People use the term "conscious" to mean many different things:
- awake (to contrast it with unconscious)
- aware of the existence of the world
- aware of some fact (to contrast it with subconscious)
- aware of oneself (i.e. "I exist")
- aware of one's own mental states
- the experience of qualia (what it subjectively feels like to be you)
As is often the case, difficult concepts are made even more difficult by unclear labels, in this case using the same label for several distinct concepts.
Whenever I discuss consciousness in this blog I'll try to be clear about which concept I'm referring to. Whenever you read about consciousness elsewhere, I encourage you to keep this point in mind as well.