what defines consciousness? we have a hard time doing that alone already
is the universe self-aware? are we 'self'-aware, considering we are all part of the universe?
tough questions imo
Moreover, before we start into discussing our ways out this whole quandary of consciousness—is X, Y, or Z self-aware?—we must take several steps back.
What is it that is aware of the self and what is this self of which it is aware? What is awareness and what is selfhood? Do selfness and awareness only coexist, or might awareness exist in the absence of the self, tantamount to how the self can exist without awareness (e.g., when asleep, comatose, or otherwise unconscious and insentient)? Therefore, is self-awareness a logical tautology, insofar as we suppose the self is merely a mental mirage or the state of being aware of awareness itself?
Is the self only just the condition of having awareness, and self-awareness is merely an example of a pigeonholed term or a needless particularisation of the concept of awareness (as with sex-awareness, rain-awareness, time-awareness, leg-awareness--all redundant terms for forms of awareness)? Thus, is the self, consciousness, and the mind all sort of like proprioception than apperception?
And if the universe has a self of which it is aware, and since the self is typically conceived of as an indivisible unit of sapience, is a universal selfhood incompatible with an individual selfhood? That is to say, can oneself or yourself or myself exist as a separate self or a subself of a universal self, which we only confuse our localised awareness thereof as part of a greater self sort of like how a cell is self-aware but unaware of the organism it constitutes or the greater self of the plenary self, or its existence as a sort of part-self of the whole-self?
We can see the possibility for the cell to think it has a self, as to know of one's existence is essentially what selfhood is all about, but it has no selfhood as it is only an element of a much grander self—the organism.
Are we personally self-aware, or only aware of a general, amorphous self or some cosmic self? When we think of ourselves, do we or can we really think of us or do we unwittingly think of a hypothetical fabric of selfves— that in which we know as ourselves, subjects that comprise microscopic interstices of fibrous sinews in the bodies of the interwoven string that forms the fabric?
Is it the self that is aware, or is it awarenesss that is the self?
So many imponderable questions and a sheer dearth of anything approaching more than conjecture or circuitous philosophical ratiocination.
The English language doesn't help any, either. I mean, Anglophones cannot even accurately translate or appropriate foreign but easy philosophical terms from closely related languages (say, German or French). But the situation is complicated further by the fact that :
The languages that do have a sizeable lexicon of terms relating to very difficult philosophical concepts (like the self, consciousness) are all far removed and distantly related to English or other Germanic languages (for example: Sanskrit, Burmese, Tibetan, Hindi, Tamil, Arabic, Persian, Mandarin, Pali, Bengali, Assamese). It's difficult enough to adequately translate the delivery instructions for a pizza from these languages into English, let alone fairly interpret some recondite, abstruse, and convoluted philosophical tome, like some composed by the greats like Abhinavagupta or Gautama Siddhartha or Panini or Lao Tzu or Yāgyavalkya or whomever.
Thus, we are not only confounded by strenuous-to-stride language barriers and translational failings, but a variety of inexplicable conceptual obstacles and a profound cultural shock on a seismic scale.
