Consciousness Explained

What is it that psychologists and philosophers call The Hard Problem?

Consciousness — or rather, self-consciousness — is a much-debated term throughout the history of both psychology and philosophy. In his 1996 book The Conscious Mind, Australian philosopher David Chalmers (1966) describes what he calls the easy problems of consciousness — like being able to explain how the brain physically works — versus the hard problem of explaining why we feel anything at all at any given time. What is the use of feeling?

These days, many psychologists define consciousness in a very practical sense, as the experience of one’s own mental events in such a manner that one can report on them to others. The practicality lies in the idea that you can ask a person to relate their thoughts, and therefore check their consciousness or awareness.

Another way to approach consciousness is by looking at attention. Attention influences how information flows from sensory memory to the short-term store or working memory. Once information is inside the working memory, we consciously work with it.

Alan Baddeley (1934) developed the most influential model of working memory, dividing it into three interacting components — the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and the central executive. Later on…