The Blank Slate

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

For the past month, in between schoolwork and regular work, I've been working my way through Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate. Its thesis, broadly speaking, is laid out int he preface:

This book is about the moral, emotional, and political colorings of the concept of human nature in modern life. I will retrace the history that led people to see human nature as a dangerous idea, and I will try to unsnral the moral and political rat's nests that ahve entangled the idea along the way. Though no book on human nature can hope to be uncontroversial, I did not write it to be yet another "explosive" book, as dust jackets tend to say. I am not, as many people assume, countering an extreme "nurture" position with an extreme "nature" position, with the truth lying somewhere in between. In some cases, an extreme evnironmentalist explanation is correct: which language you speak is an obvious example, and differences among races and ethnic groups in test scores may be another. In other cases, such as certain inherited neurological disorders, an extreme hereditarian explanation is correct. In most cases the correct explanation will invoke a complex interaction between heredity and environment: culture is crucial, but culture could not exist without mental faculties that allow humans to create and learn culture to begin with. My goal in this book is not to argue that genes are everything and culture is nothing--no one believes that--but to explore why the extreme position (that culture is everything) is so often seen as moderate, and the moderate position is seen as extreme
(Hopefully I retyped that without too many errors).

At any rate, I'm finding the book's central thesis--that, as he later states, heritability accounts for about 40-50% of personality traits--to be extremely persuasive and somewhat shocking; in some ways, I suspect this book is going to change my understanding of the world about as much as, a decade ago, Isaiah Berlin's The Crooked Timber of Humanity did.

At the same time, much as with Berlin's book, I'm disturbed by some of the details. Pinker dismisses constructivism in mathematics education (p222) in a manner that betrays an unfamiliarity with the philosophy--or, to be scrupulous, an unfamiliarity with the approach as it was taught to me by an adherent. He talks about the "version of leftism known as political correctness" (p. 287), as if this were a political movement instead of an epithet.

And, most trivially but most tellingly, he refers to Public Enemy as a "gangsta rap group" (p 329). Sure, this is an easy mistake to make for someone unfamiliar with rap. However, he's talking about their song 911 is a joke (http://www.lyricsdepot.com/public-enemy/911-is-a-joke.html), and he's using it as evidence for his claim that "Inner-city African Americans" have developed "a culture of honor," that is, a culture in which small slights are punished with great violence. He claims that when there is no strong police body to whom a people can appeal when a wrong is done to them, such "cultures of honor" naturally arise as a means of self-protection. Calling Public Enemy gangsta rappers feeds into that theory.

The problem, of course, is that they're not. Indeed, from my (admittedly limited) understanding of their work, they are politically active and politically militant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Enemy). Their solution to the joke of 911 wasn't to strap on weapons and kill motherfuckers who dissed them; their solution to the joke of 911 was to organize, publicize the injustices, and demand that the system be changed. In other words, their approach was to render any "culture of honor" obsolete.

I don't know for sure that acknowledging Public Enemy's true colors would have undermined his point; the idea behind the culture of honor seems reasonable to me, and draws on Hobbes and other fairly reputable philosophers. Still, I am bothered by the little inaccuracies in the book: it makes me wonder what else he got wrong, what he may have distorted in areas with which I'm less familiar.

At any rate, I'm almost done with the book (having just finished the chapter that concludes that parental upbringing, when not actively abusive, accounts for between 0-10% of the variance in personality of adults), and I thought it'd be interesting to discuss his thesis on the boards, or to discuss the book if others have read it. I've read several reviews of it, almost all of which were glowing (there was one in The Guardian, I think, that was less enthusiastic, but not specific in its criticisms); if anyone knows of reviews that specifically and intelligently trash it, I'd like to read those as well.

Daniel

[Digital Stimulus]

It's always surprising to me that the 100% nurture (cultural/societal/whatever) position is even considered seriously. When I skimmed through Blank Slate years ago, it struck me as being so obvious -- akin to the gradual vs. punctuated evolution arguments. The fact that Pinker even had to make the argument astounded me. It would be so nice if the real world was so simple that anything could be 100% one way or the other...

At any rate, my big problem with Pinker is (or was, possibly, as I've not kept up with his research) that he always seemed to take a hardline Chomskian position on the innateness of language (and I readily admit that I have only a shallow grasp of his actual position; perhaps I'm not doing it justice). I'd think that the same general stance -- that is, that language formation is at best partially innate -- is most accurate. And I always read him as dissing connectionist models, which is just misguided, IMHO.

