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 experiments (dichotic listening, etc.). Successful cognitive theories postulating explicit unconscious representations have to be taken into account as well. (2) The distinction between vehicle and process theories cannot be drawn in the way envisaged by the authors because a representation's explicitness depends not only on its structural but also on its processing properties. The stability of an activation vector is not very suitable for implementing the explicitness of a representation.