Cognitive scientists seeking a computational account of consciousness almost universally opt for a process theory of some kind: a theory that explains phenomenal experience in terms of the computational processes defined over the brain's representational vehicles. But until recently cognitive science has been dominated by the classical computational theory of mind. Today there is a new player on the scene, connectionism, which takes its inspiration from a computational framework known as parallel distributed processing (PDP). It is therefore appropriate to ask whether connectionism has anything distinctive to say about consciousness, and in particular, whether it might challenge the dominance of process theories. I argue that connectionism has the resources to hazard a vehicle theory of consciousness. A vehicle theory places consciousness right at the focus of cognition by identifying it with the explicit representation of information in the brain. Classicism can't support such a theory because it is committed to the existence of explicit representations whose contents are not phenomenally conscious. The connectionist vehicle theory of consciousness aligns phenomenal experience with stable patterns of activation in neurally realised PDP networks. It suggests that consciousness is an amalgam of phenomenal elements, both sensory and non-sensory, and the product of a multitude of consciousness-making mechanisms scattered throughout the brain. This somewhat unorthodox picture is supported, I claim, by careful analysis of experience, and by the evidence of the neurosciences. One obstacle facing this account is the apparent evidence, both direct and indirect, for the activity of unconscious explicit representations in human cognition. I establish that much of the direct evidence for this thesis is open to doubt on methodological grounds. And studies that support the dissociation thesis indirectly, by way of an inference to the best explanation, are vulnerable to alternative connectionist explanations of the relevant phenomena. What is most significant about the connectionist vehicle theory of consciousness is not the fact that it's a connectionist theory of consciousness, but that it's a vehicle theory - an account which takes cognitive science into largely unexplored territory, but in so doing brings into clearer focus the issues with which any theory of consciousness must contend. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Department of Philosophy, 1998.

Naturalizing the Unity of Consciousness: can neuroscience explain a fundamental feature of subjectivity? Martin Vraný Abstract The aim of the dissertation is to analyze the concept of the unity of conscious- ness as an explanandum for natural sciences and assess how good an explanation do leading neuroscientific theories of consciousness provide. The motivation be- hind this project is the idea that it is the unity which poses the greatest challenge for the scientific quest for consciousness. I argue in the Introduction that the reason why some theories of consciousness lead to what Dennett calls Cartesian materialism is precisely because they fail to address the problem of the unity of consciousness. If we had a good understanding of the unity of consciousness and its place in nature, we could more easily avoid the tendency to devise accounts of consciousness that are homuncular in disguise. In chapter 2 I analyze various aspects in which consciousness is thought be unified and conclude that two such aspects are particularly challenging for natu- ralizing the unity and that they cannot be treated separately. They are the unity of conscious contents at a time and the unity in the sense of a single subject having conscious contents and being able to reflect on them. Chapter 3 describes main conceptual and...

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-10T18:26:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Vinicius Valero.pdf: 850008 bytes, checksum: e649b8db2303d0859527b5a6b33b53bb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-08-20 / This work consists in the exam of Brentano s account of the unity of consciousness. One can defend that the concept of unity has a crucial role in the argumentative frame of Psychology from an empirical standpoint, published in 1874, and constitute an essential step toward latter investigations in descriptive psychology. Under the concept of unity are centralized psychological and ontological questions that pervade the whole philosopher s work. The assumption of Brentano s mereology, understood as the pure theory of relational properties of psychic parts, is already presented in the work of 1874, where the philosopher reaches his own understanding of consciousness as a complex unity. The influence of these questions in the later descriptive work can also help one to illuminate some controversial points of Brentano s scholarly debate, and insists on the importance of a more comprehensive reading of his work. The complexity of psychic acts is understood as a consequence of the concepts of intentionality and inner perception, a consequence that advance the discussion about the essentially complicated nature of mental structures and the necessity of conceiving psychic phenomena as wholes comprised by parts with different kinds of intimacy. This work defends that it is exactly the solution of this problem that establishes the path for ontology of mental phenomena as relations of parts and wholes encountered in descriptive psychology. / Este trabalho consiste no exame da teoria da unidade da consciência de Brentano. Defende-se que o conceito de unidade tem um papel central na trama argumentativa do livro Psicologia do ponto de vista empírico, publicado em 1874 e constitui uma etapa essencial das investigações posteriores de psicologia descritiva. Sob o conceito de unidade se centralizam questões de caráter psicológico e ontológico que permeiam toda a obra do filósofo. Os pressupostos da mereologia brentaniana, entendida como a doutrina pura das propriedades das relações das partes psíquicas, estão presentes no trabalho de 1874, onde Brentano alcança uma compreensão própria da consciência, entendida como unidade complexa. Por outro lado, os desdobramentos das questões de 1874 no trabalho posterior, ilumina controvérsias interpretativas e reforça a necessidade de uma leitura mais abrangente da obra do filósofo. A complexidade dos atos psíquicos é entendida como o corolário das teorias da intencionalidade e da percepção interna e tematiza a natureza essencialmente complicada da estrutas psíquica e a necessidade conceber o fenômenos psíquico enquanto ser constuído de partes com diferentes tipos de intimidade. O trabalho defende que é exatamente a solução deste problema que funda a possibilidade de uma ontologia dos fenômenos psíquicos como a encontrada na psicologia descritiva.

Our understanding of the physical world has evolved drastically over the last century and the microstructure described by subatomic physics has been found to be far stranger than we could previously have envisaged. However, our corresponding model of experience and its structure has remained largely untouched. The orthodox view conceives of our experience as made up of a number of different simpler experiences that are largely independent of one another. This traditional atomistic picture is deeply entrenched. But I argue that it is wrong. Our experience is extraordinarily rich and complex. In just a few seconds we may see, hear and smell a variety of things, feel the position and movement of our body, experience a blend of emotions, and undergo a series of conscious thoughts. This very familiar fact generates three puzzling questions. The first question concerns the way in which all these different things are experienced together. What we see, for example, is experienced alongside what we hear. Our visual experience does not occur in isolation from our auditory experience, sealed off and separate. It is fused together in some sense. It is co-conscious. We may then ask the Unity Question: What does the unity of consciousness consist in? The second question is the Counting Question: How many experiences does a unified region of consciousness involve? Should we think of our experience at a time as consisting in just one very rich experience, in a handful of sense-specific experiences, or in many very simple experiences? How should we go about counting experiences? Is there any principled way to do so?The third and final question, the Dependency Question, concerns the degree of autonomy of the various different aspects of our unified experience. For example, would one's visual experience be the same if one's emotional experience differed? Is the apparent colour of a sunset affected by the emotional state that we are in at the time? I offer a new answer to the Unity Question and argue that it has striking implications for the way that we address the Counting Question and the Dependency Question. In particular, it supports the view that our experience at a time consists in just one very rich experience in which all of the different aspects are heavily interdependent.