At any rate, I think if you're looking for critiques, you might want to start by googling "pinker fodor" -- you'll come up with a wealth of back and forth analysis, although I think it's more to do with Pinker's How the Mind Works and Fodor's The Mind Doesn't Work That Way. That should get you in deep (and quick), while covering some more recent work, albeit in a rather focussed area.

[Richard Parker]

I believe the standard critique of Pinker is that he's a bit of an unreformed Sapir-Whorfian. Whorf is the guy who claimed that the Inuit experience reality differently because they have so many words for snow. His premise and his conclusion have both been pretty discredited. The idea that language determines reality exists now only in the realm of "What the Bleep Do We Know?"-style pseudoscience. Surely language plays some part, but not in the deterministic way that Pinker seems to suggest (at least in his other books).

Digital Stimulus, I think that there are many intellectual circles that still think of human nature as entirely malleable. Certainly the more utopian anarchists and socialists believe that the structure of society is what creates greed and social problems, instead of human nature. I guess you wouldn't call them mainstream, but I think their ideas still carry a lot of weight even in the mainstream left.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I believe the standard critique of Pinker is that he's a bit of an unreformed Sapir-Whorfian.
Really? I'm pretty sure you're wrong on this; I believe I learned about Whorf from The Language Instinct, where Pinker roundly mocked him. I never got the impression that he thinks language determines reality. On the contrary, I believe his argument is precisely the opposite: the reality [of our genes] determines the structure of our language.

Digital Stimulus, the pointer to Fodor was great (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n02/fodo01_.html). Alas, I'm not sure I understand Fodor's objection entirely:

We know - anyhow we think that we do - a lot about ourselves that doesn't seem to square with the theory that our minds are adaptations for spreading our genes.
What I wonder is, what else could account for our minds, if you accept natural selection? I can understand debating which traits of our personalities are innate (and therefore evolved, and therefore adaptive traits) and which traits are cultural (and may therefore not be adaptive for us personally); but if you believe that a trait is genetically determined, it's gotta be adaptive. Unless you think the selfish gene model is literal--that the selfish gene is some sort of Lovecraftian elder god determining our destiny--then it seems an unremarkable step from saying a trait is heritable to speculating on what adaptive purpose the trait serves.

Daniel

[Richard Parker]

Really? I'm pretty sure you're wrong on this; I believe I learned about Whorf from The Language Instinct, where Pinker roundly mocked him. I never got the impression that he thinks language determines reality. On the contrary, I believe his argument is precisely the opposite: the reality [of our genes] determines the structure of our language.
l

Wow, yeah, you're right. I had it exactly backwards. Time to read "The Language Instinct" again. (I wonder who I was thinking of).

[Digital Stimulus]

Digital Stimulus, I think that there are many intellectual circles that still think of human nature as entirely malleable.
Yeah, it truly amazes me. As the frog found out, sometimes a scorpion does what it does just because it's a scorpion.
What I wonder is, what else could account for our minds, if you accept natural selection?
Well, it's very gratifying that you found the suggestion useful.

I have to put a disclaimer on this for a few reasons; first, Fodor's book is skimpy and (IMHO) tries to do more work than it has the muscle to do, and second, I'm not well enough versed in philosophy of mind to give an accurate critique, much less an accurate summary. One thing to note about Fodor that, it seems to me, a lot of people miss, is that he doesn't claim to have an answer, but rather points out the paucity of explanatory power of claims being made. For instance, from what I understood of The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, the following is Fodor's key objection:
But, as far as anyone knows, relevance, strength, simplicity, centrality and the like are properties, not of single sentences, but of whole belief systems; and there's no reason at all to suppose that such global properties of belief systems are syntactic...

...By definition, modular problem-solving works with less than all the information that a creature knows....eventually the mind has to integrate the results of all those modular computations and I don't see how there could be a module for doing that.
My understanding (at least of the first part of the linked article) is that Fodor finds the "massively modular mind" (MMM) logically untenable, due to the need for "something" that oversees the whole shebang. In my mind, he's making the point that if the mind is like a Prolog system -- a set of logical facts and predicates that are syntactic in nature -- there is no mechanism that can possibly perform the requisite computation to detect (in)consistency. In other words, given the vast set of facts each of us possess, how can we possibly (using his example from the article) know that our visual perception of the size of the moon is flat-out wrong?

