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Psychology in Russia: State of the Art 2009 The Role of Consciousness in Human Cognitive Activity 125

The Role of ConsCiousness

in human CogniTive aCTiviTy

Victor M. Allakhverdov

Saint Petersburg State UniversitySaint Petersburg

The problem of consciousness is examined in the article. I t is argued that all the

existing approaches to consciousness do not explain the role consciousness plays

in human life. An attempt of revealing and describing the principles of the mindswork is made. Experimental phenomena observed by the author and his followers,

particularly, the tendency of previously non-realized ideas not to be realized sub-

sequently, are reviewed. The discussion of these phenomena allows to formulate a

novel view on the nature of consciousness.

Keywords: consciousness, cognition, awareness, adequacy, emotions.

Setting up the problem

Consciousness is the most important heritage o human beings.Would anybody want to live orever, i this long lie had been elapsedin the unconscious state? Nevertheless we know neither what con-sciousness is, nor how it has appeared and what consciousness does.Philosophers admit that nowadays members o the sciences, tradition-ally related to consciousness research, consider it to be one o the mostcomplex problems, ar rom being solved (Mamchur, 2008, p.31). Noone knows how to approach the problem o qualia, the problem osubjective experience. It always tormented psychologists. At the close

o the past century D. Chalmers (1996) declared it to be the most com-plicated problem in psychology. Many repeat this Chalmers statementnowadays. Not having any other ideas some consider consciousness tobe the quality essential to any matter. Nonetheless they realize that no-body knows, how to discover this quality, because its impossible to de-ne what exactly this quality is (Velmans, 2007). M.K. Mamardashviliairly said (Mamardashvili, 1996, p. 215), consciousness is something,that as human beings we know everything about, but we know nothingabout it as scientists.

During the last decades the power o cognitive unconscious is dem-onstrated in a huge amount o beautiul experiments. Everybody agrees:unconscious processes have considerably larger resources and the morepowerul computing ability, than consciousness (Bargh, and Morsella,2008) Te unconscious decision about realization o some action oenappears earlier than the conscious intention to act (Libet, 2003; 2006).A person unconsciously perceives, stores and processes much more in-ormation, than consciously; s/he unconsciously nds the regularities inthe environment ar quicker; s/he can regulate the power and accuracy ohis/hers actions much better without the conscious control. We are notaware o the causes o our own thoughts. (In Balzacs words, thoughts

come to our head without asking us about it). Tese nonconscious pro-cesses govern the majority o our social behavior rom perception andinterpretation o the social world to interpersonal interactions and goalpursuits (Bargh, and Williams, 2006).

Why are we aware o our cognitions, i they appear and develop un-consciously? We can single out several types o answers. Te rst one:awareness is useul (contributes to survival, to adequate reection oreality and so on). It is the way they oen write in handbooks: they sayconsciousness saves us rom the inormational overload by means oreducing the inormation ows and cutting o the unnecessary inor-mation; it stores the inormation selectively; it plans the behavior, giv-ing the great resources or exible reactions to the changing demandso lie. All such descriptions just give us an illusion o understanding.o cut o the unnecessary inormation you rstly need to receive it,process it, and only then cut it o. How does it reduce the inormationload? Te suggestion that a human is able to make a conscious decisionabout the inormation to be realized, contradicts any logic: how canwe consciously be unaware o something? Tus, gaining inormationshould take place at the unconscious level at rst. Conscious planningon the basis o the limited inormation cannot be better than the plan-ning on the basis o the whole received one. Te suggestion that con-sciousness with its rather limited inormational capacity lets us reactin a more exible way than unconscious looks strange as well. On thewhole this answer leads to the deadlock, because all activity ascribed toconsciousness is accomplished unconsciously at rst. And whats more,this answer doesnt explain why the result o all this unconscious workshould be realized.


