What is consciousness? Why do we talk about it? There is no canonical definition for it. Some people say it doesn't exist, it's just an illusion. It seems like a software property of our brain. Having a sense of self, persistence in time, experience of sensory input, control of muscle output, processing of memories. What do I mean when stating that I'm conscious? When sleeping I'm not conscious. I don't (or only very rarely) have control about my thoughts. But in dreams I still experience things as David Härer. Is it a model my brain has of my body? Associating memories and future possibilities with my present body. Is it like a software session? Having access to the memory and I/O of my body. But who is having this access? My body itself. It's self-awareness. A computer simulating a user interacting with itself. Does this user actually exist? It makes sense to talk about it. It explains what happening on the computer. It can be observed as a process in memory. It's not much different then other software on the computer. However I'm still struggling with the right level of abstraction. How detached can I view my software from my hardware? My brain is more like an ASIC then a general purpose computer. I don't have a GPU in my head, capable of running arbitrary neutral nets. It's hardware that has evolved to execute one particular neural net. So the software is defined by the hardware. It's possible to learn things, change habits and so on, but that means slowly changing the hardware. However we are capable of acting in roles and doing mental math. So there is some general computing capability. But my consciousness and personality is in the domain of hardwired software. So it's not arbitrary but specific to the wiring of my brain. Is it possible to create a dublicate brain or move my consciousness to silicon hardware? I guess that's a question for another time. Thanks for reading. Do you have a definition of consciousness?