The Development of Consciousness
A key part of understanding something ( anything really ) is knowing how things got to be the way they are, this is especially important with consciousness as it can be rather subjective yet I think we all have roughly the same different conscious experiences at different points in our lives, so knowing how they change can help our understanding; come along as we take a chronological look at consciousness through life and see what we find.
Definitions: Consciousness is a semantic minefield but I've found that simply replacing it with the word awareness and being specific about what one is being aware of can help carry the conversation forward, I go into more detail here:Conscious Artificial Intelligence: Part 1. Foundations
The unborn
In the womb just after gestation things start out in nothingness as far as we know, the biological hardware and systems that allow for awareness of anything are still being built, so consciousness needs to wait for now.