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126 Victor M. Allakhverdov The Role of Consciousness in Human Cognitive Activity 127

Te attempts to ascribe some intelligible sense to the work o con-sciousness occur, but do not seem persuasive. Here is one o the mostinteresting hypotheses. B.J. Baars, U. Ramamurthy S. Franklin (Baars,Ramamurthy, and Franklin, 2007) argue that human cognition is ac-complished by a great number o relatively small, special purpose pro-cessors, almost always unconscious. Tese processors are compara-tively simple, and communication between them is relatively rare, butthey can unite into the coalitions. Tey compete or access to a globalworkspace (and subjectively into consciousness). Tis limited capacityglobal workspace serves to broadcast the message rom the winning co-alition to all the unconscious processors, in order to join the recruited

resources or gaining the current goal. From this point o view con-sciousness unction is to make dierent unconscious knowledge sources(processors) interact with each other in solving novel problems. Tesuggested hypothesis is interesting, though it is absolutely speculative.But the main question is still open: why is this mechanism consideredto be consciousness? In the explanation given it is just postulated thatthe work o the mechanism described is accompanied by the eeling oawareness, while awareness itsel does not have any reason. Awareness ispresent at the work o this mechanism or some purpose or other. Suchan approach brings us closer to another answer to the question aboutthe nature o consciousness. Tis answer is even stranger than the previ-ous one. Tey say the process o awareness is absolutely useless. It has nounction, it just accompanies some processes. Psychological literature islled with discussions whether consciousness is an epiphenomenon ornot (Dulany, 2008). Tere are suggestions to reject the idea to researchconsciousness at all. Tey say our thoughts and eelings entirely consisto the physiological activity o the brain and they are nothing less thanthat, and our Sel is just an illusion. At the times o John Watson itcould have been justied by the positivist climate o the epoch. But inmy opinion nowadays such a position resembles the behavior o an os-trich: having encountered a problem they hide their heads in the sandand pretend the problem does not exist at all. Considering conscious-ness to be the epiphenomenon contradicts the methodological principleo simplicity, basic or the science. Nature doesnt create anything in vainor, in Newtons words, does not luxuriate with excesses.

Sometimes there is an allusion o the answer about the unction oconsciousness (though it is not evidently expressed) among psychother-

apists: it is harmul. Tey say it slants reality in avor o its notions andthus leads to the misrepresentation; it includes the inormation whichis not relevantto the situation or excludes the one which isrelevantandso on. A lot o psychologists show in their experiments that we see onlythings we understand; that the world in our perception is misrepresent-ed to a degree o recognition; material which does not correspondto ourexpectations is repressed, and so on. Tough it remains unclear why, inthe opinion o the same psychotherapists, consciousness neverthelesscontributes to healing. Furthermore, considering consciousness to bean obstacle also contradicts the principle o simplicity: nature doesntcreate any monsters with a special goal to spoil something.

Here is the deplorable result: the problem o consciousness whichhas been raised in ancient times and was taken hard during the Age oEnlightenment became only more mysterious today as the result o agreat number o experiments. Te discovered power o cognitive uncon-scious has prejudiced all the previous ideas about the unction o con-sciousness. Te more contemporary works about research o conscious-ness you read, the keener is your eeling o the latent perplexity o theauthors whenever they try to ascribe consciousness as the unction, itturns out that consciousness is not needed or this, either. It means weshould look or another way to answer that question. Consciousness isthe specic mechanism o our mind, intended or implementing someunknown goal still needed to be ound. Beore the start o the search wewill try to generalize everything we know about the work o mind andconsciousness and to describe some general principles o their work (ormore complete description o these principles see: Allakhverdov, 2000).

Principles of the minds work

Even G.W. von Leibniz has ormulated the great principle o rea-sonableness: nothing happens without a cause or sufcient grounds.D. Hume has ascribed the ability to nd reason or every event exclusiveto human nature. Te empirically veried principle can be drawn romthat Humes position: even accidental events cannot be perceived as thecauseless ones; the mind always nds reasons or them. Observing thebehavior o little children shows that they nd causal explanations oreverything at any cost (the term o J. Piaget). In primitive societies ev-erything is related to everything as well. Teir spiritual lie is the giant


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variation on the theme o causality (the term o A. Huber and M. Moss).Te truth o this principle is also conrmed by various experimentaldata received during the last century (it is enough to mention the causalattribution and probabilistic orecasting research). People do react tochance events as i they were not accidental even though they might beunaware o it. For example, the anchoring eect ound by D. Kahnemanand A. versky (versky, and Kahneman, 1974). Te subjects were askeda question: what is the percentage o the Arican countries in UN? Onegroup o subjects was given the number 65% to compare with, the chancethey were convinced in (the number accidentally appeared in roulette).Another group o subjects was similarly given the number o 10%. It was

ound that those quasi accidental numbers inuenced the subjects an-swers: the average values o the answers in the rst group were signi-cantly higher, than in the second one. Particularly it means that even thenumbers generated by the roulette are nevertheless perceived not as theaccidental ones, but as somehow related with the asked questions.

