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Consciousness: a Connectionist Perspective

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Consciousness: a Connectionist Perspective Consciousness: A Connectionist Perspective Jonathan Opie Department of Philosophy University of Adelaide Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 1998 Contact me at: Department of Philosophy University of Adelaide South Australia 5005 DEDICATION To my father, who got me thinking, and to Tricia, who provided the love, support, and encouragement that enabled me to see this through. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................1 2 TWO COMPUTATIONAL THEORIES OF MIND..................................................6 2.1 Folk Psychology and Cognition ........................................................................................6 2.2 The Classical Computational Theory of Mind................................................................10 2.3 The Connectionist Computational Theory of Mind........................................................15 3 PHENOMENAL EXPERIENCE: A BRIEF SURVEY ..............................................25 3.1 Some Forms of Conscious Experience.............................................................................25 3.2 Consciousness and Thought ...........................................................................................32 3.3 The Nature of Phenomenal Experience...........................................................................42 4 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS ....................................................................43 4.1 Monophonic Consciousness............................................................................................44 4.2 Polyphonic Consciousness ..............................................................................................52 4.3 Whither Unity and Seriality?.........................................................................................64 5 THE DISSOCIATION THESIS............................................................................65 5.1 Limited Capacity and the Dissociation Thesis................................................................65 5.2 Origins of the Dissociation Thesis..................................................................................73 5.3 Doubts About the Dissociation Thesis............................................................................79 6 CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMPUTATION..........................................................91 6.1 The Vehicle/Process Distinction.....................................................................................91 6.2 The Commitments of Classicism.....................................................................................93 6.3 Connectionism and the Dissociation Thesis ...................................................................97 7 A CONNECTIONIST THEORY OF PHENOMENAL EXPERIENCE ......................99 7.1 A Multi-track Vehicle Theory of Consciousness ............................................................99 7.2 Some Support for the Theory ........................................................................................104 7.3 The Dissociation Thesis Revisited ................................................................................109 7.4 Informational Access.....................................................................................................123 8 THE MARKS OF THE MENTAL.......................................................................126 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................129 ABSTRACT 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. STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to this copy of my thesis, when deposited in the University Library, being available for loan and photocopying. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to Greg O’Hair, for introducing me to cognitive science, and for much ongoing support, insight and encouragement. Thanks also to the participants in our cognitive science discussion groups – Diarmuid Crowley, Steve Crowley, Greg Currie, Craig Files, Denise Gamble, Gerard O’Brien, Greg O’Hair, Belinda Paterson, Vladimir Popescu and Ian Ravenscroft – for creating a truly stimulating environment in which to hatch ideas, mad and otherwise. Particular thanks to Gerard O’Brien, for providing an inspiring model of how philosophy should be practised, and for unwavering and generous support (I think I owe you a few coffees too!). Some of the material in Sections 2.2, 2.3, 5.3, 6.1-6.3, 7.1 & 7.2 of this thesis is adapted from: O’Brien, G. & Opie, J. (1999) A connectionist theory of phenomenal experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22: 127-48 Some of the material in Section 7.4 is adapted from: O’Brien, G. & Opie, J. (1997) Cognitive science and phenomenal consciousness: A dilemma, and how to avoid it. Philosophical Psychology 10: 269-86 The material in Chapter 4 forms the basis of: O’Brien, G. & Opie, J. (1998) The disunity of consciousness. The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76: 378-95 1 Introduction onscious experience is both wonderful and diverse. It is a subtle blend of elements that not only reflect the condition of our bodies, and the world outside, but also accompany our thought processes, from the most abstract to the most mundane. These phenomenal states are the very stuff of us. While they defy Ccomplete description or analysis, they all have something in common – there is something it is like to be in them.1 The existence of conscious experience is the most pervasive, immediate and compelling reason to believe in the mental. We observe that the world appears a certain way, and recognise this appearing as a special kind of thing, a feature of the natural order that depends on us, and more particularly, on our brains. That is, we recognise the peculiar relationship between the appearance of things and our bodies – appearances inhere in us, even as they reveal an order of objects beyond us. For most of us the mental consists in the stuff of this first-person perspective, even if we acknowledge that there are third-person ways of accessing the mental (by, say, observing behaviour, or measuring brain states). I will call this the consciousness criterion for mentality. It is the view that conscious experience is the fundamental mark of the mental. From this perspective “it may even appear mysterious what sort of thing a mental state might be if it is not a conscious state” (Rosenthal 1986, p.462). The consciousness criterion has long held sway in both popular and critical thinking about the mind. But the second half of this century has seen a highly successful challenge to this view: intentionality has come to the fore as the characteristic that sets mental phenomena apart from other kinds of phenomena. According to the intentionality criterion it is “aboutness” – the property of standing in the relation of representation to represented – that
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