A hypothesis about consciousness

[emjay]

I just went for a walk today, trying to be mindfully aware of my surroundings... while listening to my MP3 player... and I noticed that it's impossible to separate the sound from the meaning... once you know it... or the things you see, from what they are. But, if you watch a foreign TV programme in a language you don't understand, then it really is just sound with no meaning. So I think consciousness is all about understanding... as soon as its contents are understood... then that understanding becomes somewhat inseparable from the qualia. I don't mean understanding in the sense of knowing the causes (necessarily) but understanding in the sense of becoming familiar with an environment, such that you have expectations about it... ie in a place you know where to go, and in music, you can predict the next part of it. And reason, I'd guess, is an extension of this process. But I'd never really thought of it like this before... that just the actual qualia represents understanding - in the sense that you can't separate the meaning from it - unless it's not known... something new... then you either passively come to expect it, and/or your reason comes in and and tries to make sense of it... to fit it into the overall understanding.