Abstract

In this article I try to sum up the philosophical debate about consciousness, suggesting a naturalistic and reductionistic theory of consciousness. This theory aims to connect Block's distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness with Global Workspace model, both central in a current debate about neural correlates of consciousness. Indeed a unifying global workspace model for phenomenal and access consciousness is proposed. This model describes the neural bases and neural dynamic of phenomenal and access consciousness, and the relationship of this two forms of consciousness with distributed and selective attention. The model is implemented in neural network form, with simulation of visual object processing.