Cognitive Theories of Consciousness

In the present chapter, we first overview the precursors that allowed the development of cognitive theories of consciousness, and in particular we consider the notions of attention, working-memory, modularity and the distinction between automatic and controlled processes. Then we present a selection of influential contemporary accounts of consciousness, based on three themes: consciousness results from specific architectural elements within the cognitive system (the theories by Baars, Prinz, Tononi); some features of consciousness are in fact illusory (the theories by Dennett and Wegner); consciousness is about learning (the theories by O’Regan & Noë, Cleeremans, Lau). We conclude this chapter by considering that these cognitive theories have to set a bridge between the philosophical hard problem of consciousness, and neurobiological approaches. Biographies & Photos Vincent de Gardelle is a doctoral student supervised by Sid Kouider at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris, France). His research addresses the question of biased conscious perception, by examining the perceptual illusions that might result from subject’s expectations under poor sensory evidence. Sid Kouider is a cognitive neuroscientist working at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris, France) on the neurobiological and psychological foundations of consciousness. His work focuses on contrasting conscious and unconscious processes both the psychological and neural level, using various behavioural and brain imaging methods. Recently, he extended this line of research to study the neural correlates of consciousness in pre-linguistic babies.