"Consciousness does not concern the present, but hte past: it has to do with how we think about the records of our recent thoughts." How can thinking about thoughts be possible at all? Minsky's move is to have agents sensitive to events inside the brain.
Minsky then procceds to argue for a limited capacity of consciousness, which produces a serial stream of consciousness. Why can't we reflect on the present? Because the present is not stable: "It is virtually impossible to speak of the shapes of things that change into something else each time we try to think of them. And that's what happens when we try to think about our present thoughts -- since each such thought must change our mental state."
(NB: This notion of consciousness, i.e., thinking about thoughts, reminds me directly of Minsky's earlier discussion of B-brains.)
Pearl Street | Society Of Mind Home Page | Dawson Home Page |