As to the evolution objection, your question I quoted above sums it up exactly. What it comes down to is that we have no frickin' idea how the mind relates to the brain. What kind of science is it to claim that evolution is responsible for it with zero evidence that that's the case (not to mention even a single workable hypothesis)? As he says:
Adaptationists say about the phylogeny of cognition that it's a choice between Darwin and God and they like to parade as scientifically tough-minded about which one of these you should pick. But hat misstates the alternatives, s don't let yourself be bullied.
Then, you put the two together and you get this:
And it really would be a miracle if all those details got into brains via a relative small, fortuitous alteration of the neurology. To put it the other way around, if adaptationism isn't true in psychology, it must be that what makes our minds so clever is something pretty general; something about their global structure.
But the assumed local adaptation cannot be responsible for global properties/qualities. And I really liked the way he laid into evolutionary psychology thus:
Psychological Darwinism is a kind of conspiracy theory; that is, it explains behaviour by imputing an interest (viz in the proliferation of the genome) that the agent of the behaviour does not acknowledge....The literature of Psychological Darwinism is full of what appear to be fallacies of rationalisation: arguments where the evidence offered that an interest in Y is the motive for a creature's behaviour is primarily that an interest in Y would rationalise the behaviour if it were the creature's motive.
As I read it, he's just pointing out that Pinker and others are falling victim to the same pitfalls and fallacies as previous evolutionary theorists (for example, see eugenics or Lamarkian inheritance).

Thanks for pointing that article out to me; it was pretty straight forward and succinct. It also supplied some thinking fodder; I don't really agree with Fodor's objections about MMM. I don't see his issue with it, as I think the mechanism that allows one to reflect on one's own percepts/concepts would be sufficient to do that work. But then, I also fall victim to not having an actual hypothesis as to how that would work (or even arise), so my opinion is just as bad (or good?) as another.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I have to put a disclaimer on this for a few reasons; first, Fodor's book is skimpy and (IMHO) tries to do more work than it has the muscle to do, and second, I'm not well enough versed in philosophy of mind to give an accurate critique, much less an accurate summary. One thing to note about Fodor that, it seems to me, a lot of people miss, is that he doesn't claim to have an answer, but rather points out the paucity of explanatory power of claims being made. For instance, from what I understood of The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, the following is Fodor's key objection:
I should put in my own disclaimer: I find Fodor's writing to be extremely dense, and it's very possible that I'm missing some of his central point, despite having read back and forth over that review a few times.

That said, I am not sure I agree that he successfully points out problems with the theory. As I see it, his objections fall into several areas:
1) The Conspiracy Problem. How can we say that the brain evolved (for example) friendship as a way of increasing survival, when it's equally possible that friendships developed for other reasons? Here I think he's taking the "selfish gene" metaphor overliterally. If an inclination toward friendship increases the likelihood of one's children surviving to reproduce, then that inclination will spread throughout the species. There's no motive behind the genes, just a random mutation in the gene that is selected for. True, there might be some more immediate reason that such an inclination would lead to survival, and the method by which it increases survival is up for debate, but the idea that such an inclination leads to survival is demonstrated by the fact that it's part of our inheritance. Bringing motive into the picture confuses things unnecessarily.
2) There's No There There problem. He doesn't understand how we could evaluate the meaning of a sentence (among other things). While I don't understand that either, I'm not sure that shows a shortcoming in the theory; it may equally show a shortcoming in my understanding of the theory, or a shortcoming in everyone's understanding of the specifics.

As to the evolution objection, your question I quoted above sums it up exactly. What it comes down to is that we have no frickin' idea how the mind relates to the brain.
It seems to me that we do have a frickin' idea, based on such factors as open-brain surgery and brain injuries. When a certain part of the brain is severe, people can recognize objects but not name them; when another part of the brain is touched, people experience old memories very vividly; when a third part of the brain is destroyed, people's ability to evaluate choices and exercise self-control suffers badly. Don't such types of research give us pretty good ideas of how brain tissue and consciousness intersect?

What kind of science is it to claim that evolution is responsible for it with zero evidence that that's the case (not to mention even a single workable hypothesis)?
Well, science is the best explanation at any given moment, right? Nobody to the best of my knowledge has either falsified the idea that the brain evolved, or suggested a theory that is more "elegant."

