Course: Consciousness Explained

Consciousness is a mystery.

It is a fundamental element of our mental lives: we have all experienced being conscious except during periods of sleep. We do not need specialists or special knowledge to understand the differences between being conscious and not being conscious. Consciousness is also at the center of the question: what does it mean to be a human being, and what does that mean for me?

Our self-conception is intimately linked to our conscious experiences and memories. Consciousness allows us to differentiate ourselves from others. While we must interpret our experiences with others to make sense of them, we seem to have immediate knowledge of our own conscious experiences. And psychology helps us understand, define, and explain how we become conscious and how this consciousness relates to other psychological phenomena.

Yet despite this impression that consciousness presents no mystery, it continues to elude all attempts at explanation. It is like a wet bar of soap: the more we try to grasp it, the more it tends to slip away.

This course explores some of the questions and debates about the nature of consciousness in cognitive and biological psychology. It is primarily aimed at psychology students and researchers.

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