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Neural Networks, Vol. 10, No. 7, pp. 1317–1331, 1997
q 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0893–6080/97 $17.00+.00
PII: S0893-6080(97)00050-6
Learning, Action and Consciousness: A Hybrid
Approach Toward Modelling Consciousness
Ron Sun
Department of Computer Science, The University of Alabama
(Received 2 July 1996; accepted 4 December 1996)
Abstract—This paper is an attempt at understanding the issue of consciousness through investigating its functional
role, especially in learning, and through devising hybrid neural network models that (in a qualitative manner) approximate characteristics of human consciousness. In doing so, the paper examines explicit and implicit learning in a variety
of psychological experiments and delineates the conscious/unconscious distinction in terms of the two types of learning
and their respective products. The distinctions are captured in a two-level action-based model Clarion. Some fundamental theoretical issues are also clarified with the help of the model. Comparisons with existing models of consciousness are made to accentuate the present approach. q 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.
Keywords—Neural networks, Hybrid systems, Consciousness, Implicit learning, Reinforcement learning, Procedural
knowledge, Rule extraction, Dual representation.
to stay at an intermediate and functional level; investigating the detailed functional roles of consciousness
and determining how various aspects of the conscious
and the unconscious should figure into the architecture
of the mind (in terms of learning as well as performance).
In other words, we posit a middle level between phenomenology and physiology/neurobiology, which might be
more apt at capturing fundamental characteristics of consciousness. We will also link computational models of
consciousness to parts of (phenomenological) philosophy that are concerned with consciousness.
As we will focus mainly on the learning aspect in
consciousness, let us briefly describe the learning settings
that we examined (from Sun et al., 1995). These
settings are more complex than simple categorisation/
classification and though action-based, involve more
than just simple stimulus–response pairing. Psychological experiments involving dynamic decision making or
artificial grammars will be discussed. In dynamic decision making (Berry &amp; Broadbent, 1988), subjects were
required to control the levels of an output variable by
manipulating levels of an input variable. In one instance,
subjects were to manage a simulated sugar production
factory and the goal was to reach and maintain a particular level of productivity by manipulating the size of the
workforce. In another instance, subjects were to interact
with a computer simulated ‘‘person’’ and to maintain the
behaviour of the person at ‘‘very friendly’’ by manipulating his/her own behaviour. In artificial grammar
Amidst the widespread enthusiasm of recent years concerning the scientific study of consciousness, there are a
large number of models being proposed (including computational models, which in turn include neural network
models), and various claims have been made about them.
These models capture to various extents experimental
findings and pretheoretical intuitions about consciousness (see, e.g. Taylor, 1994; Schacter, 1990; Jackendoff,
1987; Shallice, 1988; Baars, 1988; Dennett &amp; Kinsbourne, 1992; Penrose, 1994). Unfortunately, however,
some of these models (such as Dennett &amp; Kinsbourne,
1992; Shallice, 1988; Jackendoff, 1987) are aimed at a
very high and gross level of explanation (e.g. overall
architectures) and thus unable to provide more detailed
predictions and explanations. On the other hand, existing
computational, especially neural network, models tend to
rush directly into complex neural physiological thickets
(Taylor, 1994; Edelman, 1989) and thus may lose sight of
forests. In addition, most existing models do not deal
adequately with one crucial aspect of human consciousness: learning. In contrast to these approaches, we intend
Acknowledgements: This work was supported in part by Office of
Naval Research grant N00014-95-1-0440. Thanks to Ed Merril and
Diana Gordon for their comments.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Ron Sun, Department of
Computer Science, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL
35487, USA; Tel.: (205) 348-1667; e-mail: rsun@cs.ua.edu.
learning (Reber, 1989), subjects were presented with a
string of letters that were generated in accordance with
a simple grammar. Although subjects were unaware of
the underlying grammars, they were asked to judge the
grammaticality of novel strings. In addition, two navigation tasks were used for both psychological experiments
and computational modelling in our lab (see Sun et al.,
1995, 1996a, b). One is maze running, in which from
a starting location, a subject has to find a goal location,
using only local sensory information. The other is
navigation through minefields, in which a subject
is required to go from a starting location to a goal location within a given short period of time by navigating
through a densely packed field of mines (which will
explode if the subject gets too close). I will later show
the relevance of these learning tasks to the study of
In the rest of this paper, I will first present a cognitive
architecture Clarion1 for accounting for the distinction
of the conscious and the unconscious (in Section 2). I will
then show how it accounts for a number of phenomena
related to the conscious/unconscious distinction in learning (which may also be referred to as the explicit and
implicit distinction) (in Section 3). A discussion of some
fundamental theoretical issues will take place after that
(Section 4). A comparison to existing models of consciousness such as Baars (1988), Schacter (1990), and
Damasio (1994) will follow, which will show the commonalities shared by some of these models and Clarion
and the unique features of the present model (in Section
5). Some concluding remarks (Section 6) will complete
the paper.
A computational model that can tackle the learning tasks
mentioned above is needed. It needs to satisfy some basic
requirements as follows. It must be able to learn from
scratch on its own (as human subjects often do in the
learning tasks outlined earlier; Berry &amp; Broadbent,
1988; Reber, 1989; and also Sun et al., 1996a). The
model also has to perform concurrent, on-line learning.
That is, it has to learn continuously from on-going
experience in the world; for, as indicated by Medin
et al. (1987), Nosofsky et al. (1994) and others, human
learning is often gradual, on-going and concurrent, which
is true of all the aforementioned tasks. As suggested by
Anderson (1983) and many others, there are clearly two
types of knowledge involved in human learning — procedural and declarative: while one is generic and easily
accessible, the other is embodied and specific. Moreover,
different types of learning processes are involved in
acquiring different types of knowledge (Anderson,
It was originally developed for modelling human skill learning; see
Sun et al. (1995).
R. Sun
1983; Keil, 1989; Smolensky, 1988; Stanley et al.,
1989). Humans are able to learn procedural knowledge
through trial and error (without a priori knowledge) in the
aforementioned tasks. On top of low-level procedural
skills, declarative knowledge can be acquired also
through on-going experience in the world (see Stanley
et al., 1989). Furthermore, it is important for declarative
knowledge to be learned through the meditation of low
level skills (i.e. bottom-up learning; see Sun et al.,
Procedural knowledge (skills) can be captured by subsymbolic distributed representation, such as that provided by a backpropagation network. Because of the
implicit nature of procedural skills, details of such skills
are in general inaccessible to consciousness (Anderson,
1983; Reber, 1989). A distributed representation naturally captures this property with representational units
that are capable of accomplishing tasks but are in general
uninterpretable and subsymbolic (Sun, 1994, 1995). (A
symbolic representation may be used, but then this would
require an artificial assumption that these representations
are not accessible, while other similar representations are
accessible — such a distinction is arbitrary.)