I really nothing in the world happens without a reason, then thesearch or reasons becomes easier due to this principle. Here is the ex-ample o my old research. One group o subjects was to nd the ruleenabling them to continue the sequence o binary digits as ar as pos-sible. Tat instruction set up an attitude or determinacy: there can beno accidentally appearing digit in the sequence. Te other group was tond the longest possible succession o digits repeated with no changesin dierent parts o the sequence no less than three times. Tat task al-lowed the presence o the accidental digits (noise) the subjects werepermitted not to pay attention to during the perormance o the task.Te subjects o both groups were presented with the same sequence:a set o 14 digits repeated three times in succession. Te exact peror-mance o the instruction in both groups was to lead to the same answer:to the extraction o the 14-digit sequence. Such an answer made it pos-sible to continue the sequence and at the same time it was the longestgroup o digits repeated three times in succession. During the set 5 min-utes the problem was solved by 81% o subjects in a group with the atti-tude or determinacy, and only by 11% o subjects in another group. Tisexample shows that knowledge about determinacy promotes efcientaction in a strictly determined environment. Such knowledge does notprevent rom realizing the chance, but makes us interpret it as a result oinuence o stil l unknown reasons, thats why it doesnt complicate the

process o cognition even i the environment is not entirely determined.It is clear that hypotheses about the concrete reasons o some phenom-ena can be wrong. Tats why mind should veriy them empirically andcorrect them.

Description o the determined world cannot be contradictory. Tatswhy the reviewed principle may be expressed as the urge towards con-cordance, consistency o the existing cognitions. Such characteristic ohuman nature also has been noted by many philosophers and psycho-logists. Sometimes it is ormulated as a human necessity to live in arational world (Poducka, 1980, p. 409). I your slippers once told youGood morning, you would search or a hidden tape recorder or think

that you had not woken up completely, but you wouldnt believe that theslippers talk, because it would contradict your knowledge o the world.Having encountered with contradictory inormation a person begins towork with it immediately and tries to reconsider it so as to get rid ocontradiction. Sometimes s/he devalues the inormation by means oincreasing the contradiction to the state o unreal grotesque. Researchshow us the way a person distorts inormation to remove or decreasethe contradiction. (Psychologists use dierent terms to designate suchphenomena: rationalization, reducing o cognitive dissonance, etc.). Is/he doesnt manage to do it, sometimes s/he totally represses this inor-mation rom consciousness.

A person can react to the emerging contradictions even without be-ing aware o the act that contradiction exists. Lets consider the anchor-ing eect. People shi their answers towards the imposed number com-parably with normal answers given in the control group. In other words,the subjects, being not aware o it, conict with their own opinion whichthey would have probably expressed in the absence o the imposed num-ber. Our research demonstrates that they do react to this contradictionand in a rather peculiar way they increase it. V.L. Volokhonsky andE.A. Vishnyakova (Volokhonskyi, and Vishnyakova, 2006) have retestedthe inuence o anchoring eect in three weeks and have ound that thesubjects demonstrate the signicantly larger shi o their answers to-wards the anchor than right-about; in case o a shi towards the anchortheir condence in the correctness o the answers was estimated higher.Te subjects ostensibly devalue the contradiction by means o increas-ing it, demonstrating that their previous shi rom the normal answerhas been right, but insufcient. Here is an example o research in the


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eld o illusory perception. V.J. Karpinskaya (Karpinskaya, 2006) hasshowed that the mere illusorychange o the stimulus size (in H. Ebbin-haus, M. Ponzo, A. Charpentier illusions and others) also changes thethreshold o the stimulus detection. It means that while watching thevisual il lusion the visual acuity o the observer seems to be changing.Such results may be explained by the hypothesis that the visual systemadequately reects the size o all the images including the illusory ones,but only the illusory size is realized rather than the real one. I it is reallyso, then the illusory perception o the size contradicts the real estima-tion o the size made by the visual system. How do the subjects reactto this unconscious contradiction? A.G. Prichislenko has presented the

cards with the images o visual illusions to her subjects (the illusion oa star, the Mller-Lyer illusion etc.) and has given them the task to esti-mate the length o the lines or the distance between the objects in mil-limeters. During the retest in a week the size o the illusion (the illusorydistortion o the size) decreases. Visual estimates o illusory images sizeaccuracy are signicantly worse in comparison to the estimates o non-illusory. It seems that the subjects estimate the size o illusory imageswith such a low accuracy, that their previous mistake is in the area oerror, so this value is negligible.

