Teadvustan

Teadvustan is a term used in Estonian-language philosophy and cognitive science to denote the subjective, first-person aspect of conscious experience. Rooted in teadvus, the Estonian word for consciousness, teadvustan is used to refer to what it feels like to undergo experiences—colors, sounds, emotions—rather than to the neural or computational processes that enable them.

In usage, teadvustan serves to distinguish the phenomenological content of awareness from third-person descriptions of brain states. It appears in discussions of phenomenology, the mind–body problem, and the philosophy of mind, where analysts emphasize subjective reports and the felt quality of experiences (the "what it is like" aspect). Some theorists see teadvustan as a necessary component of any complete account of consciousness, while others argue that it can be analyzed or explained through correlated brain activity without appealing to subjective qualifiers.

Operationalizing teadvustan for scientific study remains controversial, because reliable measurement relies on introspective report, which can be biased and limitado by memory. Proponents advocate combining first-person descriptions with third-person biomarkers to map teadvustan to neural correlates and cognitive processes.

See also: consciousness, phenomenology, neural correlates of consciousness, first-person perspective.