Neural networks as a path to self-awareness

Abstract

There has been important new cross-disciplinary work using neural network mathematics to unify key issues in engineering, technology, psychology and neuroscience - and many opportunities to create a discrete revolution in science by pushing this work further. This strain of research has a natural link to clinical and subjective human experience - the “first person science” of the mind. This paper discusses why and how, and gives several examples of links between neural network models and key phenomena in human experience, such as Freud's “psychic energy,” the role of traumatic experience, the interpretation of dreams and creativity and the cultivation of human potential and sanity in general, and the biological foundations of language.