Consciousness

We just received two courses I ordered from The Teaching Company (I love this company's courses so far). This is from the intro page from a course called Consciousness and Its Implications:

First, that consciousness and mental life are not "like" anything else.
Second, what distinguishes consciousness (and the term presupposes consciousness of something) from all else is its phenomenology--there is something it is "like" to be conscious that is different from all other facts of nature.
Third, conscious awareness is a power possessed by the normal percipient, including non-human percipients. This power is such that much that impinges on the sense organs is filtered out and sometimes only the weakest but the most "meaningful" of occurrences gains entrance.
Fourth, such powers vary over the course of a lifetime, are subject to disease and defect, and thus, lead to questions of profound ethical consequence.

D has had questions about this subject, perhaps only a passing interest, but it's always been of great interest to me. I'm hoping we can both get something from it. Like the Quantum Revolution course, this and the geometry course I got for him are college level. D has a great many ideas and understandings in his head that he lacks the vocabulary to explore and express.
At times this is a challenge because I need to give him higher level information explained with lower level vocabulary. Of course, that's what much of parenthood is about, isn't it?