Abstract
Connectionism and phenomenology can mutually inform and mutually constrain each other. In this manifesto I outline an approach to consciousness based on distinctions developed by connectionists. Two core identities are central to a connectionist theory of consciouness: conscious states of mind are identical to occurrent activation patterns of processing units; and the variable dispositional strengths on connections between units store latent and unconscious information. Within this broad framework, a connectionist model of consciousness succeeds according to the degree of correspondence between the content of human consciousness (the world as it is experienced) and the interpreted content of the network. Constitutive self-awareness and reflective self-awareness can be captured in a model through its ability to respond to self-reflexive information, identify self-referential categories, and process information in the absence of simultaneous input. The qualitative “feel” of sensation appears in a model as states of activation that are not fully discriminated by later processing. Connectionism also uniquely explains several specific features of experience. The most important of these is the superposition of information in consciousness — our ability to perceive more than meets the eye, and to apprehend complex categorical and temporal information in a single highly-cognized glance. This superposition in experience matches a superposition of representational content in distributed representations.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allport, Alan (1989), ‘Visual Attention’, in Michael Posner, ed.,Foundations of Cognitive Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 631–683.
Churchland, P.S. and T.J. Sejnowski (1992),The Computational Brain, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Churchland, P.M. (1993), ‘The Implications of Cognitive Neuroscience for Philosophy’, lecture at Trinity College.
Clark, Andy (1993),Associative Engines, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Clark, Austen (1993),Sensory Qualities, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Dennett, D. (1987), ‘Consciousness’, in Richard Gregory, ed.,Oxford Companion to the Mind, Oxford University Press.
Dennett, D. (1988), ‘Quining Qualia’, A.J. Marcel and E. Bisiach, eds.,Consciousness in Contemporary Science, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Dennett, D. (1991),Consciousness Explained, Little, Brown, Boston.
Elman, J. (1989), ‘Structured Representations and Connectionist Models’,Program of the 11th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 17–25.
Elman, J. (1990), ‘Finding Structure in Time’,Cognitive Science 14, 179–211.
Elman, J. (1991), ‘Distributed Representations, Simple Recurrent Networks, and Grammatical Structure,’Machine Learning 7, 195–225.
Erdelyi, M.H. (1985),Psychoanalysis: Freud's Cognitive Psychology, Freeman, San Francisco.
Flanagan, Owen (1992),Consciousness Reconsidered, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Freud, S. and J. Breuer, (1895),Studies on Hysteria. Vol. 2 ofThe Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, Hogarth Press, London, 1955.
Garfield, J. (1989), ‘The Myth of Jones and the Mirror of Nature: Reflections on Introspection’,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50, 1–26.
Hinton, Geoffrey (1991), ‘The Unity of Consciousness: A Connectionist Account’, in W. Kessen, A. Ortony, and F. Craik, eds.,Memories, Throughts, and Emotions: Essays in Honor of George Mandler, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 245–255.
Hornik, K., M. Stichcombe, and H. White (1989), ‘Multilayer Feedforward Networks Are Universal Approximators’,Neural Networks 2, 359–366.
Lloyd, Dan (1989),Simple Minds, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Lloyd, Dan (1991), ‘Leaping to Conclusions: Connectionism, Consciousness, and the Computational Mind’, in T. Horgan and J. Tienson, eds.,Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind, Kluwer, Dordrecht.
Lloyd, D. (1994), ‘Connectionist Hysteria: Reducing a Freudian Case Study to a Network Model,’ Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 2, 69–89.
Lyons, D. (1986),The Disappearance of Introspection, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Nelkin, N. (1989a), ‘Propositional Attitudes and Consciousness’,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49, 413–430.
Nelkin, N., (1989b), ‘Unconscious Sensations’,Philosophical Psychology 2, 129–141.
Ramsey, W. (1994), ‘Internal Representations in Connectionist Theory: Do They Earn Their Explanatory Keep?’ paper presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting, Memphis.
Rosenberg, C. (1987), ‘Revealing the Structure of NETtalk's Internal Representations’, inProgram of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Congitive Science Society, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ.
Rumelhart, D., J. McClelland, and the PDP Research Group (1986),Parallel Distributed Cognition: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Rumelhart, D., Smolensky, P., McClelland, J., and Hinton, G. (1986), ‘Schemata and Sequential Thought Processes in PDP Models’, in J. McClelland and D. Rumelhart, eds.,Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition. Volume 2: Psychological and Biological Models, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Sartre, J.-P. (1937) (1957),Transcendence of the Ego. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, New York.
Sartre, J.-P. (1953) (1966),Being and Nothingness, Washington Square Park, New York.
Sejnowski, T. and Rosenberg, C. (1987), ‘Parallel Networks That Learn to Pronounce English Text’,Complex Systems 1, 145–168.
Servan-Schreiber, D., A. Cleeremans, and J.L. McClelland (1991), ‘Graded State Machines: The Representation of Temporal Contingencies in Simple Recurrent Networks’,Machine Learning 7, 161–193.
Simon, H. and A. Newell (1956), ‘Models: Their Uses and Limitations’, in L.D. White, ed.,The State of the Social Sciences, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Smolensky, Paul (1988), ‘On the Proper Treatment of Connectionism’,Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11, 1–23.
van Gelder, Timothy (1991), ‘What is the ‘D’ in ‘PDP’? A Survey of the Concept of Distribution’, in R.W. Ramsey et al., eds.,Philosophy and Connectionist Theory, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Van Gulick, Robert (1988), ‘Consciousness, Intrinsic Intentionality, and Self-Understanding Machines’, in A.J. Marcel and E. Bisiach, eds.,Consciousness in Contemporary Science, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Velmans, M. (1991), ‘Is Human Information Processing Conscious?’,Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14, 651–669.
Wegman, C. (1985),Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Psychology, Academic Press, London.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lloyd, D. Consciousness: A connectionist manifesto. Mind Mach 5, 161–185 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00974742
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00974742