This discussion is kind of at the limits of my understanding of this science: it's something I read about almost purely on a sporadic, hobbyist basis. My apologies in advance for any newbie errors I make in it!

Daniel

[Digital Stimulus]

Pshew, busy day. Sorry about the delay, and sorry that my mind isn't really in this right now.
That said, I am not sure I agree that he successfully points out problems with the theory.
I'm not sure he does either. While I think that article you linked to was straightforward and succinct, I have a similar complaint with it as I do about The Mind Doesn't Work That Way (from here on out, TMDWTW, if I want to refer to it). That is, it sounds like he's raising valid points, but for the life of me, I can't figure out the real meat of the argument.

It seems to me that some of his objections are the same as debates among gene vs. individual vs. population evolution. I think "demonstrated" is too strong a word to use as you do, but I also have reservations about accepting his objection. I just don't have a firm enough grasp on it to decide.
He doesn't understand how we could evaluate the meaning of a sentence (among other things). While I don't understand that either, I'm not sure that shows a shortcoming in the theory; it may equally show a shortcoming in my understanding of the theory, or a shortcoming in everyone's understanding of the specifics.
I think that's the problem -- there are no specifics. I was attending a philosophy of mind colloqium a year or so ago, and one of the people quoted him as saying that computationalism is the best theory we've got (and may well prove correct), but that he thinks it's not adequate to give a deep explanation.

And it seems to me that there really is a serious problem with "mind as computer" -- syntax matching, the foundation of Turing machines (and thus all of the science of computing), is a pretty clunky mechanism to cover what it appears our minds can do. Personally, I think it'll do; but lordy, lordy, I have no real substance for that cherished belief o' mine.
It seems to me that we do have a frickin' idea, based on such factors as open-brain surgery and brain injuries....Don't such types of research give us pretty good ideas of how brain tissue and consciousness intersect?
Sorry, I was overstating for effect. Although, I would point out that we don't really have a well developed idea of the "intersection". I mean, yeah, we can say that area X of the brain is usually responsible for condition or ability Y. But honestly, we really have little idea about how consciousness arises from brain matter. If we did, I'd most likely be out of a job (AI researcher).
Well, science is the best explanation at any given moment, right? Nobody to the best of my knowledge has either falsified the idea that the brain evolved, or suggested a theory that is more "elegant."
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to scrap with you. I suppose one might characterize science that way -- it certainly makes it easier to defend the philosophical status of science as the best truth we have. Somehow, though, I expect more. To my knowledge, we're still at such a basic stage that to call anything a full-fledged "theory" is kind of misleading.

Perhaps it's just semantics. However, it's interesting, in this context, to think about how the theories and metaphors we use do shape our thoughts on things. Fodor is right to point out that we should be careful about how much weight we put on evolution; it may end up blinding us. (Insert something knowledgable about Kuhn and revolution, Heidegger and technology, or Stengers (http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/S/stengers_science.html) and metaphor).

But you know what? We've totally gotten away from Pinker. I hope some resident linguists weigh in on this. And I hope I'll have time in the next couple days to pursue this in more depth -- I think I might have to dust off How the Mind Works for a brief review.

[Digital Stimulus]

So, I dusted off How the Mind Works and thought some initial thoughts might be of interest. I'm only through the preface and chapter one, but that's enough to make the foundation of the book quite clear. I must say, I had forgotten how enjoyable Pinker is to read.

So, it seems to me that I agree almost totally with Pinker. It's fascinating to me that he starts off with what he calls "The Robot Challenge"; that is, a discussion of what it would take to design an intelligent robot. This hits close to home for me, as it's what I do for a living. He treats the matter fairly well, although I'm not sure he truly gets across the difficulty involved.

In setting up his argument, he puts in enough qualifications on broad statements that it's difficult to actually argue with him. For instance, he says, "The computational theory of mind is not the same thing as the despised 'computer metaphor.'" Obviously true, and it needs to be stated over and over again, for it's too easy to fall into the trap of misunderstanding the arguments. But I'm left with the impression of a politician -- that is, put enough qualifiers on things and you're able to then selectively say "but I specifically said...". I'm not sure I can keep all of them in my head as I read, especially as I'm sure any contradictions or issues will be very subtle.

