A few centuries ago, James asked the following question: does consciousness cause attention to be directed or is consciousness the effect of paying attention? We feel that our consciousness causes some parts of the world to light up, while leaving some other parts in darkness. This is also called 'spotlight of attention'. So it feels like we can focus our attention on something consciously.Numerous theories about attention have been carried out. For example, around 1950, researchers conducted experiments with the dichotic listening task. In such an experiment, someone gets to hear different messages in both ears. It is the intention that someone only pays attention to the messages that come into one ear. The result of this experiment was that what comes into the other ear is perceived unconsciously, even though no attention is paid to it. These kinds of findings led to the ongoing debate about the moment of attention selection: early, close to the sensory level, or only after much processing has taken place.Other theories saw attention as a bottleneck, where pre-conscious sensory filters were needed to decide what should be passed to deeper stages of processing. This perception fits well with the idea that the brain has a limited capacity for detailed processing. There is then parallel processing. There are various ideas today about the relationship between attention and consciousness. Mack states on the basis of 'inattentional blindness' (see section 6) that no conscious perception can exist without attention. Crick, on the other hand, states that consciousness is closely linked to attention.So there are basically two opposing ideas about consciousness and attention. The first idea is that if attention is paid to something, it will end up in consciousness. The other idea is that consciousness leads the attention...