Why Consciousness Begins When the Brain Observes Itself

Awareness of Awareness Is Consciousness

Hook: The moment the mind notices itself

On a quiet afternoon, a neurologist named Jill Bolte Taylor felt her mind slipping away. A stroke was spreading across her left hemisphere, dissolving language and the sense of a separate self. In her memoir, she describes a strange calm: thoughts became clouds, boundaries softened, and yet something remained—a raw, luminous awareness. Later, as her brain recovered, she noticed something else returning too: the ability to notice that she was aware. That second step—the mind watching itself—felt like the reassembly of personhood.

Most of us glide through days without thinking about this distinction. We see, hear, worry, plan. But occasionally—during meditation, in a moment of awe, or in the middle of a mistake—we catch ourselves in the act of thinking. We don’t just feel; we notice that we feel. We don’t just think; we notice that we think. That reflexive turn is what many philosophers and scientists mean when they say, in different words, that awareness of awareness is consciousness.

It sounds like a riddle. It’s not. It’s a clue.

What “awareness of awareness is consciousness” means in this interpretation

In this article, the phrase is not treated as mysticism or wordplay. It points to a scaffolded process in the mind:

First level: The brain processes information and generates experiences (seeing red, feeling pain, hearing music). This is simple awareness.
Second level: The brain represents or monitors those experiences (“I see red,” “I am in pain,” “I am hearing music”). This is awareness of awareness, also called metacognition or higher-order awareness.

The claim is not that basic awareness doesn’t exist without this second step. It does. Animals, infants, and even simple nervous systems can have forms of experience. The claim is that what we typically call full human consciousness—the kind that includes a sense of self, reflection, reportability, and deliberate control—emerges when the mind learns to represent its own states.

Consciousness, on this view, is not a switch. It is a skill the brain learns.

The science behind it (in plain language)

1. Metacognition: thinking about thinking

Psychologists use the word metacognition for the ability to monitor and evaluate our own mental processes. When you say, “I’m not sure I remember this well,” or “I notice I’m getting distracted,” you’re using it.

Metacognition has two main parts:

Monitoring: noticing what your mind is doing
Control: adjusting behavior based on that notice

Importantly, these abilities are partially separable from raw performance. You can be good at a task but bad at judging how well you’re doing it—and vice versa.

2. Higher-order theories of consciousness

Several neuroscientific and philosophical theories propose that a mental state becomes conscious when it is represented by another mental state—a “thought about the thought” or a “perception of the perception.”

This doesn’t require a little person in the head. It’s more like layers in software: one system processes data; another system monitors and summarizes what the first is doing.

3. The brain networks involved

Neuroscience consistently finds that self-monitoring and introspection rely on a network involving:

Prefrontal cortex (especially anterior and dorsolateral regions)
Anterior cingulate cortex (error monitoring, conflict)
Insula (interoceptive awareness, bodily feelings)
Parts of the default mode network (self-related processing)

These areas are not necessary for raw sensation—but they are crucial for reflective awareness.

4. Developmental scaffolding

Children don’t start life with full metacognition. They gradually learn to:

Recognize their own beliefs
Notice uncertainty
Distinguish appearance from reality
Reflect on their own thinking

Consciousness, in the human sense, grows in layers.

Experiments and evidence

Below are landmark studies that connect awareness-of-awareness (metacognition, higher-order monitoring) to what we experience as conscious access. Where details are well established, they are given; where there is uncertainty, that is noted.

1. Blindsight and higher-order awareness

Researchers: Lawrence Weiskrantz and colleagues Year(s): 1970s–1990s Where: Various publications, notably in Brain and Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Research question: Can people respond to visual stimuli without being consciously aware of seeing them?
Method: Patients with damage to primary visual cortex were shown stimuli in their “blind” visual field and asked to guess properties like location or movement.
Sample/setting: Neurological patients with cortical blindness.
Results: Patients performed above chance while reporting no visual experience.
Why it matters: It shows that information processing and behavior can occur without awareness of awareness. The missing piece is not the visual data—it’s the meta-level access to that data.

This supports the idea that consciousness involves not just having information, but knowing that you have it.

2. Confidence and metacognitive sensitivity

Researchers: Stephen Fleming, Hakwan Lau, and others Year: 2012 Where: Science

Research question: Can we measure how well people know how well they’re doing?
Method: Participants performed perceptual tasks and rated their confidence. Brain imaging and behavioral modeling were used to separate task performance from metacognitive accuracy.
Sample/setting: Healthy adult volunteers.
Results: Metacognitive ability varied independently from task performance and correlated with anterior prefrontal cortex structure and activity.
Why it matters: This shows that self-monitoring is a distinct, measurable brain function. Two people can see equally well, but differ in how well they know they see.

This is strong evidence for a second-order layer in cognition.

