There sure are a lot of books and articles and videos out there. Perhaps it doesn’t hurt to start with the Wikipedia article.
Then perhaps read this overview article from 2007. Then read this one, which seems to take a different perspective from the first, sort of.
The series Closer To Truth has tons of videos on consciousness, and you can find dozens on YouTube. Here’s the “What Is Consciousness” video:
This series has so many more episodes on consciousness, among them:
In the first article, you learned a little about a couple big names in Consciousness studies, David Chalmers and Daniel Dennett. Now watch this 10-minute interview of Chalmers (by the Closer To Truth guy of course):
Dennett doesn’t agree with Chalmers. He sees consciousness as an illusion. Watch Dennett’s TED talk now:
Now you can go off and explore on your own. Start at Wikpedia’s Mind and Brain Portal. And don’t miss the consciousness article at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Can we build consciousness? Read the article Curious About Consciousness? Ask the Self-Aware Machines for ideas.
Can consciousness be non-biological? Here’s yet another Closer To Truth video:
Nick Humphrey has been doing a lot of cool work recently. Here’s a talk of his:
Most people agree consciousness is hard to define. Some might say we are not ready to define it, or that it may not even exist. But nearly everyone has an intuitive understanding of it. Rather than defining consciousness, let’s list some questions asked about it.
Here are the three questions from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
- What is consciousness? What are its principal features? And by what means can they be best discovered, described and modeled? (The Descriptive Question)
- How does consciousness of the relevant sort come to exist? Is it a primitive aspect of reality, and if not how does (or could) consciousness in the relevant respect arise from or be caused by nonconscious entities or processes? (The Explanatory Question)
- Why does consciousness of the relevant sort exist? Does it have a function, and if so what it is it? Does it act causally and if so with sorts of effects? Does it make a difference to the operation of systems in which it is present, and if so why and how? (The Functional Question)
Other questions:
And here’s a video with a possible answer to where consciousness might have come from:
Some people don’t care at all about studying consciousness (or studying much at all), but some people do, and here are some reasons why they might:
Like most things worth studying, you can’t really study consciousness in isolation. It is studied along with the brain, language (especially syntax and semantics), logic, self-reference, levels of meaning, cognition, thought, sentience, knowledge, and information processing (computation).
Research on consciousness is done in:
You can find many thousands of articles, books, studies, and videos the examine and study and attempt to describe consciousness, or at least speculate on where it comes from. Here is a very small list:
For something pretty radical in consciousness studies, check out Orchestrated Objective Reduction.
Interestingly enough, Orch-OR, made this list of ten "brain-breaking scientific concepts" (whatever that means).
One more (old) video here: Marvin Minsky. Are his views closer to Dennett’s or Chalmers’?