THE ISSUE OF CONSCIOUS AND NON-CONSCIOUS IN THE LIGHT OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE

The review paper starts off from phenomenological features of consciousness (reportability, vividness, unification, coherence). Than goes on first to review the first stage of the renewed interest towards consciousness in the 1960s’ concentration on phenomena like verbal conditioning, awareness continuum, split brain, relationships between consciousness and prefrontal activity. Then the paper reviews some leading ideas of contemporary scientific consciousness research. The search for neurobiological equivalents of consciousness, from cortical localizations (prefrontal systems) to peculiar modes of functioning (gamma oscillations), and to disorders of consciousness. While we know more and more about consciousness, we should not forget that several observations in experimental psychology (priming, ambiguity activation, attention blindness) indicate that one has to deal with a rather complex phenomenon. E.g. semantically anchored behaviors are not always accessible to consciousness.