Furthermore, I do take issue with some of it. Essentially, I have a similar objection as Fodor -- Pinker's treatment of the MMM is extremely shallow and doesn't say much about the "Mind" (capitalized to emphasize the non-trivial substance needed). What I mean is this: the modules he's discussing thus far deal mostly with perceputal apparatus. Yes, vision processing is remarkable, as is auditory processing, speech recognition and production, etc. But this is just the first "layer" of the mind, and -- as difficult and amazing as it is -- the easy part. Braitenberg pioneered work in such simple apparatus, followed by Brooks' revolutionary work (google on "braitenberg vehicles" and "brooks subsumption" for more).

To put it bluntly, we can get a lot of mileage out of reactive systems, but they don't come close to having the capabilities we want to require of an "intelligent" being. There's literally no theory (OK, that's an overstatement for effect; for instance, see Dennett's Consciousness Explained or work on reactive planning like Firby's RAPs) about how the result of these "initial" processing modules gives rise to what we'd consider "mind" in any meaningful sense. And I think that's where Fodor's objection about "global" vs. "local" comes in; there really is an issue here. Assuming the computational theory of mind, at the highest level, asserting strict "modules" makes the brain a sequential processor. But if that's the case, how can a module arise that is responsible for global coherency and control? (Personally, I think the computational model has an answer for this in terms of reflection, but again, have no well-formed theory for support.)

Then there's the issue of computation as syntactic processing -- syntax is not only brittle, but requires huge amounts of processing (on a global scale) to be successful. At a really deep level, we not only have to explain how humans can process such vast amounts of information coherently, but how we can do it in real-time. What we know about computation seems to indicate that it's impossible -- what we do routinely in milliseconds would require lifetimes of computation. And this is not to say that the computational theory of mind is wrong, but that we don't have any deep theories about how it actually works (or even could work) that aren't just hand-waving (i.e., step 1: the brain processes input, step 2: a miracle occurs, step 3: we have consciousness). Minsky gave a keynote at last year's AAAI conference with a similar complaint -- specifically, he talked about the need for multiple representations (perhaps "interpretations" is a better word, or even "semantic content") for the information processed by the brain. And little work (or headway, perhaps) has been accomplished on that front. If you're interested, he has a working copy of his latest book available on his website that makes this pretty clear.

I thought you might be interested and I hope this discussion continues. If I come across anything else in my reading, I'll post about it...

[SentientMeat]

I've not read The Blank State, but this thread seems to have morphed into a How The Mind Works vs. The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, which I have (the latter being incredibly expensive for a 100 page paperback, but worth it all the same).

Neither of the two discuss how connectionism (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism/) and syntactic 'computation 'proper' (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/) might work together (with one embodying the other somehow), as I think might well be the way forward - indeed, connectionism is hardly mentioned at all in either book. And I think the opposition aspect is alittle overplayed - after all, Fodor admits straight away that the CTM is the only non-ludicrous game in town, and it's the details which Pinker is so optimistically blasè about compared to Fodor's Eyore-like pessimism. This isn't evolutionist vs. creationist, more like two dinosaur experts arguing whether it was just the Xixulub meteor which killed them off.

So, while I think that some of Fodor's arguments are rather nitpicky, I'd agree that Pinker's book might need a change of title. Just as a full account of the development of, say, the wing doesn't actually tell you the engineering principles of how wings actually work, so the book How The Mind Works is yet to be written. But Pinker's would definitely make an excellent follow-up entitled How The Mind Got Like That In The First Place.

[SentientMeat]

Ugh, sorry:

how connectionism (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism/) and syntactic 'computation 'proper' (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind) might work together

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Thanks tremendously, Digital Stimulus, for the posts--my lack of response so far doesn't mean I'm not reading, but rather that I'm absorbing still. Fodor's objections are obviously fairly new to me, and I need awhile to think about them. Sentientmeat, the point about connectionism and syntactic computation sounds interesting, but I'll need to refresh myself on those two concepts.

Maybe I can pick out something specific from the book to talk about: he suggests that, when it comes to your adult personality, the variance in it (i.e., the differences betewen your personality and that of other folks) is explained by, approximately:
Genetics: 50%
"Fate" (i.e., the fiddly things that happen to you in your life: diseases, your friends, a movie you saw when you were six, etc.): 40-50%
Family environment: 0-10%.

