Vocate Luria on consciousness

"'Brain and Conscious Experience'": A Critical Notice from the U.S.S.R. of the Symposium Edited by J. C. Eccles ( 1966)" ( 1967a) is Luria's review for the British Journal of Psychology of the transcript of an international symposium on brain/consciousness called by the Vatican Academy of Sciences and organized by its President, Sir John Eccles.
Luria chides the majority of the prominent participants for their archaic philosophical orientations to the brain/consciousness question, and notes that
In spite of the fact that the definitions of consciousness given by the participants were varied, not one of them understood consciousness as the reflexion of objective reality, as "conscious being" or as complex activity which has a semantic and systematic structure. ( Luria, 1967a, p. 469)
Rather, according to Luria, the participants were roughly divided into two groups: one group, exemplified by Penfield, sought the material basis for consciousness inside the brain and anticipated discovery of the formations in neuronal structure that give rise to this phenomenon; the other group, typified by MacKay, rejected any study of neuronal structure and called for the study of logical systems concerned with the processing of information, which are somehow the basis for conscious experience.
After reviewing the new directions in brain research represented at the symposium, Luria goes on to note that the central problem of the conference was "the question of the role played by the non-specific system of the brain stem in providing an active and waking state for the cerebral hemispheres . . . ." ( Luria, 1967a, p. 471). This problem arises from the knowledge that the non-specific reticular system of the brain stem interacts with the specific or cortical formations of the brain--stimulating and receiving stimulation.