So, mind lives in a strictly determined world and ascribes reasonsto everything, it constructs the system o consistent knowledge o theworld. It reduces the emerging contradictions and devalues them; andit does all o that and many other things being unaware o its own ac-tions. In D. Humes words, these actions cannot be either created or sup-pressed with reasoning. Consciousness arising in the depths o mindsubmits to these principles too. Lets try to single out the specic prin-ciples o consciousness. But at rst we should note: awareness is the onlything to be experienced as the phenomenon o consciousness. And itis the existence o such an experience that gives us the right to veriycorrelation o the theoretical constructs with consciousness empirically.We all know a classical metaphor o a continuous consciousness ow byWilliam James. It means that the consciousness content is always con-tinuously changing; a person is not able to realize the same thing with-out any changes. However even W. Goethe has ormulated the principleo the continual changing o impressions. H. Spenser wrote about thesame thing in such words: When the change in consciousness ceases consciousness ceases too Changes make up the raw material o con-

sciousness (cit.: Bekhterev, 1999, p.203-204). It comes rom the abovethat the invariable stimulation should either entirely escape conscious-ness or transorm itsel. Te examples are numerous. A subject does notrealize an image without any changes in color or brightness and stabi-lized to the retina in just 1-3 sec rom the beginning o the presentation.Te permanent irritant o moderate intensity acting on the ear or skinis not being noticed aer very little time. Te colored background losesits coloration during the long-lasting xation. Te volume o the samesound presented to the subject as the standard also changes subjectively.Te multiple repeating o the same word or a group o words leads to asubjective eeling o the loss o sense o these words. A set o elements

presented to be remembered is being orgotten very rapidly, not remain-ing in actual awareness. Te whole invariable context o the situationalso is not realized. Tus, it is unlikely that the reader o this text is si-multaneously aware o his/hers own name and where s/he is.

Lets try to understand the reason o such phenomena. Every stimu-lus needs some reason o its emergence to be explained. Consciousnessnds such a reason necessarily and regardless o whether this reason isright or wrong. I the stimuli dont change later on, consciousness stopsworking with them because now there is nothing to explain. Tereorethe stimuli are not realized any longer. I such reasoning is correct, thenthe hypothesis is liable or empirical verication results: consciousnessworks longer with rare and sudden stimuli than with the requent andexpected ones. In order to explain the emergence o the unexpectedstimuli it would take consciousness more time to work with them. Tatis why they would remain in consciousness longer. Indeed, it is well-known that the emergence o the absolutely unexpected stimuli bringsa peculiar inuence on the subjects they are embarrassed to some ex-tent, and the difculties in perorming current activity arise. Te reac-tion to the rare signals is slower, than to the requent ones (Hicks law);the sudden stimulus remains in memory or a longer time, i.e. is beingrealized longer (von Roestor eect) etc. I the stimuli are presented ina sequence constructed according to some rule which is not realized bythe subjects then the implicit learning is observed the subject processesthe stimuli in consciousness aster and aster. Tus, in the experiment oour group (Moroshkina, 2006) the subjects were to add and to subtractthe pairs o digits presented. In a case when these digits proceeded in acomplicated non-realized sequence, the time o the simplest arithmeti-


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cal operations gradually decreased to a signicantly greater extent thanin control group, where the sequence o the digit pairs was not observed.I the sequence o the digit pairs changed and in a place where the sub-jects had previously had to add they now had to subtract, the time oarithmetical operations became even longer than beore the learning atall. I a person is aware o only the part o the inormation presented (incase o great amount o inormation or its uncertainty), then during thenext presentation s/he is usually aware o the same part o inormation.Gestalt-psychologists called such a phenomenon the law o gure aer-eect. In general, the act is that the decision to realize something beingmade once (a positive choice) tends to have the aereect. Tis eect is

evidently shown in memory research. When the set o stimuli exceedingthe memory capacity is presented to a subject, the part o this set will berecalled, the other wont. During the repeated presentation o the sameset the subject will rstly recall the elements which s/he has previouslyrecalled. According to our research the other statement is also true. I aperson is aware o only the part o inormation presented, then duringthe next presentation o the previously non-realized inormation s/hetends not to realize it again. It is striking, because in order not to real-ize something repeatedly you should remember what are the elementsnot to be realized, recognize these elements in the presented materialand make a decision about non-realizing them aer all. According toour data the elements which have not been recalled or recognized once,being presented in a new set are recalled and recognized worse thanthe elements that have not been presented earlier (the negative choiceaereect). Besides, the non-realized meaning can even complicate thesolving o the related tasks and, thus, it is still perceived by the subject,but, so to speak, with negative mark.