3. Loss of insight in brain injury and psychiatric conditions

Researchers: Multiple; classic work by Babinski (anosognosia), modern reviews in neuropsychology Years: Early 1900s to present Where: Various clinical neurology and psychiatry journals

Research question: What happens when people lose awareness of their own deficits?
Method: Clinical observation of patients who deny paralysis, blindness, or cognitive impairment.
Sample/setting: Stroke patients, traumatic brain injury, some psychiatric populations.
Results: Some patients can be profoundly impaired yet sincerely report being fine.
Why it matters: Their brains process information and generate behavior, but the monitoring layer is damaged. This is a real-world demonstration of what happens when awareness of awareness breaks.

4. Prefrontal involvement in conscious reportability

Researchers: Stanislas Dehaene and colleagues Year: 2001 onward Where: PNAS, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, and others

Research question: What brain activity distinguishes consciously reportable perception from unconscious processing?
Method: Masked stimuli, brain imaging, EEG, and behavioral reports.
Sample/setting: Healthy adults.
Results: Consciously reportable stimuli trigger widespread, late, global brain activation, especially involving prefrontal and parietal regions.
Why it matters: This supports the idea that consciousness involves broadcasting and monitoring—not just local sensory processing.

A simple thought experiment you can try

The “two-level attention” exercise (5 minutes):

Sit comfortably and close your eyes.
For one minute, just notice your breath.
Now add a second task: notice that you are noticing your breath.
When your mind wanders, note both:
- What it wandered to
- The moment you noticed it wandered

Most people discover something surprising: there is a difference between being in an experience and knowing you are in it. That difference is exactly the gap this article is about.

This is not proof of any theory—but it’s a direct, safe demonstration of the layered structure of attention.

Real-world applications

1. Education: learning how you learn

Students who are taught metacognitive strategies—checking understanding, predicting mistakes, monitoring attention—consistently outperform those who only practice content. You’re not just training skills; you’re training the observer of the skills.

2. Mental health: decentering from thoughts

Many modern therapies (CBT, ACT, mindfulness-based therapies) rely on teaching patients to notice thoughts as thoughts rather than as reality. This tiny shift—awareness of awareness—can reduce anxiety, rumination, and depression.

3. Decision-making: knowing when you don’t know

Good pilots, doctors, and investors are not just skilled—they are skilled at detecting the limits of their own knowledge. That’s metacognition in action, and it saves lives and resources.

4. Artificial intelligence: building systems that know what they’re doing

Current AI systems can perform tasks, but they are often poor judges of their own confidence. Many researchers now argue that something like metacognition will be essential for robust, safe AI—machines that know when they might be wrong.

Limitations, controversies, and what we still don’t know

1. Is higher-order awareness really necessary for consciousness?

Some philosophers argue that raw experience itself is already consciousness, even without reflection. On this view, a baby or an animal can be fully conscious without thinking about it.

A fair response is: this debate is partly about definitions. The scaffold view doesn’t deny basic experience—it claims that human-style reflective consciousness depends on the extra layer.

2. The hard problem remains

Even if we explain how the brain monitors itself, we still haven’t explained why any of this feels like something from the inside. The famous “hard problem” of consciousness is not solved here.

This framework addresses structure and function, not the ultimate nature of subjective experience.

3. Measuring awareness of awareness is tricky

Confidence ratings and introspective reports are imperfect tools. People can be wrong about their own minds. The science is improving, but the measurements are still indirect.

4. Correlation is not identity

Just because prefrontal areas correlate with reportable awareness doesn’t mean they are consciousness. They may be part of the access and control system rather than the generator of experience itself.

Inspiring close: the skill of waking up

If consciousness were a lightbulb, it would be either on or off. But everything we know suggests it’s more like a muscle—or better, a skill.

You don’t just have experiences. You can learn to see yourself having them.

That capacity—fragile, trainable, sometimes lost and sometimes sharpened—may be one of the most important achievements of the human brain. It lets us step back from impulse, from habit, from fear. It lets us notice when we are confused, when we are biased, when we are growing.

“Awareness of awareness is consciousness” is not just a theory. It’s an invitation: to practice the strange, powerful act of being present for your own mind.

And in a world increasingly shaped by automatic systems—both biological and artificial—that might be the most human skill of all.

Key takeaways

The brain can process information without reflective awareness.
What we call human consciousness likely depends on a metacognitive layer: noticing our own mental states.
This ability is measurable, trainable, and neurologically distinct.
Many therapies, learning strategies, and safety-critical professions already rely on it.
The deepest mystery—why experience exists at all—remains open.

Compact references (selected)

Dehaene, S., & Naccache, L. (2001). Toward a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Fleming, S. M., et al. (2012). Metacognitive ability and the anterior prefrontal cortex. Science.
Weiskrantz, L. (1997). Consciousness Lost and Found: A Neuropsychological Exploration. Oxford University Press.
Lau, H., & Rosenthal, D. (2011). Empirical support for higher-order theories of consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Babinski, J. (1914). Contribution à l’étude des troubles mentaux dans l’hémiplégie organique cérébrale. Revue Neurologique.