Consciousness is inherently subjective, making it difficult to study with objective scientific methods. The search for neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) has been a productive workaround, focusing on brain activity reliably linked to conscious experience. However, this approach was never meant to explain consciousness, only to sidestep the challenge. The authors argue that most modern accounts of consciousness are not true theories but rather laws that describe what they cannot explain, analogous to Newton's description of gravity. They contend that attention schema theory is an exception, qualifying as an explanatory theory that goes beyond mere description.
People's understanding of consciousness may be shaped by an implicit theory of mind, a social cognition approach that helps explain a divide between the physically incoherent consciousness people think they have and the complex, rich, but mechanistic consciousness they may actually have. This approach helps reconcile current cognitive neuroscience theories of consciousness. A single, coherent explanation of consciousness is available and has been for some time, encompassing the views of many researchers, but is not yet recognized. It is obscured partly by terminological differences and because researchers view isolated pieces as rival theories. A deeper, coherent pool of ideas, a kind of standard model, may explain multiple layers of consciousness and how they relate to specific brain networks.