Joe is correct. Science does not know what consciousness is in full. In fact, science doesn't know what consciousness is at all. Ron Davies, who has apparently never misspelled nor misspoke in his life, is excused from this argument, we wouldn't want to bore him with our lack of education, would we?

So, with that said, we will have to agree on some basics of what it means to be conscious. I posit tnat, at its base, being conscious means that one has the ability to experience events and to remember those events. This must be because if one does not remember events, one cannot have experience. If one is told by another that one was present at an event of which one has no memory of any kind--nothing at all--then what does that say about the state of one's consciousness during that event? I say, one could not have been conscious during the event or one would remember something.

So when I speak of being unconscious, I don't mean sleep necessarily. One can dream and remember it and that is experiencing. However, a deep sleep where one falls into bed, snoozes for 8 hours and then is awoken by the alarm and swears that only a second had gone by experienced total or near total unconsciousness. One is aware of nothing, not even the passage of time. In fact, we can reduce complete unconscious to just that--missing time.

So there are degrees of consciousness and unconsciousness so let's get that out of the way. I refer here only to full adult consciousness rather than, say, baby consciousness since we can't be certain how babies experience events. And when I refer to unconsciousness, I refer to missing time. I will specify otherwise if and when necessary.

Does anyone disagree that the most fundamental trait of consciousness involves experiencing events and remembering?