That last one, suggesting that (within a normal middle-class American family devoid of outright abuse) parenting style has no effect on a child's personality, strikes me as ludicrous. The facts he marshals--that adopted children are no more like their family siblings than are children from other families, but siblings adopted into different families grow up as alike as siblings who stay in one family--are pretty persuasive. But I still have a great deal of trouble with his conclusion.

Daniel

[SentientMeat]

That last one, suggesting that (within a normal middle-class American family devoid of outright abuse) parenting style has no effect on a child's personality, strikes me as ludicrous. The facts he marshals--that adopted children are no more like their family siblings than are children from other families, but siblings adopted into different families grow up as alike as siblings who stay in one family--are pretty persuasive. But I still have a great deal of trouble with his conclusion.Like I say, I've not read it, but he does make similar claims in HTMW. And I'd go along with them, really: after all, what is the 'family environment' but a subset of 'fiddly life stuff'? Consider how much time from birth to adulthood you spend solely with your family, compared to with your friends, your teachers and schoolmates, or even just alone, and 10% (or 20% of 'fiddly life') seems more reasonable. Ask yourself in addition who you were most trying to be like in that period and it makes even more sense. Our familes accept us unconditionally, but our peer group is another story.

As an older friend said to me about my 7 month old nipper, enjoy his complete devotion to you now because you'll lose a large part of him at school.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Like I say, I've not read it, but he does make similar claims in HTMW. And I'd go along with them, really: after all, what is the 'family environment' but a subset of 'fiddly life stuff'? Consider how much time from birth to adulthood you spend solely with your family, compared to with your friends, your teachers and schoolmates, or even just alone, and 10% (or 20% of 'fiddly life') seems more reasonable. Ask yourself in addition who you were most trying to be like in that period and it makes even more sense. Our familes accept us unconditionally, but our peer group is another story.
That is true--but consider some of the things considered in "home life":
-Do you give you children whatever they want, or do you set limits?
-Do you emphasize the importance of schoolwork, or do you act as if it can be blown off?
-Do your children hear a lot of music in the home and see adults getting together to play music regularly?
-Do your children hear more than one language spoken in the home?
-Do you take your children on lots of trips?
-Do you encourage your children to fight back physically when confronted by a bully?

I just have a very hard time believing that influences like these add up to less than 10% of an adult's personality, especially such factors as whether you spoil your children.

Daniel

[SentientMeat]

I'm not being particularly argumentative here, but a few counterexamples:
Do you give you children whatever they want, or do you set limits?Either way, they will eventually learn that they simply cannot have everything they want without serious negative social consequences. Again, the education they receive ad hoc from a peer group in this respect might be far more important.
-Do you emphasize the importance of schoolwork, or do you act as if it can be blown off?Again, I'd suggest the school itself and the pupils in it would be far more important here.
-Do your children hear a lot of music in the home and see adults getting together to play music regularly?If there's a television, they'll see and hear both regularly. Music lessons and the like aren't insignificant, of course, but they cost money, and I don't think one's personal affluence can be brought solely under the 'family environment' umbrella. The whole rest of your 'fiddly life' will be radically different, too.
-Do your children hear more than one language spoken in the home?Language is a big factor, of course. But, again, note how many kids speak a different language at school than at home. (Heck mine will be taught in Welsh despite me knowing barely any.)
-Do you take your children on lots of trips?More importantly, if you don't, do they just go somewhere else anyway? I suggest an afternoon at a friend's house can be just as formative as a day somewhere impressive or natural with parents.
-Do you encourage your children to fight back physically when confronted by a bully?I suspect this has a strong genetic influence, actually - for many kids it's just not in their nature to employ physical force, even in defence, no matter what the encouragement.
I just have a very hard time believing that influences like these add up to less than 10% of an adult's personality, especially such factors as whether you spoil your children.Of course, 'spoiling' isn't insignificant either: if the genetic half is true, you're still talking about a whole 20% of that which can be influenced. But, as I say, I think 'spoiling' just delays the lessons in many cases. A kid finds out how the world really works sooner or later. Of those kids who are woefully ill-prepared from 'spoiling', what percentage simply can't or don't learn to deal with it? Is 20% really that inconceivable?


Of course, you might well be right and Pinker wrong - as I say, I've no strongly held position here. But if he is right, think how much influence schoolteachers have on each and every kid in their care. When you've finished your training, your first pupils will each become a percent or so YOU.