Procedural knowledge can be learned in a couple of
different ways. In the case where correct input/output
mappings are provided, straight backpropagation can
be used on a neural network. Otherwise, reinforcement
learning can be used (Sutton, 1990; Watkins, 1989). This
is preferred because there is often no uniquely correct
action in the aforementioned tasks, although feedback is
usually available. Using reinforcement learning in neural
networks, we can measure the goodness of an action
through a payoff-reinforcement signal. An adjustment
can be made to weights to increase the chance of selecting the actions that receive positive reinforcement and
to reduce the chance of selecting the actions that receive
negative reinforcement.
This level can be modular; that is, a number of small
networks can co-exist each of which is adapted to
specific modalities, tasks, or groups of input stimuli.
This coincides with the well known modularity claim
(Fodor, 1983; Karmiloff-Smith, 1986; Cosmides &amp;
Tooby, 1994), in that much processing in the human
mind is done by limited, encapsulated (to some extent),
specialized processors that are highly efficient. It is also
similar to the idea of Shallice (1988) that a multitude of
‘‘action systems’’ compete with each other. There also
has been some work in neural network and machine
learning communities in developing modular systems,
which are equally relevant.
On the other hand, declarative knowledge can be
captured by a symbolic or a ‘‘localist’’ representation
(Clark &amp; Karmiloff-Smith, 1993), in which each unit
has a clear conceptual meaning or interpretation. This
allows declarative knowledge to be highly accessible
and inferences to be performed explicitly (Smolensky,
1988; Sun, 1994, 1995).
Learning, Action and Consciousness: A Hybrid Approach Toward Modelling Consciousness
Declarative knowledge can be learned in a variety of
ways. In this work, because of the dynamic on-going
nature of the learning tasks, we need to be able to dynamically acquire a representation and to modify the representation subsequently if necessary, in an efficient or
even one-shot fashion.
The difference in representing procedural and declarative knowledge revealed by the above discussion leads
naturally to a two-level architecture, in which one level is
procedural and the other declarative. This structuring can
be argued on both psychological and philosophical
grounds. Anderson (1983) put forward the dichotomy
of separate yet interconnected declarative and procedural
knowledge bases to account for a variety of learning data.
Smolensky (1988) suggested that the separation of conceptual-level and subconceptual-level processing. The
conceptual level possesses three characteristics: (1)
public access; (2) reliability; and (3) formality. It can
thus be modelled by symbolic processing. In contrast,
skills, intuition, and the like are not expressible in linguistic forms and do not conform to the three criteria
prescribed. Hence, skills and intuition constitute a different type of capacity, reflecting the ‘‘subsymbolic’’ processing at the subconceptual level (see also Shiffrin &amp;
Schneider, 1977). In a similar vein, Dreyfus and Dreyfus
(1987) contrasted analytical and intuitive thinking, from
a phenomenological analysis of human cognitive skill
learning in which the fluent, holistic and situation sensitive way of solving problems (intuition) as observed in
master level performers is in sharp contrast with the
slow, deliberate thinking that often occurs in the novices
(analytical thinking). Models have been proposed to
account for such two-tiered structures, which often
posit the existence of at least two separate components,
each of which responds to one side of a dichotomy (e.g.
Posner &amp; Snyder, 1975; Schacter, 1990; Murphy &amp;
Medin, 1985; Keil, 1989; Sun, 1992a, 1994; Sun &amp;
Bookman, 1994). The dual representation hypothesis
put forth in Sun (1994) stated that:
It is assumed in this work that cognitive processes are
carried out in two distinct levels with qualitatively different
processing mechanisms. Each level encodes a fairly complete set of knowledge for its processing, and the coverage
of the two sets of knowledge encoded by the two levels
overlaps substantially.
Based on the above considerations, we developed
Clarion: Connectionist Learning with Adaptive Rule
Induction ON-line. It consists of two main components:
the top level encodes explicit declarative knowledge, and
the bottom level encodes implicit procedural knowledge.
In addition, there is an episodic memory, which stores
recent experiences in the form of ‘‘input, output, result’’
(i.e. stimulus, response, and consequence) that are
recently-filtered (episodic memory will not be used in
this paper and therefore will not be further discussed
here) (see Figure 1).
An overall pseudo-code algorithm that describes the
operation of Clarion is as follows:
1. Observe the current state x (in a proper representation).
2. Compute in the bottom level the Q-values of x associated with each of the possible actions ai ’s:
Q(x, a2 ), :::, Q(x, an ). Select one action or a few
based on Q-values.
3. Find out all the possible actions (b1 , b2 , :::, bm ) at the
top level, based on the input x (sent up from the
bottom level) and the rules in place.
4. Compare the values of the selected ai ’s with those of
the bj ’s (sent down from the top level), and choose an
appropriate action b.
FIGURE 1. The CLARION architecture.
R. Sun
5. Perform the action b, and observe the next state y and
(possibly) the reinforcement r.
6. Update Q-values at the bottom level in accordance
with the Q-Learning-Backpropagation algorithm.
7. Update the rule network at the top level using the
Rule-Extraction-Refinement algorithm.
8. Go back to step 1.
In the bottom level, a Q-value is an evaluation of the
‘‘quality’’ of an action in a given state: Q(x, a) indicates
how desirable action a is in state x (which consists of
some sensory input). We can choose an action based on
Q-values, e.g. by choosing the one that has the maximum
Q-value in the current state or by choosing an action
probabilistically based on Q-values. To acquire the
Q-values, one option is to use the Q-learning algorithm
(Watkins, 1989), a reinforcement learning algorithm.2 In
the algorithm, Q(x, a) estimates the maximum discounted
cumulative reinforcement that the agent will receive
from the current state x on:
FIGURE 2. The Q-Learning method.
previous considerations). The output of the third layer
(i.e. the output layer of the backpropagation network)
indicates the Q-value of each action (represented by an
individual node), and the node in the fourth layer determined probabilistically the action to be performed based
on the Boltzmann Distribution (i.e. Luce’s choice axiom;
Watkins, 1989):
gi ri
e1=aQ(x, a)
p(alx) &frac14; X 1=aQ(x, a )
where g is a discount factor that favours reinforcement
received sooner relative to that received later, and ri is
the reinforcement received at step i (which may be 0).
The updating of Q(x, a) is based on minimising
r &thorn; ge(y) &sup1; Q(x, a)
where g is a discount factor and e(y) &frac14; maxa Q(y, a).
