward signs of a person's...state of awareness." People with aberrant awareness are typically placed into one of three categories: having a coma, being in a vegetative state and being 'minimally conscious'. But based on recent research, those categories must now be reevaluated."

Here we find that we are measuring "subjective experience" and "awareness." We might reword this statement in such a way to eliminate the word consciousness altogether and just say that the boundaries of vegetative states are measured by a person's outward signs of their state of awareness, in relation to their subjective experience.  What was previously considered "minimal consciousness" becomes a measurement of brain activity.

We see that there really might be no need for the word at all, when it comes to science.

Let me close with a research paper that supports the notion that we are not ready for a definition of this phenomena referred to as "consciousness."

Abstract. Definitions of consciousness need to be sufficiently broad to include all examples of

conscious states and sufficiently narrow to exclude entities, events and processes that are

not conscious. Unfortunately, deviations from these simple principles are common in

modern consciousness studies, with consequent confusion and internal division in the field.

The present paper gives example of ways in which definitions of consciousness can be either

too broad or too narrow. It also discusses some of the main ways in which pre-existing

theoretical commitments (about the nature of consciousness, mind and world) have intruded

into definitions. Similar problems can arise in the way a “conscious process” is defined,

potentially obscuring the way that conscious phenomenology actually relates to its neural

correlates and antecedent causes in the brain, body and external world. Once a definition of

“consciousness” is firmly grounded in its phenomenology, investigations of its ontology and

its relationships to entities, events and processes that are not conscious can begin, and this

may in time transmute the meaning (or sense) of the term. As our scientific understanding of

these relationships deepen, our understanding of what consciousness is will also deepen. A

similar transmutation of meaning (with growth of knowledge) occurs with basic terms in

physics such as "energy", and "time."

http://cogprints.org/6453/1/How_to_define_consciousness.pdf