Mind reacting to correctand incorrect answers

It was shown in numerous research, that the time o the correct so-lution o simple cognitive tasks (recognition, counting and categoriza-tion) is usually aster than the incorrect solution time even at the samelevel o condence. Condent answers are usually aster than the uncer-tain ones, but the condent right answers are aster than the condentwrong ones; the uncertain right answers are aster, than the uncertain

wrong ones (Allakhverdov, 1993). Tus, the subject is able to discrim-inate between his/hers correct and incorrect actions, even when s/hecannot subjectively assess i s/he has been doing right or wrong. Teneurophysiological researche also reveal the reaction o a subject to amistake, even i s/he is not aware o this mistake (Bekhtereva, 2006).Tough according to our data there are two exclusions, which do notcancel the conclusion derived: the same repeated incorrect answers areaster, than the rare correct ones1; during the subjects conversion to aguessing strategy the uncertain incorrect answers may appear to be theastest ones.

Tis ability o discriminating between the correct and incorrect

answers is especially striking, when the subject solves the problems,which, as assumed, cannot be consciously solved at all. In my experi-ments the participants were to dene without any calculations what dayo the week corresponded to the date given. All o the dates were scat-tered at random all over the twentieth century. As it was expected theaverage probability o the right guesses was close to the theoretical resulto a random choice, i.e. 1/7 (and even less than that). Nevertheless, ithe subjects guessed the day o the week correctly, then during the pre-sentation o the next date they gave the right answer signicantly morerequently (in 22% o cases). In O.V. Naumenko research (Naumenko,2006) the subjects were to choose without any calculating, which o thetwo presented digits should appear aer the dot while dividing a 7-digitnumber by a 6-digit-number. Te subjects were given no eedback aboutthe correctness o their answers. Its not surprising, that during the rstpresentation o stimuli the subjects gave almost random answers. Nev-ertheless, when the same digits were presented in a week the subjectsrepeated their right answers almost two times more requently than i itwere a random choice. In N.P. Vladykina research (Vladykina, 2008) thesubjects compared the presented stimulus with a standard. Within thezone o undistinguishing, i.e. the zone where the dierences were lowerthan the threshold, the subjects usually considered the stimulus to beequal to standard. Tey rarely gave another answer, i.e. they answeredthat the stimulus was larger or smaller than the standard. But it isstrange i that answer was right, then during the next presentation o

1 I would like to note, that the probability o repeating ones own mistake as a rule issignicantly higher than the probability o making the mistake at all.


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the same stimulus (though they could not realize that the stimulus wasthe same) they demonstrated an evident tendency to repeat exactly thatanswer.

An interesting result was ound by N.S. Kudelkina (Kudelkina, 2008).Te subjects were solving the anagrams. Beore solving the task (500msec beore the emergence o the anagram) the subject was presentedwith a prime or 25 msec (with a subsequent masking or 50 msec). Tecontent o the prime was either answer to the anagram (the right orvalid prime) or another word (the wrong or invalid prime). Teaverage anagram solving time when presented with the right primes ap-peared to be signicantly less than the time when presented with the

wrong primes. Usually this act is interpreted in such a way: the non-realized prime gives a hint to the subject; and i the hint is right thespeeding-up o solving the task is observed; i the hint is wrong it leadsto slowdown. But Kudelkina goes urther. She gives one group o sub-jects a series o 20 anagrams with the right primes and then a series o20 anagrams with the wrong primes. Te sequence o the series or theother group o subjects was the opposite. Te time o solving the ana-grams accompanied by the right primes was signicantly less in the rstgroup than in the second one. Tus, there is a kind o distrust emergingor any primes o the subject. It means that s/he can somehow estimatethe correctness o the hint, though s/he does not notice it and, o course,is not able to realize, that this hint has helped or hindered him. Tere isa question here: i a person can discriminate between correct and incor-rect answers when solving simple cognitive tasks, then why does s/hemake mistakes at all?

