A Solution to the Binding Problem

Abstract

Visual information about an object is widely distributed over the cortex. The problem of how this information gets reassembled in consciousness is the “binding problem”. It is assumed in this paper that consciousness reads the distributed information as a laser reads a barcode; and that this solves the binding problem without resorting to oscillations, or synchronous signals, or any other form of mechanical association. Cortical distributions are made intelligible by consciousness that learns from childhood to recognize cortical arrays of single objects and project them onto the external world. An example shows how consciousness exercises its influence in the case of a well-known line drawing. When an object is constructed by consciousness there is no guarantee that the resulting image will be anything like the original object of observation. However, there is reason to believe that most of the visual images of our surroundings reflect real properties of those surroundings. These images have a constancy about them that is not always conveyed by the sensory input, but consistency in the external world can be learned by consciousness that is able to override the incongruities of the senses.