@misc{cogprints1413,
          volume = {76},
           title = {The Disunity of Consciousness},
          author = {Gerard O'Brien and Jon Opie},
            year = {1998},
           pages = {378--395},
         journal = {The Australasian Journal of Philosophy},
        keywords = {connectionism, philosophy of mind, phenomenal consciousness, single-track theory of consciousness, multi-track theory of consciousness},
             url = {http://cogprints.org/1413/},
        abstract = {It is commonplace for both philosophers and cognitive scientists to express their allegiance to the
"unity of consciousness". This is the claim that a subject?s phenomenal consciousness, at any one
moment in time, is a single thing. This view has had a major influence on computational theories
of consciousness. In particular, what we call single-track theories dominate the literature,
theories which contend that our conscious experience is the result of a single consciousness-making
process or mechanism in the brain. We argue that the orthodox view is quite wrong:
phenomenal experience is not a unity, in the sense of being a single thing at each instant. It is a
multiplicity, an aggregate of phenomenal elements, each of which is the product of a distinct
consciousness-making mechanism in the brain. Consequently, cognitive science is in need of a
multi-track theory of consciousness; a computational model that acknowledges both the
manifold nature of experience, and its distributed neural basis.
}
}

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