There seem to be two ways to approach what the word “consciousness” (or, alternatively, “conscious”) could possibly mean.  The physicalist is inclined to start from the most fundamental level of reality and work their way upwards, looking at basic elements such as atoms and deriving properties from these atoms upwards on the length scale.  A psychologist, on the other hand, may start with behaviors and emotions, looking at the phenomenon of consciousness from the “top” and working their way downward on the length scale to firing neurons and other brain like activity.

Philosophical Engineering:

In essence, two worlds are converging (or at least we hope they are) as we speak.  Can the two approaches meet together in the middle? The physicalist might stick with a bottom-up approach, claiming looking at the problem of consciousness this way is like putting the pieces of a very complex puzzle together; we don’t start to see the picture until many of the little pieces have been put in place. It seems, however, the pieces aren’t fitting together the way they had hoped. Psychologists, on the other hand, who maintain these pieces aren’t essential to explaining some parts of the puzzle, seem ill equipped to grasp the connection between psychological states and brain events. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge neither approach can give us a complete story, and find some way to meet in the middle.

For more information, I recommend

J. Schwartz and S. Begley.  The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of the Mental Force.  Harper Perennial, 2002 and H. Sapp.  Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics.  Springer, 2009.