Computational Models of Consciousness: An Evaluation

Abstract

This paper aims at evaluating existing computational (mechanistic) models of cognition in relation to the study of consciousness, on the basis of psychological and philosophical theories and data.It first critiques various mechanistic explanations of consciousness, especially existing computational cognitive models.It then explores the issue of the functional roles of consciousness and examines various views in this regard in relation to the mechanistic explanation of consciousness.In these examinations, the paper argues in favor of the explanation based on the distinction between localist (symbolic) representation and distributed representation (the ideas of which have been put forth in the connectionist literature).Serving as a basis for the discussions, a model of the conscious/unconscious interaction, utilizing the representational difference explanation of consciousness is briefly described.The paper also advances a proposal regarding the synergistic interaction between the conscious and the unconscious that encompasses various existing views concerning the functional roles of consciousness.