The epistemological problem

Beore searching or the answer, we should rstly ormulate themore general problem, having succeeded in tormenting many philoso-phers (J. Locke and others): how is mind able to compare its own ideaswith reality, i reality is given to mind only as the minds own ideas? Itis impossible to compare something being in consciousness with some-thing being out o consciousness. Some authors claim that this problemis unsolvable in principle. But then we should reuse to talk about ac-curacy o perception, correctness o the memories, truth o the motivesand efcacy o actions, adequacy o sel-esteem etc. and thereby rom

psychology itsel. Tere is no doubt that people can solve this problem.Even William James wrote about it. Te cited data conrm the idea thatmind does really solve it, being unconscious o how. But this ability stillneeds some logical grounds. Without a logical solution o epistemologi-cal problem no theory o mind and consciousness is possible at all.

Contemporary attempts o the solution o this problem go back toI. Kant. Te essence o the solution is this: the ideas given to mind can-not be compared directly with reality; but they can be compared withother ideas o mind. I similar ideas are produced on the basis o di-erent ways o cognition, independent rom each other (i.e. on the ba-sis o dierent inormation, dierent principles o processing, and so

on), then we have a hope that this similarity is determined by realitycognized, rather than the way o cognition. It is what modern philoso-phers say: knowledge should be veried by means o comparing it withknowledge obtained in another way. Concretization o the independentways may be o dierent kind. Kant told about two independent stemso human cognition: sensuality and reason. In the twentieth centuryphysiologists and psychologists suggested the sensory systems whichreect reality each in its own way or the role o those independent wayso cognition. In my opinion, we should recognize the independence othe sensory cognition and the motor cognition. Ten the comparisono sensory and motor notions about reality becomes the way o mutualverication o these notions, because coincidence o the notions wouldmean not so much the work o the sensory or motor cognitive systems,as the real things around. A lot o modern models show us the existenceo autonomous processors, which are the solving tasks the mind is ac-ing (though not always paying attention to the necessity o processorsexisting that solve the same tasks). Mans own ideas about reality arecompared during the process o social interaction also: people constructtheir independent conceptions o reality and are partially able to cor-rect each other. It is important: the matter is about constructing dier-ent descriptions o reality, independent rom each other, which could becompared together.

Such an approach to the solution o epistemological problem hasone undamental difculty. Let us assume that sensory notions aboutthe environment are compared with the motor ones about the sameenvironment. But the collation cannot occur directly in the sensory ormotor eld otherwise the result o the comparison depends on it.


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Nonetheless, the initial cognitive structures have to get eedback aboutthe result o their activity. Te problem is solved rstly i we allow theexistence o an additional block which accomplishes the collation (ac-cording to our assumption the sensory-motor one); and secondlyi we allow the initial cognitive structures receiving only the qualita-tive signal about the coincidence/non-coincidence o ideas rom thisnew block. Otherwise the independence o verication is lost. Whati an emotional signal is a such qualitative signal? Lets think o data,received by O.K. ikhomirov School (ikhomirov, 1969): while solvinga chess problem the state o emotional activation, which is revealedthrough a GSR shi, anticipates the naming o the crucial move or

several seconds. ikhomirov himsel suggested that there emerges aeeling o close solution. But how can the subject know that s/he is justabout to nd a right move, i this move does not exist in any orm? Wemay assume that the succession o the problem solving process is di-erent: the subject nds the solution at rst, but s/he is not aware o it.I the solution, ound in some way, corresponds to the solution o theproblem, made by means o another way, then the emotional signalemerges, inorming that the solution was ound, and thereupon the re-alizationo the solution itsel occurs.

Such a view is partly conrmed in the research o our group. M.G. Fil-ippova (Filippova, 2006) presented the ordinary and the ambiguous g-ures in the le part o a screen to her subjects. At rst the subject was tonote, what a category or categories that image belonged to (was it a hu-man or a bird, or an insect etc.). Tat answer helped dene what kind omeaning o the ambiguous gure the subject saw. Ten in the right part othe screen dierent tasks were presented (anagrams solving, recognizingimages by their ragments etc.) that were either related to the presentedgure or not (neutral). Te presentation o the initial gure continued inthe le part o the screen. And i the subject noted only the one meaningo the ambiguous gure, then the gure was gradually changing into theimage with another meaning. As soon as the subject noticed the change,s/he was to say what s/he saw now. Tat moment was regarded as therealization o the previously non-conscious meaning.