Sleep tight. :)

[Digital Stimulus]

I've not read The Blank State, but this thread seems to have morphed into a How The Mind Works vs. The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, which I have (the latter being incredibly expensive for a 100 page paperback, but worth it all the same).
Yeah, sorry about that. It's just too damn interesting to let the thread die on the proverbial vine. And it's difficult to find anyone that criticizes Pinker; he's just so...so...damned reasonable. :)

Thanks for the links; I'm looking over the computational one now, but probably will have to abort to get other things (i.e., work) done. Here's what I think (one of the major) disputes is:
The technical notions of formalization and computation arguably do some important philosophical work here: formalization shows us how semantic properties of symbols can (sometimes) be encoded in syntactically-based derivation rules, allowing for the possibility of inferences that respect semantic value to be carried out in a fashion that is sensitive only to the syntax, and bypassing the need for the reasoner to have employ semantic intuitions. In short, formalization shows us how to tie semantics to syntax.
They do well to qualify that, as it's not only an open question, but one that may very well be flawed. I think the usual objections laid at the door of the positivists apply here as well. It'll be interesting to see if and how they discuss it.

As to connectionism (which I'm not going to read the link right now), it's not surprising they don't mention it -- it's the elephant in the room. So little is understood, it's almost useless to even attempt to use it as a bridge between brain and mind. Sure, Elman networks have been shown to be able learn language rules. Sure, Kohonen feature maps are stellar classification machines. Sure, Hebbian learning is biologically plausible (in fact, grounded in ethology). But we have little idea how to extract representations from any neural net currently in existence -- and it's not just a lack of theory, it goes so far as to not even having an idea of how to design tools to analyze theories. (Nonetheless, given all that, I'm pretty confident that we will; I don't mean to imply otherwise.)

Ultimately, at the layperson level, it seems to me that Fodor and Pinker agree substantially. I think the same can be said in general of cognitive scientists that are taken seriously. But when you delve into the details, as you say, there are substantial issues that need resolving.

To get in line with the direction the discussion is now taking, I very much find Pinker's claim about parental influence credible. Don't know if I'd put it at 10%, but it's certainly way down there. I think of it like this: the time when I personally was mostly influenced by my parents was between the ages of 0 (I suppose) and 8 or 9. In my opinion, little personality development occurs during that time; mostly, I developed motor control (based on my sports skills, badly, I must say) and other core functionalities. The radical changes my actual personality went through during my teenage years (when my peer group exerted huge pressures) is surpassed only by the changes that occurred between the ages of 20-25. That was when I broke free of peer expectations and started analyzing my beliefs and behaviors. Now, I'm encrusted with the results; while they can be changed (possibly), it takes a buttload of work to do so (blame it on Quinian determination).

Once again, when I honestly consider Pinker's arguments, they seem spot on to me.

[Digital Stimulus]

Thanks tremendously, Digital Stimulus, for the posts--my lack of response so far doesn't mean I'm not reading, but rather that I'm absorbing still.
So noted; it's great to be a part of this discussion (and thank you for starting it). As I said to SentientMeat, it would be a damn shame to have the thread drop off the first page.

[DSeid]

To stay true to the op, I'll start by chiming in on The Blank Slate. I thought it was been the weakest of Pinker's works exactly because, as pointed out early in this thread, it is so patently obvious to me and it amazed me that a book of this size is needed to make the case.

Left Hand please remember that personality is not values. Other than by my genetic contribution I have had little influence on my biological kids' personalities and none on my adopted daughter's, yet I have a high degree of influence on their values. The importance of that cannot be overemphasized. Still, as a parent I depend on their natural strengths outweighing my capacity to screw them up ;).

Secondly, I'd like to ask Digital and SM what they think of Steven Grossberg's Adaptive Resonance Theory and CogEM models in which he portrays conscious states as being resonant states. If you are not familiar with his work here is a link: http://cns-web.bu.edu/Profiles/Grossberg/ and specifically- Grossberg, S. (1999). The link between brain learning, attention, and consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition, 8, 1-44. Preliminary version appears as Boston University Technical Report, CAS/CNS-TR-97-018. Available in PDF (Gro.concog98.pdf) (336Kb) and postscript (Gro.concog98.ps.gz) (761Kb) - linked to on that page (modestly I point out the most recent addition to his list) Clearly he is consistent with the fact that the mind is a massively nonlinear system subjected to a variety of external forces. Also what they think of the body of work on Neural Correlates of Consciousness and specifically the concept that consciousness is actually nested sets of looped processes building out of the need to distinguish the changing entity of "self" from "non-self".

