What has consciousness to do with explicit representations and stable activation vectors?

To assess O'Brien & Opie`s connectionist vehicle theory of consciousness. ( 1) it is not enough to point to the methodological weakness of certain expe riments (dichotic listening, etc.). Successful cognitive theories postulati ng explicit unconscious representations have to be taken into account as we ll. (2) The distinction between vehicle and process theories cannot be draw n in the way envisaged by the authors because a representation's explicitne ss depends not only on its structural but also on its processing properties . The stability of an activation vector is not very suitable for implementi ng the explicitness of a representation.