Abstract
Advocates of the computational theory of mind claim that the mind is a computer whose operations can be implemented by various computational systems. According to these philosophers, the mind is multiply realisable because—as they claim—thinking involves the manipulation of syntactically structured mental representations. Since syntactically structured representations can be made of different kinds of material while performing the same calculation, mental processes can also be implemented by different kinds of material. From this perspective, consciousness plays a minor role in mental activity. However, contemporary neuroscience provides experimental evidence suggesting that mental representations necessarily involve consciousness. Consciousness does not only enable individuals to become aware of their own thoughts, it also constantly changes the causal properties of these thoughts. In light of these empirical studies, mental representations appear to be intrinsically dependent on consciousness. This discovery represents an obstacle to any attempt to construct an artificial mind.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I am very grateful to Mark Bedau, Lisa Bortolotti for their insightful comments and remarks on earlier drafts.
Some cognitivists take a similar view. For example, Dan Sperber writes: “From the kind of naturalistic point of view we defend, there are only natural causes… In particular, intentions and other mental representations are biological phenomena with natural causal powers” (Sperber 2007, p. 132).
It has already been noted that facilitating interneurons carrying information from the tail create axo-axonic connections with the terminals of the sensory neurons innervating the siphon.
References
Bedau, M. A. (2003). Downward causation and autonomy in weak emergence. Principia, 6, 5–50.
Bickle, J. (2003). Philosophy and neuroscience. A Ruthlessly reductive account. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Cheng, D. T., et al. (2008). Neural substrates underlying human delay and trace eyeblink conditioning. Proceedings of National Academy of Science USA, 105(23), 8108–8113.
Clark, R. E., Manns, J. R., & Squire, L. R. (2002). Classical conditioning, awareness and brain systems. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(12), 524–531.
Clark, R. E., & Squire, L. R. (1998). Classical conditioning and brain systems: The role of awareness. Science, 280, 77–81.
Dretske, F. (1995). Naturalizing the mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Fodor, J. (2000). The mind doesn’t work that way: the scope and limits of computational psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Haugeland, J. (1997). What is mind design? In J. Haugeland (Ed.). Mind design II, pp. 1–28. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Höllinger, P., et al. (1999). Mental representations of movements. Brain potentials associated with imagination of eye movements. Clinical Neurophysiology, 110, 799–805.
Kandel, E. (2000). Cellular mechanisms of learning and the biological basis of individuality. In E. Kandel, J. Schwartz & T. Jessell (Eds.). Principles of neural science, pp. 1245–1279. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kandel, E. (2001). The molecular biology of memory storage: A dialogue between genes and synapses. Science 294, 1030–1038.
Kandel, E. (2007). In search of memory—The emergence of a new science of mind. New York: WW Norton & Company.
Lukowiak, K., & Sahley, C. (1981). The in vitro classical conditioning of the Gill Withdrawal Reflex of Aplysia californica. Science, 26(212), 1516–1518.
Manns, J.R., Clark, R.E., & Squire, L.R. (2000). Parallel acquisition of awareness and trace eyeblink classical conditioning. Learning Memories 7(5), 267–272.
Pitt, D. (2008). Mental representation. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-representation/.
Putnam, H. (1975). Mind, language, and reality: Philosophical papers, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scheutz, M. (1999). The Ontological Status of Representations. In A. Riegler, M. Peschl, & A. von Stein (Eds.). Understanding representation in the cognitive sciences, pp. 33–38. New York: Kluwer.
Sperber, D. (2007). Seedless grapes: Nature and culture. In E. Margolis, & S. Laurence (Eds.). Creations of the mind: Theories of artifacts and their representation, pp. 124–137. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
von Eckardt, B. (1993). What is cognitive science? Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
von Eckardt, B. (1999). Mental representation. In R. A. Wilson, & F. C. Keil (Eds.). The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences, pp. 527–529. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Zhang, X., et al. (2006). A mechanism of cell death involving an adenylyl cyclase/PKA signaling pathway is induced by the Cry1Ab toxin of Bacillus thuringiensis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103(26), 9897–9902.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Swiatczak, B. Conscious Representations: An Intractable Problem for the Computational Theory of Mind. Minds & Machines 21, 19–32 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-010-9214-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-010-9214-y