One kind o result was obvious. Te time o solving the tasks thatwere related to the realized meaning o the simultaneously presentedambiguous gure was signicantly less than the time when the neutralimages were simultaneously presented. Te closer the associative rela-

tionship was, the aster was the time o task solving. Te second kindo result was the expected one or us: the non-conscious meaning o theambiguous gure interered with solving o the tasks related to it; thetime o solving them was slower. But the most important and the strang-est act was that: in cases when the subjects realized the second meaningo the ambiguous gure, which was not previously noticed, then all thetasks either related with the two meanings o the gure or not weresolved signicantly aster.

According to the suggestion made earlier, realization o any solu-tion is anticipated with a signal the solution is ound. It seems thatthis signal is not specic or a certain task. Te emergence o this signal

leads to estimation o all the problems being simultaneously solved (aperson does always simultaneously solve a lot o problems in his/herslie) as having been already solved; so a person realizes some phenom-ena which take place in his/hers unconscious aster. Maybe that is whythe realization o the problem during the psychotherapeutical sessioncontributes to healing. It is because the other problems are also beingsolved at the same time.

Consciousness as the imitatorof cognitive activity

We have assumed that a person as the cognizing system receivessome emotional signals inorming him o success (or ailure) o his/hercognitive activity. Tese signals play the role o criteria o cognitive pro-cess efcacy or the whole system. But any system with the efcacy cri-teria given tunes in to their achievement. As soon as the efcacy criteriaare ormulated in any social systems, the real goal is immediately substi-tuted with an articial goal determined by these criteria. Does a personas the cognizing system perhaps begin to urge or receiving o subjec-tively experienced positive emotional signals and avoiding the negativeones, rather than search or truth? Isnt it the unction o consciousness?I it is so, then consciousness may be interpreted as a special mechanisminuencing the cognitive processes so as to achieve positive subjectiveexperiences. In other words, consciousness just imitates the successulcognitive activity, rather than cognizes.

Te articial substitution o a true cognitive process with its imi-tation can rarely lead to intense experiences. A weak (but rather di-


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erentiated) emotional background, which is achievable here, could beconsidered to be awareness. One o consciousness aims is to provideitsel with the continuous existing o such a background (consciousnessow). Te consciousness activity cannot, o course, be realized; onlythe result the conscious experience is realized, because the processleading to realizing cannot be realized. Te emergence o such a mecha-nism may certainly lead a person away rom reality and even show him/her the way to madness. And it is not surprising that it is a characteristico human consciousness to make mistakes. But in the overwhelmingmajority o situations consciousness reveals the new ways o cognitiono reality, changing the way o cognition in a revolutionary manner.

Consciousness behaves as a scientist constructing the hypotheses aboutthe world and veriying them empirically. Similarly to the scientist itsimplies the real world and reects it sometimes ar rom being accu-rate. Consciousness regulates the activity, but rst o all it is the activityo constructing and veriying the hypotheses. It considers the world tobe determined and ascribes reasons to everything even to the randomevents, though it can only guess about the real causes ruling over theworld. Te scientist makes theories or the idealized objects, i.e. the onesthat do not really exist. Consciousness orms the idealized constructs notions that do not exist in reality either. And it deends the constructsormed in dierent structures rom disproving in any way possible. Andconsciousness does it in a very graceul way, because it has the abilityo interering in the process o collation, identiying the non-identicalthings and distinguishing between the undistinguishable ones.

Certainly the world constructed by consciousness is not absolutelyadequate to reality, but it is not alienated rom reality either, otherwiseit would have not managed to achieve the long-lasting positive emo-tional states. Te scientists guess about the unobservable characteristicso macro and micro world just due to their consciousness. It is due toconsciousness that we are able to reason about the processes o Uni-verse origin, which are presented in our direct physiological reectionin no way; we are able o discriminating between good and bad; and weare even able to search or principles ruling over unconscious. Te sug-gested view on the role o consciousness in human cognitive activity isstill rather speculative; many things are le not ully claried in such anapproach. Nevertheless it seems that it has ne heuristic potential and isliable to empirical verication.

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