A model for a cognitive machine is presented and pertinent issues of machine cognition are discussed in the framework of this model. This machine is designed to reproduce folk psychology properties of consciousness, which are deemed to be useful as such even if they were not accurate descriptions of "real consciousness." This model utilizes neural signals as transparent carriers of information; the material machinery remains hidden from the system and only the actual meanings matter. The neural signals operate as distributed representations in a massively parallel perceptual architecture. This architecture supports the flow of inner speech and imagery. The system is controlled by motivational factors that arise from hard-wired and learned emotional values. The cognitive machine is supposed to have a body with possibilities for physical action. These actions are executed lucidly as responses to imagination or perceived environment, without numeric computations. Consciousness in the machine is seen as cooperative states between the numerous modalities; this leads to a large number of cross-associations and hence to the possibility to report the situation to the machine itself and to others in various ways and also remember it for a while; the past will be connected to the present in "a stream of consciousness."
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