Thus, the updating is based on the temporal difference
in evaluating the current state and the action chosen. In
the above formula, Q(x, a) estimates, before action a is
performed, the (discounted) cumulative reinforcement to
be received if action a is performed, and r &thorn; ge(y) estimates, after action a is performed, the (discounted)
cumulative reinforcement that the agent will receive; so
their difference (the temporal difference in evaluating an
action) enables the learning of Q-values that approximate
the (discounted) cumulative reinforcement. Using Qlearning allows sequential behaviour to emerge. Through
successive updates of the Q-function, the agent can learn
to take into account future steps in longer and longer
We chose to use a four-layered network for implementation (see Figure 2), in which the first three layers form a
(either recurrent or feedforward) backpropagation network for computing Q-values and the fourth layer
(with only one node) performs stochastic decision
making. The network is internally subsymbolic and
implicit in representation (in accordance with our
Here, a controls the degree of randomness (temperature)
of the decision making process.4 The combination of
Q-learning and backpropagation facilitates the development of procedural skills in the bottom level, which can
potentially be done solely on the basis of acting and
exploring in the real world. This learning process
performs both structural credit assignment and temporal
credit assignment.
In the top level, declarative knowledge is captured in a
simple propositional rule form. To facilitate correspondence with the bottom level and to encourage uniformity
and integration (Clark &amp; Karmiloff-Smith, 1993), we
chose to use a localist network model for representing
these rules. Basically, we connect the nodes representing
conditions of a rule to the node representing the conclusion. However, we need to determine how we wire up
a rule involving conjunctive conditions. There are a
number of previous attempts (e.g. Sun, 1992b; Towel
&amp; Shavlik, 1993) that we can draw upon. For each
rule, a set of links can be established, each of which
connects to a concept in the condition of a rule to the
conclusion of the rule. So the number of incoming links
to the conclusion of a rule is equal to the number of
conditions of the rule. If the concept in the condition is
The training of the backpropagation network is based on minimising the following:
erri &frac14;
Supervised learning methods can also be applied, when correct
mappings of an input and output are available.
In terms of both simplicity and performance, Q-learning is best
among similar reinforcement learning methods (Lin, 1992; Sun et al.,
if ai &frac14; a
where i is the index for an output node representing the action ai .
Backpropagation is then applied as usual to adjust the weights. Or,
when correct mappings are available for each step, backpropagation
can be directly applied.
Learning, Action and Consciousness: A Hybrid Approach Toward Modelling Consciousness
FIGURE 3. A network for representing rules: (1) b c → a ; (2)
&not;f g → b ; (3) &not;h i → b ; (4) j → c .
in a positive form, the link carries a positive weight w;
otherwise, it carries a negative weight — w. Sigmoidal
functions are used for node activation (as an obvious
choice; other functions are also possible):
ii wi &sup1; t
The threshold t of a node is set to be n times w &sup1; v, where
n is the number of incoming links (the number of conditions leading to the conclusion represented by this node),
and v is a parameter, selected along with w to make sure
that the node has activation above 0.9 when all of its
conditions are satisfied, and has activation below 0.1
when some of its conditions are not met. (Activations
above 0.9 are considered 1, and activations below 0.1
are considered 0; so rules are crisp/binary.) In addition,
if there is more than one rule that leads to the same
conclusion, an intermediate node is created for each
such rule: all of the conditions of a rule are linked to
the same intermediate node, and then all the intermediate
nodes are linked to the node representing the conclusion
(see Figure 3). (For more complex rule forms including
predicate rules and variable binding, see Sun, 1992b).
To fully capture bottom-up learning processes, we
devised an algorithm for learning declarative knowledge
(rules) using information in the bottom level. The basic
idea is as follows: if an action decided by the bottom
level is successful (here, being successful could mean a
number of different things, including the difference
between the Q-value of the state before an action is performed and that after the action is performed, which
comes from the bottom level; the details are specified
in Sun et al., 1995), then the agent extracts a rule that
corresponds to the action selected by the bottom level
and adds the rule to the network. Then, in subsequent
interactions with the world, the agent verifies the
extracted rule by considering the outcome of applying
the rule: if the outcome is not successful, then the rule
should be made more specific and exclusive of the current case; if the outcome is successful, the agent may try
to generalise the rule to make it more universal (Mitchell,
1982). (The detail of the algorithm can be found in Sun et
al., 1995.)
At the top level, after rules have been learned,
backward and forward chaining reasoning, means-ends
FIGURE 4. The implementation of CLARION.
analysis, counterfactual reasoning and explicit hypothesis testing can be used. These rules, expressed in the
‘‘state → action result’’ form (which constitutes a
schema; cf. Waltz, 1991). allows powerful operations
to be performed. Backward chaining means-ends analysis is accomplished at the top level through backward
tracing of rule links from the ‘‘result’’, which is the
new state entered after the ‘‘action’’ is performed, to
the state, which is the state before the action is performed. This process is successively applied, with the
derived ‘‘state’’ as the new state (the result) to be back
traced, until reaching an initial state. All of the actions
involved in the derivation are collected, which form a
plan for accomplishing the desired final result. Counterfactual reasoning can also be applied (because we have
information concerning conditions, actions, and results
readily available): one can thus hypothetically alter
either the conditions or the action of a rule, and see the
change in (immediate or final) results. Such counterfactual reasoning can be used to justify (or explain) a
chosen action, or a sequence of such actions (a plan).
Explicit hypothesis testing, similar to techniques discussed by e.g. Bruner et al. (1956), Nosofsky et al.
(1994), and Michalski (1983), can also be applied at
this level of Clarion.
The algorithm (at step 4) makes the final decision on
which action to take by incorporating influences from
both levels (as has been shown by Willingham et al.,
1989, in humans, declarative knowledge can influence
procedural performance). It allows different operational
modes: (1) relying only on the top level; (2) relying only
on the bottom level; or (3) combining the outcomes from
both levels weighing them differently. The weights can
change over time and in different situations. (These
different operational modes roughly correspond to the
folk psychological notions of the intuitive mode, the
deliberative mode, and the various mixtures of the two
with different percentages of each; more later; see Sun
et al., 1995.) Figure 4 shows the details of the two levels
of the model.
The necessity of a two level architecture that incorporates two types of processes can be summed up as
In terms of representation, without the bottom level,
the model will not be able to represent procedural
skills properly. Such skills may involve graded, uncertain and inconsistent knowledge and autonomous
stochastic exploration (with numeric calculation and
probabilistic firing).
In terms of learning, without learning in the bottom
level, the model will not be able to learn from experience dynamically to acquire procedural skill. The
bottom level captures gradual learning of skills,
which is different from one-shot rule learning at the
top level.
