Abstract

As a tactic for preventing an enquiry into attention’s relationship to consciousness from lapsing into ill-definition, this chapter treats ‘attention’ as a term defined by the role that is assigned to it in our explanations of empirically established psychological phenomena (especially those involving the modulation of reaction times). It reviews evidence showing that such modulations are associated with processing that stands in various relations to consciousness. The psychological phenomena that explain these modulations cannot be identified with the causes of consciousness. Nor do they operate exclusively within the field of conscious awareness. If the explanation of these phenomena is to cast explanatory light on how and when consciousness occurs, it will need to do so in the context of some more complex explanatory theory.