Conclusion – Can consciousness really be explained?

This presentation on consciousness explores a field recognized as one of the most complex and fascinating in contemporary psychology. There appears to be no simple answer to the questions raised by conscious experience. And yet, despite heated debates and persistent disagreements, research has made considerable progress in recent decades.

Theoretical and neuroscientific advances

Theories such as those of Bernard Baars and Antonio Damasio offer rich models for thinking about consciousness as access to information, cognitive control, or even a sense of self. These approaches have helped conceptualize certain crucial aspects of our conscious experience. They are based on solid empirical data, particularly from neuroscience and the study of patients with neurological disorders. These clinical cases provide valuable insight into the mechanisms and potential biological substrates of consciousness.

The importance of our intuitions

This chapter also compared your personal intuitions with the scientific literature. Why? Because our understanding of consciousness—and in particular of phenomenal consciousness — relies largely on our intuitions about what it “feels like” to have an experience. However, these intuitions can mislead us or, on the contrary, reflect a fundamental reality that is difficult to objectify.

Daniel Dennett, for example, argues that these intuitions are misleading and must be deconstructed. Other researchers believe that they reflect something authentic and that they account for the difficulty of scientifically approaching conscious experience. At this point, we must primarily assess the implications of these two positions.

Questions still open

Several major questions remain unanswered:

1. Can we really hope for a unified theory of consciousness?
   The different types of consciousness identified—access, control, self-awareness, phenomenal consciousness—suggest that multiple approaches are needed. Phenomenal consciousness, in particular, seems to require a different explanation.

2. How to scientifically treat phenomenal consciousness?
   If we can explain this phenomenon in biological or cognitive terms, then psychology can fully fall within the field of natural sciences. Otherwise, two options present themselves:

   • Continue to develop a scientific psychology that covers only part of mental life.

   • Recognize that psychology also deals with phenomena that the natural sciences cannot fully explain, and thus propose other forms of knowledge.

A return to founding intuition

In short, we return to our initial intuition: to be conscious is not only to process information about the world, but also to experience this information, to experience itThis subjective, qualitative experience still eludes any definitive explanation. But if we ever manage to fully understand it, it will profoundly transform our conception of the mind—and perhaps of ourselves.

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