Without the top level, the model will not be able to (1)
represent generic, easily accessible, and crisp knowledge and (2) explicitly access and communicate that
knowledge. When precision, consistency, and certainty are needed, declarative knowledge is preferred.
Without rule learning, the model will not be able to
acquire quickly and dynamically explicit knowledge
for the top level from experience, and therefore have
to resort to externally given declarative knowledge or
to procedural knowledge exclusively.
There is ample biological evidence that indicates the
existence of multiple pathways (in visual, linguistic, and
other processing modes) some of which lead to conscious
awareness, while others do not (e.g. one type is cortical
while the other is subcortical), as described in Damasio
(1994) and LeDoux (1992). For example, LeDoux (1992)
described a cortical pathway from stimulus to thalamus
to cortex, which produces conscious thoughts, and a subcortical pathway from stimulus to thalamus then to
amygdala, which can lead directly to brain stem and
effect actions without any explicit process. A two-level
model such as Clarion approximates the separation of
the two kinds of pathways to a certain degree, and suggests,
in a concrete and tangible way, how subcortical processes can play a fundamental role in supporting and initiating consciousness in a bottom-up direction (more later).
The crucial link between this model of procedural/
declarative knowledge and the conscious/unconscious
distinction in humans is in the psychological work on
implicit learning (by e.g. Reber, 1989; Lewicki et al.,
1992; Berry &amp; Broadbent, 1988; Stanley et al., 1989;
Willingham et al., 1989). Such work shows the dissociation between conscious and unconscious learning.
R. Sun
Human knowledge, and its acquisition process, could
be partially or completely unconscious. The connection
from such illustrative data to our model lies in the ability
of the model to account for some of the most important
characteristics of human implicit/explicit learning, as
will be sketched below. (More detailed comparisons
and data can be found in Sun et al., 1996a, b)
3.1. The Difference of Conscious/Unconscious
In the psychological data, there is a clear demonstration
of the difference between conscious and unconscious (or,
explicit and implicit) learning. Berry &amp; Broadbent
(1988) demonstrated this through an experiment using
two similar dynamic decision tasks differing in the
degree of saliency of the input/output relation. Human
subjects were required to maintain the behaviour of a
computer person at a ‘‘very friendly’’ level through
their inputs. In the salient version, the computer
responded in accordance with the subjects immediately
preceding input. In the non-salient version, the computer
responded in accordance with the input prior to that.
Results suggested that subjects in the two conditions
learned the tasks in very different ways: subjects in
the non-salient condition learned the task implicitly
while subjects in the salient condition learned the task
explicitly, as demonstrated by tests of their explicit
knowledge. Reber (1989) described a similar situation
in artificial grammar learning. When complex hierarchical relations were needed to judge grammaticality, subjects tended to use implicit, unconscious learning; for
example, when a sequence consisted of pairings of
adjacent symbols that were ambiguous pair-wise but
unambiguous when the entire sequence was viewed
through hierarchical relations, such as in the case of
101110, implicit learning was preferred by the subjects.
When only pair-wise relations were needed, such as in
the case of 101010, subjects were more likely to use
explicit, conscious learning by inducing an explicit
rule. In other tasks, Cohen et al. (1990) also expressly
demonstrated a dissociation between learning simple
(pairwise) relations and learning complex hierarchical
relations. A pattern emerging from the human data is
that, if the to-be-learned relationships are simple, usually
explicit/conscious learning prevails, while, when more
complex relationships are involved, implicit/unconscious
learning becomes more prominent. The implicit learning
mechanism appears to be more structurally sophisticated
and able to handle more difficult situations (Lewicki
et al., 1992). It is important to note the inability of
human subjects to articulate their implicitly learned
knowledge, no matter how hard they tried (this is especially true in Lewicki et al., 1992). The subjects were
often not even aware that they were learning. Nevertheless their performance improved over time, which
demonstrated that their knowledge was unconscious.
Learning, Action and Consciousness: A Hybrid Approach Toward Modelling Consciousness
This accords well with the Clarion model. In the
model, one can freely move from one type of process
to another, by engaging or disengaging the top level
and its associated learning mechanisms (explicit processes that are consciously accessible, as discussed
before), or the bottom level and its associated mechanisms (implicit processes that are not consciously accessible). Furthermore, in general, the bottom level is used
to tackle more complex relations while the top level takes
on simpler and crisper relations (cf. Reber, 1989; Seger,
1994). This is because the top level does not lend itself
easily to the learning of complex structures due to its
crisp, individuated, and symbolic representation and
rigorous learning process. The bottom level, with its
distributed network representation that incorporates
gradedness and temporal information, handles complex
relations better.
A specific example of this complexity difference is as
follows. Implicit learning of sequences (e.g. artificial
grammar sequences) is biased towards sequences with
a high level of statistical structure with much correlation
(Stadler, 1992). As has been demonstrated by Elman
(1990) and by Cleeremans and McClelland (1991), recurrent backpropagation networks, as used in the bottom
level of Clarion (in conjunction with Q-learning), can
handle sequences with complex statistical structures,
given proper training procedures. Dienes (1992) reported
similar results, in which a simple network model outperformed other models in capturing sequence learning
data. The rule learning mechanism, as used in the top
level of Clarion, clearly has trouble handling such
sequences. Therefore, in the circumstances in which a
high level of statistical structure is involved in sequences,
the bottom level prevails.
Note that there has been other work that demonstrated
the distinction and dissociation of the two types of
knowledge and proposed models based on that (e.g.
Schacter, 1990; Shallice, 1988). However, some of the
empirical work on which these models are based is concerned with abnormal subjects, most typically patients
with brain damages. For example, Schacter (1990) discussed the following types of patients: amnesia (a selective inability to remember recent experience and to learn
new information, typically due to lesions in the medial
temporal lobe), blindsight (the inability to make certain
responses in the absence of conscious perceptual awareness due to damages in the visual cortex), aphasia
(impairment in processing syntactic or semantic information due to damages to a particular brain region), hemineglect (an impaired ability to attend to the side
contralateral to the damaged hemisphere), and so on,
all of which were characterised by dissociation of different types of information/knowledge somewhat similar to
situations discussed above. Schacter (1990) proposed a
model for accounting for the dissociation (see Section 5
for details). Although the model was, I believe, on the
right track, the support for it was not as strong as it could
have been, because in brain damaged patients, it was
possible that certain reconfiguration and reallocation
might have taken place (Shallice, 1988) and thus rendered the findings less applicable to normal human subjects. In this work, I only examine experimental findings
from normal human subjects and thus results obtained
may be generalised to a wider range of settings.
