For yearsconsciousness was not researched in the scientific community. The scientificcommunity is very objective and saw the internal mental processes ofconsciousness as being too subjective to study. Just recently, scientists,philosophers, and psychologists have been rejecting the idea than consciousnessis too hard to study and have been attempting to try to understand its truemeaning. Consciousness is one of many mysteries in the scientific world thatsocial scientists and neuroscientists presently can't agree on. Consciousnesshas been at the center of many discussions in articles and books involvingneuroscientists and psychologists. They have been debating over what field willconstitute consciousness, psychology or neuroscience.

Neuroscienceis considered a ?hard science? and Psychology is considered a ?social science.?What do I mean by ?hard science? and ?social science?? A hard science is ascience that is completely objective in its research and doesn't speculate ordetermine the subjectivity of the area in which it is studying. A socialscience is a science that deals with the subjectivity of an area of study. Itis the scientific knowledge of the activities and functions of the human soulrelating to the brain and consciousness experience. It is concerned with thefacts and is objective to a point, but tends to speculate morethan a hardscience and also develops theories that are not necessarily able to be proventrue. Because Psychology uses theories to tie the physical aspects to the psychologicalones, it will have a greater role in the near future in explaining themysteries of consciousness.

 Many have tried to define consciousness butnone presently have developed a definition that is acceptable to allscientists. Francis Crick, a Professor at Salk Institute for Biological Studiesin San Diego,defines consciousness as, ?attention and short term memory?. The AmericanHeritage Dictionary of the English Language defines consciousness as ?immediateknowledge or perception of the presence of any object, state, or sensation or aspecial awareness or sensitivity.? The American Heritage Dictionary of theEnglish Language has a more vivid definition of consciousness but neither fullyexplain all the elements involved in consciousness. Supporters of neurosciencebelieve that the mystery of consciousness can be solved using technology, andthere is no need for social scientists to speculate over why the brainfunctions in the way it does. They believe in the future they will have thetechnology to understand all the functions of the brain. Psychologists on theother hand believe that technology can't possibly answer the questionsconcerning how the brain interprets the things we perceive and what gives riseto subjective experience. David J. Chalmers, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, categorizes the questions inconsciousness into two types of categories. The ?easy problems? are concernedwith interpreting how the brain's functions work. They are very objectivequestions and will probably be answered by neuroscience in the future. Anexample of an ?easy problem? would be, how do different neurons in differentsectors come together at a precise moment and form a picture in our brain? Theyask how the brain's processes work to bring us a subjective experience. Anexample of a hard problem would be, why do we become sad when a certain song isplayed? Other hard problems are how our eyes perceive things and why theseneural pathways are connected to the brain. These questions are all questionsthat cannot possibly be explained by neuroscience, they may however be able tobe explained by theories developed by psychologists. So far only the ?easyquestions? about consciousness have been addressed by scientists andneuroscientists, and there hasn't been a theory devised by eitherneuroscientists or psychologists completely explaining what consciousness is. DavidJ. Chalmers classifies the views of consciousness into two groups, mysterianismand reductionism.

Thereductionists believe that one day consciousness will be fully explained by themethods used only by the hard sciences. There are two key figures in the areaof neuroscience that are considered reductionisms. Francis Crick of the SalkInstitute of Biological Studies in San Diego and Christof Koch of the California Institute ofTechnology, propose that ?consciousness comes from certain oscillations in thecerebral cortex that fire neurons that are precisely synchronized withdifferent parts of the brain?. In this way two pieces of information in thebrain come together to make a whole picture. This hypothesis might in timeanswer one of the easy questions of consciousness but it doesn't answer thehard question of why these oscillations give us a conscious experience. Thisexplanation of consciousness and many others like it explain how the functionsof the brain carry out functions but don't touch on why the performance ofthese functions accompanies a conscious experience.

David J.Chalmers describes mysterians as ?believing that consciousness will never beexplained by either psychology or neuroscience?. He believes consciousness isvery difficult to understand fully, but in time may be resolved by a new theoryfrom the Psychological world. Such a theory would have to envelop physical lawsthat tell us about behavior in the physical systems of the brain. The newtheory would also have to encompass psychological laws that tell us how thosesystems are associated with conscious experiences. If these two components arecombined they will explain all there is to know about consciousness. Thistheory will not be conclusively testable because there will be a lot ofspeculation involved, but if the theory coincides with the data gathered fromthe physical research in experiments done, then it will be considered a goodtheory.

Consciousnesswill always be a mystery to the ?hard sciences? and the ?social sciences.? Technologywill not advance enough to fully explain consciousness in the near future. Itwill take a huge breakthrough in neuroscience to even begin to explain all theelements that give rise to a conscious experience. The only way consciousnesswill be explained presently is by a psychological theory that can tie physicalaspects into psychological aspects. To accomplish this, one must do somespeculation, and if one has to speculate, his theory will not be acceptable tothe hard sciences because it isn't backed by hard facts. There is no plausibleway neuroscience can explain all the elements related to consciousness becauseits technological resources are so limited. Psychology can theorize about whythe brain's functions operate the way they do, but they will ultimately have noway of proving their theories. Both areas of science have their weaknesses, butpsychology is much closer to explaining the ?why? questions about consciousnessthan is neuroscience. Neither Neuroscience nor psychology may ever understandconsciousness, but psychology is our best bet in our quest to understand thefunctions of the brain that make us aware, or conscious.