Origin and evolution of human consciousness
The study of the origin and evolution of consciousness presents several problems. The first problem concerns terminology. The word consciousness comes from the Latin term conscĭentĭa that means “knowledge shared with others.” However, the term consciousness also refers to several other aspects involving both its levels (sleep, coma, dreams and waking state) and contents (subjective, phenomenal and objective). A second issue is the problem of other minds, namely, the possibility to establish whether others have minds very like our own.