3.2. Delayed Explication of Unconscious Processes
In the implicit learning literature, implicit performance
typically improves earlier than explicit knowledge that
can be verbalised by the subject (Stanley et al., 1989).
For example, in dynamic decision tasks, although performance quickly rises to a high level, subjects’ verbal
knowledge improves far slower; the subjects cannot provide usable verbal knowledge until near the end of their
training (Stanley et al., 1989). Bowers et al. (1990) also
showed delayed explication of implicit processes. When
subjects were given patterns to complete, they showed
implicit recognition of what a proper completion might
be even though they did not have explicit recognition of a
correct completion. The implicit recognition improved
over time and eventually, an explicit recognition was
achieved. In all of these cases, as suggested by Stanley
et al. (1989) and Seger (1994), we may hypothesise that,
due to the fact that explicit knowledge lags behind but
improves along with implicit knowledge, explicit knowledge is in a way extracted from implicit knowledge.
Cleeremans and McClelland (1991) also pointed out
this possibility in discussing their data and models.
Several developmental theorists have considered a
similar process in child development. Karmiloff-Smith
(1986) suggested that developmental changes involve
representational redescription. In young children, first
low level implicit representations of stimuli were
formed and used, then, when more knowledge was accumulated and stable behaviours developed, through a
redescription process, more abstract representations
were formed that transformed low-level representations
and made them more explicit and usable. Based on data
on perceptual analysis and categorization in infancy,
Mandler (1992) proposed that relatively abstract
‘‘image-schemas’’ were extracted from perceptual stimuli, which coded several basic types of movements.
On top of such image schemas, concepts were formed
using information therein. She suggested that it was
likely that an infant gradually formed ‘‘theories’’ of
how his/her sensorimotor procedures work and thereby
gradually made such processes explicit and accessible.
Finally, Keil (1989) suggested that conceptual representations were composed of an associative component
(with frequency and correlational information; Hasher
&amp; Zacks, 1979) and a ‘‘theory’’ component (with explicit
knowledge; Murphy &amp; Medin, 1985). Developmentally,
there was a clear shift from associative to theory based
representations in children. In data concerning learning
concepts of both natural and nominal kinds, simple
similarity-based or prototype representations dominated
at first, but gradually more explicit and focused theories
developed and became more prominent. Keil (1989)
pointed out that it was unlikely that theories developed
independently, but rather they developed somehow from
associative information that was already available. These
findings further testify to the ubiquity of an implicit-toexplicit transition (Clark &amp; Karmiloff-Smith, 1993).
Clarion readily captures this kind of bottom-up process. The bottom level develops implicit, embodied skills
on its own (Section 2, eqn (2)), while the top level
extracts explicit rules using algorithm Rule-ExtractionRefinement (Section 2). Thus, the delayed bottom-up
learning naturally falls out of the model.5
3.3. Differences in Conscious/Unconscious Processes:
Flexibility, Generalizability, and Robustness.
It has been shown that implicit learning produces less
flexible knowledge than explicit knowledge (Seger,
1994; Berry &amp; Broadbent, 1988; Stanley et al., 1989;
Karmiloff-Smith, 1986). Seger (1994) argued that implicit learning results in knowledge that was more tied to the
specific stimulus modality of the learning environment
and less manipulable. Based on psycholinguistic data,
Karmiloff-Smith (1986) observed that with the growth
of explicit representations, more and more flexibility was
shown by subject children. Clarion can account for the
higher degree of flexibility of explicit, conscious knowledge relative to implicit, unconscious knowledge. Due to
the explicit (i.e. localist) representation used at the top
level of Clarion (which stores explicit knowledge), a
variety of explicit manipulations can be performed that
are not available to the bottom level. For example, backward and forward chaining reasoning, counterfactual
reasoning, explicit hypothesis testing learning, and so
on can be used individually or in combination. These
capacities lead to heightened flexibility in the top level.
The bottom level employs only backpropagation networks and thus cannot have the same flexibility.
As observed in many experiments, following explicit
learning, subjects are able to handle novel stimuli in a
similar way (or in other words, to generalise). In artificial
grammar learning, Reber (1967, 1976) found good
transfer to strings using different letters but based on
the same grammar. Berry and Broadbent (1988) showed
that subjects trained on a dynamic decision task could
transfer to another task with a similar cover story and
identical underlying relations. Generalisation has been
There is also evidence that explicit knowledge may develop
independently. Willingham et al. (1989) reported such data. These
data rule out the possibility that one type of knowledge is always
preceded by the other type, at least under their experimental conditions.
To account for this phenomenon, in Clarion, explicit hypothesis
testing can be employed in the top level for learning rules, independently of the bottom level, as mentioned before.
R. Sun
demonstrated in neural network models by e.g. Elman
(1990) and many others. Elman (1990) reported good
generalisation of sequences by recurrent backpropagation networks in grammar learning. Pollack (1991)
found generalisation of such networks to arbitrarily
long sequences. As in human learning, generalization
in neural networks is based in part on similarity of old
and new sequences but also in part on certain structures
exhibited by the sequences. Thus, the bottom level of
Clarion, which incorporates a backpropagation network, has the capability to capture the generalization
exhibited in human implicit learning. (Explicit processes,
as in the top level of Clarion, can also generalise, albeit
in a different way as discussed in Sun et al., 1995.)
It has also been observed that implicit processes are
more robust than explicit processes (Reber, 1989) in the
face of internal disorder and malfunctioning. For example, Hasher and Zacks (1979) found that encoding of
frequency information (an implicit process) was correctly performed by clinically depressed patients, even
though they could not perform explicit tasks consciously.
Warrington and Weiskrantz (1982) found that amnesics
were more successful in performing implicit rather than
explicit memory tasks. This effect is consistent with the
dual representation framework of Clarion: while the top
level employs localist representation and is thus more
vulnerable to malfunctioning, the bottom level utilises
a distributed representation that is more resistant to
damages and faults, as demonstrated amply in neural
network models.
3.4. Unconscious Initiation of Action
Existing evidence indicates that unconscious processes
often (if not always) initiate actions in skilled performance in advance of conscious awareness. Libet (1985)
reported that electrophysiological ‘‘readiness potentials’’ (RPs) always precede conscious initiation of an
act that is fully endogenous and voluntary. After a conscious intention to act appears, whether the action actually takes place or not can still be decided consciously
by a subject within a time period of somewhere between
100 and 200 ms. As suggested by Libet (1985), the role
of the conscious mind is not to initiate a specific course
of action, but to control and influence (implicitly selected
and initiated) actions.
This view is consistent with that of Willingham et al.
