Consciousness:

>Consiousness can be defined as knowing what you are thinking about and being able to tell others about it and act on it as a matter of self-understood choice among envisioned alternatives in subsequent social or other situations. It implies the ability to think about times, places, and events separated from your immediate circumstances and the ability to use the understanding so gained to anticipate and alter the future, build further scenarios, plan and think ahead, anticipate different possible outcomes, and retain the potential to act in several alternative ways, depending on circumstances that can be only imperfectly represented at the time the plans or scenarios are being made. Language is a concomitant of consciousness, characterized by features that make communication of useful information about mental scenarios possible: signs, symbols, and displacement in time or space (Hockett 1960; Alexander 1979a, 1983; Pinker 1994, 1997).<

R. D. Alexander, Darwinism and Philosophy, 2005