Contrary to consciousness being an emerging property of the mind, as someone has answered, thus reifying the latter, I would hold the inverse: mind is a property or, better, a projection of consciousness. Consciousness is universal, mind particular, individual – standing in the relationship essence-accident (or substance-form). The first is without a beginning, the second temporal, The first, necessary as principle, the second contingent. First unmoving, second changeable.
All this is clearly spelled out in the philosophy and metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta and also, even if with different analysis and import, in Aristotelian metaphysics.
SH. (PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience and QM) I agree with Alberto that Consciousness is fundamental to the evolution of mind. But he doesn’t explain how Aduaita, or, monism, explains away consciousness which has remained an unsolved mystery, so far.
In fact, it is duaita, that is, the true monotheism of Sanatana Dharm, which is based on the faculty of categorization of consciousness, for example, to maintain the categories of ‘time-independent Uncreated Creator’ and the ‘temporal, caused creation’ strictly non-overlapping. On the contrary, Aduita is based on deliberate intermixing of the inherently opposed categories of the timeless Uncaused Creator and the time-dependent caused creation, into one monolithic system. Aduaita or, monism, is symptomatic of serious cognitive deficit.
Both, duaita of Sanatana Dharm, or, Brahmanic monotheism, and the aBrahamic monotheism (that’s Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), being true monotheisms, connote highest cognitive achievement.
AM. Consciousness is not a mystery – it is a prime and directly apprehended fact of which no one can have any doubt (e.g. ‘Are you conscious?’). Can you define ‘existence’? A metaphysical principle, such as consciousness, or existence, is indefinable because it has no parts or attributes. It is essence, a prius, and stands by itself. A metaphor for consciousness would be space (as in chit-akasha).
SH. The unsolved mystery of consciousness is how a conscious experience arises in a physical brain, how meaning arises in a conscious experience, and how meaning is represented in the brain before it is expressed linguistically. Since a discovery of a novel non-coding RNA gene (HAR1F) and our Universal Field of Quantum-Consciousness, (chit-akasha), the above mysteries have been reported to be solved.
While duaita (Sanatana Dharm) is epistemologically most relevant, aduaita implies a grossly unrecognizable lumping of the two categories of the Uncreated and the created, (Monism).
This has been possible based on the well known trait of Consciousness as “spontaneous integration.”
Existence is defined only in terms of our inherent faculty of generation of meaning based on the greatest God-given gift of Consciousness.
AM. ‘Lumping the two categories’… or dissolving the duality – which is epistemological and conceptual – into non-dual reality? If consciousness is ‘ultimately’ the sole reality, everything else being derivative – or, rather, appearance (name and form) – therein is the answer of traditional Advaita Vedanta. Only (universal) intuition and the sastras can afford that understanding. Both Gaudapada and Shankara were strong in this (view).