(1989) that the role of explicit processes is to influence
the implicit process but not to directly take control of
skill learning or performance. Willingham et al. (1989)
posited that the effects from the two processes are
‘‘superimposed’’ on each other, so that each type complement each other. Kelley and Jacoby (1993) also
insisted that an important function of the explicit mind
is to oppose, or counterbalance, the influence of the
implicit mind.
The aforementioned view is also consistent with
Learning, Action and Consciousness: A Hybrid Approach Toward Modelling Consciousness
voluminous data on the ever-present role of unconscious
processes in all kinds of tasks: lexical priming, semantic
processing, visual attention, unconscious perception and
so on (as discussed in Velmans, 1991; Marcel, 1983).
Velmans (1991) summarized evidence for the existence
of implicit (preconscious) analysis of input stimuli,
implicit processing of semantic content of word pairs
in ‘‘shadowing’’ experiments, and implicit processing
of bilingual messages in similar experimental settings.
Most of these findings support the possibility that unconscious processes start before conscious processes take
Clarion can readily accommodate this phenomenon,
in that the bottom level, which captures unconscious
processes, can work independently and initiate processing without the involvement of the top level. However,
after the initiation of action and, consequently, the activation of the relevant nodes, the corresponding representations at the top level can then be activated by the
bottom-up information flow (see Section 2). The activated explicit representations and their associated processes at the top level will in turn influence the implicit
processing at the bottom level, in way of modifying and
rectifying its outcomes and decisions (through the combination mechanism; see Section 2). Thus the implicit
processes, which directly control actions in skilled performance, incorporate the results of explicit processes
from the top level.
3.5. Synergy Between the Conscious/Unconscious
Why are there two separate (although interacting) systems, one conscious and the other unconscious? Based on
earlier discussions, we may hypothesize that each system
serves a unique function and the two are complementary
to each other; that is, there may be a synergy between the
conscious and the unconscious. Such a synergy may
show up by speeding up learning, improving learned
performance, and facilitating transfer of learned skills.
In terms of speeding up learning, Stanley et al. (1989)
reported that in a dynamic decision task (the sugar factory task), subjects’ learning improved if they were asked
to generate verbal instructions for other subjects along
the way during learning. Willingham et al. (1989) found
that those subjects who acquired full explicit knowledge
appeared to learn faster.
In terms of learned performance, Willingham et al.
(1989) found that subjects who verbalized while performing were able to attain a higher level of performance, because the requirement that they verbalised
their knowledge prompted the formation and utilization
of explicit knowledge. In high-level skill acquisition,
Gick and Holyoak (1980) found that good problem
solvers could better state rules that described their
actions in problem solving. This phenomenon may be
related to the self-explanation effect (Chi et al., 1989):
FIGURE 5. The Maze. The starting position is marked by ‘‘S’’ in
which the agent faces upward to the upper wall. The goal is
marked by ‘‘G’’.
subjects who explained the examples in textbooks more
completely did better in solving new problems. In all
these cases, it may well be the explication and the use
of explicit knowledge that helped the performance.
In terms of facilitating transfer of skills, Willingham
et al. (1989) obtained some suggestive evidence that
explicit declarative knowledge facilitated transfer of
skilled performance. It was reported that: (1) subjects
who acquired explicit knowledge in a training tasks
tended to have faster response times in a transfer task;
(2) these subjects were also more likely to acquire explicit knowledge in the transfer tasks. In high-level
domains, Ahlum-Heath and DiVesta (1986) also found
that the subjects who were required to verbalize while
solving the Tower of Hanoi problem performed better on
a transfer task after training.
Sun et al. (1995) reported some simulation experiments that demonstrated Clarion was able to exhibit
analogous synergy effects in learning, performance,
and transfer through the interaction of the two levels.
The simulation experiments were conducted in two
domains: maze running and navigation through minefields. The details of the experiments and complete
data can be found in Sun et al. (1995). Briefly, in the
maze task, a subject/agent was to find a unknown
target in the maze and had only rudimentary sensory
inputs regarding its immediate left, front and right side,
indicating whether there was a wall, an opening, or the
goal; the agent could move forward, turn to the left, or
turn to the right, until it found the target (see Figure 5). In
terms of speeding up learning, the differences in learning
speeds between Q-learning (which in Clarion captures
unconscious learning at the bottom level) and Clarion
(which includes both unconscious and conscious learning) were very significant. In terms of trained performance (measured by the average number of steps
needed to reach the target in one episode), Clarion outperformed pure Q-learning by large margins again. We
also compared the trained performance of the bottom
level of Clarion alone (after the training of the entire
system together, including Q-learning) with the performance of pure Q-learning, and discovered that the explication of skills not only improved the performance of the
whole system, but it also improved the Q-learning part
when included as part of Clarion. We also assessed the
performance of trained models in a new and larger maze.
Clarion transferred much better than Q-learning alone
R. Sun
Some theoretical issues concerning consciousness will be
discussed below in relation to the Clarion model.
4.1. Casual Efficacy of Consciousness
Is consciousness epiphenomenal as some have claimed?
To see the casual role of consciousness, it is useful to
examine the available cognitive. The following has been
observed from patients who suffered the loss of some of
the capacities of their consciousness due to brain
damages (Marcel, 1988):
FIGURE 6. Navigating through mines.
(in terms of number of steps to reach the goal in one
episode). Furthermore, by comparing the corresponding
performance of the top level, the bottom level and the
whole Clarion model, it was clear that often learned
rules alone (the top level) performed better in transfer
than the bottom level, as well as than the whole Clarion
model, which showed that explicit knowledge facilitated
In the simulated navigation task shown in Figure 6, the
subject/agent had to navigate an underwater vessel
through a minefield to reach a target location. The
agent received only local information from a number of
instruments, as shown in Figure 7. Using only this information, the agent decided (1) how to turn and (2) how
fast to move, and within an allotted time period, could
either (a) reach a target (which is a success), (b) hit a
mine (a failure), or (c) run out of fuel (a failure). In terms
of learning speeds, the superiority of Clarion over Qlearning was statistically significant. To access transfer,
after training models on 10-mine minefields, we assessed
performance of these models in new minefields that contained 30 mines. Clarion outperformed Q-learning. The
difference between the best transfer of Q-learning and
the best transfer of Clarion was statistically significant.
In sum, Clarion is able to replicate similar findings in
human conscious/unconscious learning.
They lost the ability to act on parts of the environment
that were not accessible to their explicit/conscious
mind (as in the case of blindsight patients who could
not grasp objects in the blind field).
They lost the ability to form an integrated self-concept
(as in the case of amnesiac patients).
They lost the ability to learn new complex tasks that
required explicit, verbal instructions.
They lost the ability to form explicit plans of actions
before acting on them.
