The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A Software Agent Model of Consciousness
Abstract
Baars (1988, 1997) has proposed a psychological theory of consciousness, called global workspace theory. The present study describes a software agent implementation of that theory, called "Conscious" Mattie (CMattie). CMattie operates in a clerical domain from within a UNIX operating system, sending messages and interpreting messages in natural language that organize seminars at a university. CMattie fleshes out global workspace theory with a detailed computational model that integrates contemporary architectures in cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Baars (1997) lists the psychological "facts that any complete theory of consciousness must explain" in his appendix to In the Theater of Consciousness; global workspace theory was designed to explain these "facts." The present article discusses how the design of CMattie accounts for these facts and thereby the extent to which it implements global workspace theory.
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Compared to other scientific theories of consciousness, many more proposals have been made for the implementation of GWT in artificial systems.
“Compared to other scientific theories of consciousness, many more proposals have been made for the implementation of GWT in artificial systems (e.g.Franklin & Graesser 1999, Shanahan 2006, Bao et al. 2020).”
From Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness (2023) · cites this paper as Franklin & Graesser 1999
Citations
Cites
The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (2017) · doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262529365.001.0001 · Cited by 2,449
Is It an agent, or just a program?: A taxonomy for autonomous agents
Franklin, S., & Graesser, A. (1997) · Lecture Notes in Computer Science · doi:10.1007/bfb0013570 · Cited by 2,286
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Research works printed but not linked: 16
- Baddeley, 1992, Working memory, Science, 255, 556, 10.1126/science.1736359 · DOI · Paper page
- Ericsson, 1980, Verbal reports as data, Psychological Review, 87, 215, 10.1037/0033-295X.87.3.215 · DOI
- Franklin, 1997, Autonomous agents as embodied AI, Cybernetics and Systems, 28, 499, 10.1080/019697297126029 · DOI
- Franklin, 1997, Global workspace agents, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4, 234
- Franklin, S, Graesser, A, Olde, B, Song, H, &, Negatu, A. 1996, Virtual Mattie—An intelligent clerical agent. Paper presented at AAAI Fall Shymposium on Embodied AI.
- Graesser, 1991, Question answering in the context of stories, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 120, 254, 10.1037/0096-3445.120.3.254 · DOI
- Graesser, 1994, Constructing inferences during narrative comprehension, Psychological Review, 101, 371, 10.1037/0033-295X.101.3.371 · DOI
- Jackson, J. V. 1987, July, Idea for a mind, SIGGART Newsletter,, No. 181 (pp, 23, – 26, ). · DOI
- Leung, 1988, Fuzzy concepts in expert systems, Computer, 21, 43, 10.1109/2.14346 · DOI
- Maes, 1990, How to do the right thing, Connection Science, 1, 3
- Maes, P. 1992, Learning behavior networks from experience, Proceedings of the first european conference on artificial life,, Paris, December 1991, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Maturana, 1975, The organization of the living: A theory of the living organization, International Journal of Man–Machine Studies, 7, 313, 10.1016/S0020-7373(75)80015-0 · DOI
- McCauley, T. L, &, Franklin, S. 1998, An architecture for emotion. Paper presented at AAAI Fall Symposium on Emotional and Intelligent: The Tangled Knot of Cognition.
- Ramamurthy, U, Franklin, S, &, Negatu, A. 1998, Learning concepts in software agents. From animals to animats IV, Proceedings of SAB'98, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (pp, 372, – 377, ). · DOI
- Zhang, Z, Franklin, S, Olde, B, Wan, Y, &, Graesser, A. 1998a, Natural language sensing for autonomous agents. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Joint Symposium on Intelligence and Systems (pp, 374, – 381, ). · DOI
- Zhang, Z, Franklin, S, &, Dasgupta, D. 1998b, Metacognition in software agents using classifer systems. In Proceedings of the AAAI 98, (, 82, – 88, ).
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness
Butlin, P., Long, R., Elmoznino, E., Bengio, Y., Birch, J., Constant, A., Deane, G., Fleming, S. M., Frith, C., Ji, X., et al. (2023) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2308.08708 · Cited by 196
A Case for AI Consciousness: Language Agents and Global Workspace Theory
Goldstein, S., & Kirk-Giannini, C. D. (2024) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2410.11407 · Cited by 4
“Notable examples include CMattie (Franklin and Graesser 1999), a simple system designed to schedule seminars at a university by sending and reading messages in natural language, its successor system IDA (Franklin 2003), and the robotic system designed by Shanahan (2006).”
Metadata
- Authors
- Franklin, S., & Graesser, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Memphis (US)
- Corresponding author
- Franklin, Stan
- ORCID
- Franklin, Stan
- Venue
- Consciousness and Cognition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 1999-09
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 285-301
- ISSN
- 1053-8100 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1989576180
- Cited by
- 102
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 18 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 4 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 1 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 6.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Consciousness and Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Naval Research
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Psychiatry, Mental Health, Neuroscience
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Cognitive Computing and Networks
- Keywords
- global workspace theory, consciousness, software agents, computational models of consciousness, UNIX operating system, clerical work
- MeSH terms
- Cognition, Consciousness, Humans, Memory, Problem Solving, Psychological Theory, Software, Neural Networks, Computer
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