consciousnesses

Noun

consciousness (countable and uncountable, plural consciousnesses)

1. (uncountable) The state of being conscious or aware; awareness.
   • Of course it’s natural to think twice about whether your cell phone truly “knows” a favorite number, your GPS is really “figuring out” the best route home, and your Roomba is genuinely “trying” to clean the floor. But as information-processing systems become more sophisticated—as their...2018, Steven Pinker, “Chapter 2: Entro, Evo, Info”, in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Penguin, →ISBN
   1. The state or trait of having cognition and sensation; cognition and sensation themselves.
      • To lose consciousness after striking one's head
   2. The fact of having knowledge of a particular fact or matter; cognizance.
      • Although the Celebrity was almost impervious to sarcasm, he was now beginning to exhibit visible signs of uneasiness, the consciousness dawning upon him that his eccentricity was not receiving the ovation it merited.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter V, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC
   3. Acute awareness (of something) and belief in its communal relevance.
      • the development of a feminist consciousness
2. (countable) A being with cognition.
   • The pantheistic mainstream asari religion is siari, which translates roughly as "All is one." The faithful agree on certain core truths: the universe is a consciousness, every life within it is an aspect of the greater whole, and death is a merging of one's spiritual energy back into the greater...2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Asari: Religion Codex entry