These effects indicate certain casual efficacy of consciousness, and are consistent with Clarion. In the
model, these effects follow from the loss of the mechanisms in the top level of Clarion, such as backward
chaining reasoning (planning), verbal instruction taking,
and the use of explicit knowledge (regarding self and
objects in the world).
Through contrasting ‘‘aware’’ vs ‘‘unaware’’ conditions on their experiments with human subjects, Kelley &amp;
Jacoby (1993) showed that conscious awareness per se
had a distinct effect in subsequent behaviour. The two
different conditions produced two different causal attributions in the subjects: one to true causes (in the
‘‘aware’’ condition) and the other to spurious causes
(in the ‘‘unaware’’ condition; see Nisbett &amp; Wilson,
1977 for causal attribution as error-prone, post hoc interpretation); consequently, different causal attributions
led to different actions on the part of the subjects
making the attributions. This kind of causal role in consciousness is consistent with that of the top level of
Clarion, which shares the responsibility of controlling
actions using explicit knowledge. A second mechanism
on top of unconscious processes can offer counterbalance, and thus can have clear survival values to the
agent possessing it.
4.2. Human Intuition
FIGURE 7. The navigation input. The display at the upper left
corner is the fuel gauge; the vertical one it the upper right corner
is the range gauge; the round one in the middle is the bearing
gauge; the 7 sonar gauges are at the bottom.
While the top level of Clarion captures conscious processes, the bottom level may capture intuition to some
extent (as a form of skill): This level has the characteristics of being implicit, inaccessible, and holistic, which
are also characteristics of human intuition (James, 1890;
Dreyfus &amp; Dreyfus, 1987). According to Smolensky
Learning, Action and Consciousness: A Hybrid Approach Toward Modelling Consciousness
(1988), as mentioned before, intuition and skill are not
expressible in linguistic forms and constitute a different
kind of capacity, reflecting ‘‘subsymbolic’’ processing.
Dreyfus &amp; Dreyfus (1987) suggested that intuition is
manifested in the fluent, holistic and situation sensitive
way of dealing with the world, unique to humans and not
captured by conventional symbolic computation. These
identified characteristics can be found in the bottom level
of Clarion to some extent.
It was hypothesised by Reber (1989) that human intuition may be the direct result of implicit, unconscious
learning: Through the gradual process of implicit learning, ‘‘tacit’’ (implicit) representations emerge that capture environmental regularities and are used in direct
coping with the world (without the involvement of any
introspective process). Intuition is the end product of this
process of unconscious and bottom-up learning (Reber,
1989). Bowers et al. (1990) also suggested that intuition
is the outcome of an unconscious, implicit process
(which later becomes explicit due to the emergence of
a coherent pattern of activation) in the context of discovery. Clarion indeed uses implicit learning to develop
tacit (implicit) representations in the bottom level and
thus acquires intuition in the sense identified above.
4.3. Two Types of Consciousness
We can also examine the two levels of Clarion using
the perspective of phenomenological philosophy.
Heidegger (1927) emphasised a basic mode of existence,
that is, the immediate comportment with the world.
Normally, when going about its daily business, an
agent is not thematically conscious of routine activities.
Everyday routine activities are mostly made up of nondeliberate ‘‘primordial’’ coping. For example, in normal
perception, we are usually not having thematic experience of the world (Dreyfus, 1992). An agent’s ‘‘openness
onto the world’’ is fundamental and makes possible the
secondary experience of deliberate looking or trying to
see (Dreyfus, 1992). Comportment is prior to any
(explicit) belief, (explicit) knowledge, or (explicit)
representation; it is a direct connection between an
agent and its existential context. It is comportment with
the world that is in fact a more fundamental kind of
consciousness, according to Heidegger, and in this
view, consciousness is non-representational (i.e. without
explicit representation).
This is in contrast with the notion of ‘‘thematic’’ consciousness, which involves a focused, meditated awareness of the object of consciousness (akin to the common
notion of consciousness). Thematic consciousness is
representational because it treats awareness itself as an
object (see also Clark &amp; Karmiloff-Smith, 1993). As has
been argued extensively by Heidegger (1927), thematic
consciousness can indeed arise, but it presupposes a
nonthematic, nondeliberate, direct, and on-going way
of dealing with the world (i.e. comportment); for direct
comportment with the world is a necessary means
for coping with a complex world that exhibits complex
regularities. Explicit representations are derived from
direct comportment with the world. Derived representation and thematic consciousness come into play, e.g.
during breakdown in which established routines get
disrupted and thus alternative ways are necessary (see
also Sun, 1994, Chapter 8). In the light of the above,
the distinction between the two levels in Clarion can
be corresponded roughly to the distinction between comportment and thematic consciousness. Specifically, the
bottom level captures the implicit and routine activities
and embodies ‘‘comportment’’. This is because the
bottom level embodies skills resulting from and used
for directly coping with the world and involves distributed representation, which is hence unable to present
explicit traces of its processes (Smolensky, 1988). However, some events (e.g. certain implicit processes or
explicit verbal inputs; Velmans, 1991) may lead to activation of corresponding explicit representations and processes at the top level and therefore lead to (thematic)
conscious awareness. This is because at the top level
explicit/localist representation is used, which makes it
possible to articulate the content that is present and
trace the processes as they are occurring (Sun, 1994,
Chapter 2). Furthermore, due to the fact that the top
level of Clarion is derived from, mediated by, and
grounded in the bottom level, which has direct interactions with the external world and develops bottom-up
from such interactions, (thematic) consciousness is
clearly grounded, in this model as in humans, in the
interaction between the agent and the external world.
4.4. Qualia
But what about qualia? Qualia refer to the phenomenal
quality of conscious experience. Block (1994) distinguishes access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness, whereby access consciousness refers to the
utilization of the content of consciousness while phenomenal consciousness refers to the subjective feel of
conscious experience. Although it has been a major difficulty to understand phenomenal consciousness/qualia
(‘‘the hard problem’’; Chalmers, 1992), some speculations may be made here in relation to Clarion: qualia
(phenomenal consciousness) may be accounted for by
the totality of a multi-modal (see the next section regarding modalities), multi-level organization and its total
collective states, which are of extremely high complexity
involving external perception (of many modalities),
internal perception, action decision making, explicit
concepts, etc. The complexity of this organisation may
explain the difficulty (or impossibility) of describing
phenomenal qualities (qualia) of consciousness, which
is the most striking feature of phenomenal consciousness
(as argued by Nagel, 1974). In this approach, a particular
kind of phenomenal quality may be accounted for by a
particular region of total-state space (involving the
totality of all the aforementioned aspects) or the manifold
as termed by Van Gulick (1993), which gives rise to the
sense of what something is like (Nagel, 1974). Clearly,
such regions depend on particular functional organizations of modules and levels (Chalmers, 1992) that
support such a space of total-states. Qualia are thus
(partially) the result of functional organisations (architectures) of cognitive apparatuses. In Clarion, qualia
are (partially) the result of the two-level organization,
on top of all the detailed, intricate structures involved
in various fine-grained modalities (the detail of which
is not covered here). Equally important, such regions
arise from the interaction of the agent and the world, as
the consciousness is grounded in learning, action, and the
world in which the agent exists. Thus, phenomenal consciousness is in general derived from a complex integrative organisation of cognitive apparatuses that develop as
a result of the interaction between the agent and the
world. This is true both in an ontological and in an ontogenetic sense. Note that, though access consciousness
has a clear causal role in behaviour (as discussed earlier),
phenomenal consciousness is less clear in this regard
(Block, 1994).
