# Owen J. Flanagan - Consciousness Reconsidered **Opening (not a real abstract):** Naturalism is the view that the mind-brain relation is a natural one. Mental processes just are brain processes. This idea has increasedin credibility as the picture of the mind as a sophisticatedinformation processorhas become more widely acceptedand as neurosciencehas shown that the brain es both the complexity and the power to do the information processing possess human minds in fact do. But there is a gnawing suspicionthat the picture of personsas sophisticated information processorsleaves something out. And indeed, it does. We are conscious creatures . Perhapswe are information processors , but if we are, we are consciousinformation processors. Our mental life has a phenomenal side, a subjective side, that the most sophisticated information processormight lack. Whereasthe brain seemssuited to processinginformation, it is harder to