Editorial: Consciousness and Cognition: New Approaches

Abstract

principally concerned with the computational theory of cognition, rather than with phenomenal experience. With the maturing of cognitive science, there is a widely-held view that cognitive processes are computational, in the broad sense. They are implemented in the brain, which is a neural net, and in principle therefore they are implementable in artificial neural nets. Object recognition, the organization of actions and natural language understanding may be difficult problems for AI and connectionist approaches, but the performance of artificial systems continues to improve. Until quite recently, a historical review and synthesis of cognitive science need make no reference to consciousness in the index (for example However, in the current decade, there has been a resurgence of interest in fundamental problems of consciousness, including the possibility or impossibility of artificial consciousness. Searle (1998) has pointed out that humans, and to an extent, our relatives in the animal kingdom, are the only exemplars we have of conscious beings. Surely, we should first try to understand how natural systems produce consciousness! In any case, exploring the problem of consciousness is now firmly on the agenda of AI, cognitive science and neuroscience.