4.5. Functionalism
An important question regarding consciousness is
whether there is a physical basis for consciousness
and what it is. It is pretty much agreed upon among
contemporary philosophers that there is indeed a
physical basis but they disagree on what constitutes
that physical basis. In the Clarion model, we basically
stipulate that the physical basis of consciousness is made
up of the detailed architecture, the fine-grained functional organisation (e.g. the two-level modular framework with detailed sensory modality structures at a
very fine level), of one’s cognitive apparatus, in interaction with one’s world. The distance between the physical and the phenomenological/psychological is so great
that intermediate levels (functional levels) are necessary
for studying cognition, and this is especially true in the
case of studying consciousness. The present approach
is a form of fine grained functionalism (Chalmers,
1992), which states that consciousness is invariant
across systems with the same functional organization at
a sufficiently fine-grained level (i.e. the principle of
organizational invariance), as argued for elegantly by
Chalmers (1992). It is a weak form of functionalism, in
that it is not just causal connections between functional
states that are important, but also the level at which we
identify functional states. This approach is also interactionalism in the sense that the interaction of internal
and external systems (the agent and its world), on the
basis of internal (developing) fine-grained functional
organizations, is crucial in giving rise to conscious
experience (Heidegger, 1927).
R. Sun
The following comparisons will further explicate and
accentuate the Clarion model in accounting for issues
of consciousness. Clarion captures important features
of existing models. The comparisons reveal that Clarion has the potential to account for the integration of
sensory modalities, global consistency, and the unity of
First we can compare Clarion with the model of
Baars (1988) (see Figure 8), in which a large number
of specialist processors perform unconscious processing
and a global workspace coordinates their activities
through global broadcasting to achieve consistency and
thus conscious experience. The model bears some resemblance to Clarion, in that unconscious specialist processors in that model can be roughly equated to modules
in the bottom level of Clarion, and the global workplace
may be roughly captured by the top level, which
‘‘synthesizes’’ the bottom level modules and is essential
in conscious processing. One difference is that Clarion
does not emphasise as much internal consistency
(Marcel, 1983): it is believed to be limited as a phenomenon in consciousness and may have only limited roles in
the emergence of consciousness. Global broadcasting
in Baars’ model (Baars, 1988; Revonsuo, 1993) can be
viewed as the integration of the two levels of representations (with the bottom-level representations dispersed
within multiple modules) in Clarion, which does produce somewhat consistent outcomes (which lead to the
unity of consciousness; Baars, 1988; Marcel, 1983; more
on this later).
We can also compare Clarion with the model of
Schacter (1990) (see Figure 9), which is based on
neurophysiological findings of the dissociation of different types of knowledge in brain damaged patients as
mentioned earlier. It is similar to Clarion, in that it
includes a number of ‘‘knowledge modules’’ that perform specialized and unconscious processing (analogous
to bottom-level modules in Clarion) and send their
FIGURE 8. Baars’ model of consciousness.
Learning, Action and Consciousness: A Hybrid Approach Toward Modelling Consciousness
FIGURE 9. Schacter’s model of consciousness.
outcomes to a ‘‘conscious awareness system’’ (analogous to the top level in Clarion), which gives rise to
conscious awareness. Schacter’s explanation of some
disorders (e.g. the loss of short-term memory or explicit
learning abilities, as mentioned earlier) is that certain
brain damages result in the disconnection of some of
the modules from the conscious awareness system,
which leads to their inaccessibility to consciousness.
An alternative explanation offered by Clarion is that
disorders may not be due to disconnected modules, but
the loss of some explicit learning and performance
mechanisms at the top level (resulting from brain
damages etc.).
Finally, we can examine Damasio’s neuroanatomically motivated model (Damasio, 1994; Revonsuo,
1993). The model (see Figure 10) hypothesised the
existence of many ‘‘sensory convergence zones’’ that
integrated information from individual sensory modalities through forward and backward synaptic connections
and the resulting reverberations of activations, without
the need for a central location for information storage
and comparisons; it also hypothesised the global
‘‘multi-modal convergence zone’’, which integrated
information across modalities also through reverberation
FIGURE 10. Damasio’s model of consciousness.
via recurrent connections. In Clarion, different sensory
convergence zones may be roughly captured by bottomlevel modules, each of which takes care of sensory inputs
of one modality (at a properly fine level), and the role of
the global multi-modal convergence zone (similar to the
‘‘global workspace’’ in a way) may be played by the top
level of Clarion, which has the ultimate responsibility
for integrating information (and serves as ‘‘conscious
awareness system’’). The widely recognised role of
reverberation (Damasio, 1994; Taylor, 1994) may be
captured in Clarion through using recurrent connections within modules at the bottom level and through
multiple top-down and bottom-up information flows
across the two levels, which lead to the unity of consciousness that is the synthesis and integration of all
the information present (Marcel, 1983; Baars, 1988).
This paper presented a hybrid neural network model for
learning that incorporated the distinction of declarative
and procedural knowledge, and succeeded to some extent
in accounting for the distinction of the conscious and
the unconscious (or the explicit and the implicit). More
specifically, the Clarion model applied neural network
and machine learning techniques to explain complex
human learning and consciousness in normal human
subjects. It accounted for phenomena in psychological
literature on learning and development in terms of the
two levels in the model and their associated mechanisms.
The model readily accommodated important features of
existing models of consciousness. We also had something to say about theoretical issues such as qualia and
intuition on the basis of the model, which helped clarify
complex issues in a tangible way. The key issue for
future research is scaling up the model by incorporating
a variety of sensory information and dealing with complex environments, in order to allow rudimentary forms
of consciousness to emerge, because, I believe, complexity is a necessary condition for consciousness.
R. Sun
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