.Consciousness
All kinds of psychical–mental activities, in the form of a continuous
and almost uninterrupted process, constitute the consciousness of an
individual. An object in the situation of an individual – for example,
a task in a project – provides the consciousness with a meaningful content.
A so-called meaning emerges in the consciousness as this content
becomes referred to the object located in the situation of the person
in such a manner that she understands what the object implies. This
is, a person can understand an object only in terms of a meaning or
a group of meanings. The network of all meanings accumulated in the
consciousness is called the worldview of an individual. In accordance with
autopoietic epistemology, the worldview is continuously redefined as
new meanings emerge on the basis of new objects observed in one’s
situation.
Everything in this process occurs in terms of understanding, which
means that a person knows, feels, believes in and dreams about phenomena
and objects located in his or her situation in terms of their
‘being something’. Understanding is complete only after a meaning has
been generated. Meanings are components from which the world, as
people experience it, is constructed. In the consciousness, a continuous
restructuring of meanings occurs as a person actively acquires or passively
gets knowledge from the situation – e.g. observes and learns new things.
Meanings are often forgotten, fading into the unconsciousness and perhaps
retrieved into the consciousness anew. An important condition is
that all aspects of knowledge and skills are ‘stored’ in the worldview of
an individual in terms of different kinds of meanings