Dig as an AI guy, I'd love to also get your response to a hugely digressionary concept: the modelling of creative thought. I believe that most concepts can be concieved of as objects in an n-dimensional conceptual space (I have actually even found that others have had that same conception - Peter Gardenfors for example) and think of metaphors and creative thinking as being the very real geometric rotation, translation, and transformation of those objects within that conceptual space and finding unexpected good fits. I've never had either the mathematical expertise in n-dimensional geometry or in computer languages to model this process but wonder if anyone one has had such an idea. Do you know of any work similar to that or if such a modelling is even doable?

Thanks for your thoughts in advance.

[Digital Stimulus]

Secondly, I'd like to ask Digital and SM what they think of Steven Grossberg's Adaptive Resonance Theory and CogEM models in which he portrays conscious states as being resonant states.
Funny that you bring Grossberg up. Prior to dusting off HTMW, I was in the middle of Arbib's Handbook of Neural Networks and Brain Theory, and realized I really need to reach some kind of understanding of ART (which, alas, I don't really have a handle on at this point in time). It was, prior to getting "sidetracked", next on my list. I'm looking at the paper you cited right now, though; I'll give my thoughts on it later.
Also what they think of the body of work on Neural Correlates of Consciousness and specifically the concept that consciousness is actually nested sets of looped processes building out of the need to distinguish the changing entity of "self" from "non-self".
I wonder how ART relates (if it does at all) to Edelman's work/theories (as presented in Wider than the Sky (http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300107617)). Gah -- I need a refresher on that one also. You guys are loading me up with reading into next year, it seems. And I say that with much appreciation and enjoyment.
Dig as an AI guy, I'd love to also get your response to a hugely digressionary concept: the modelling of creative thought.
This is outside my area (not due to lack of interest, but lack of time). When you mention "creativity", I think of Barry Werger's "dancing robots" and some computer "painters", for which I don't recall the details (some were featured in Kurzweil's The Age of Intelligent Machines, if you need a reference). It seems to me that prior to (or in conjunction with?) doing meaningful work on creativity, the representation problem (mentioned above with reference to Minsky) needs some type of resolution. If you wouldn't mind, can you supply some other names also? I'm not familiar with Gardenfors, but am, of course, interested. As far as metaphor goes, I think you'd do well to look into Lakoff and Johnson's Philosophy in the Flesh (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465056741/102-4752050-7727300?v=glance&n=283155) -- not really an AI book, as it's philosophy that's not really tied to implementation (outside of claiming the necessity of embodiment), but it was excellent.

Now, as far as n-dimensional vectors and such go, I just attended a presentation about using "growing neural networks" as the basis for a robot learning about its environment. Essentially, sensor readings form the (arbitrary) vector of inputs, fed into a Kohonen feature map that dynamically grows to provide coverage of the feature space within some error bounds. It's a neat idea, but practically useless (at least as presented). What I mean is that the classification ends up being so large that for scenarios of any substance, it would be computationally intractable. Personally, I'm enamoured with Rauber's work on Growing Hierarchical Self-Organizing Maps (http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/dittenbach00growing.html), which are very promising to my mind. (It looks like there's follow up work that I wasn't aware of and haven't read yet here (http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/rauber02growing.html)).

I apologize for not really providing anything of substance beyond a list of cites and "not familiars", but there's really too much with which I'm not conversant. :( I learn more every day though. :)

[SentientMeat]

I'm rather busy so just a quick fly-by: Phillip Johnson Laird does good stuff on creativity (I like his programs for improv jazz basslines!) - you'll find a lot of good stuff on his website at Princeton.

[Digital Stimulus]

Oh -- I just remembered another person that might be of interest to you DSeid -- Tom Ziemke (http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cis?q=Tom+Ziemke), who is advising someone on tools to analyze neural nets. Once again, I have to claim substantial ignorance as to the status of his research.

SentientMeat -- I assume that would be Laird of the SOAR cognitive architecture? Do you have any opinions on SOAR?

[DSeid]

Well since we are overloading each others reading lists ...

Gardenfors' book is Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262572192/sr=8-1/qid=1144431756/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-1235912-0007049?%5Fencoding=UTF8) In it he does an excellent job of presenting concepts as geometric objects and brushes up against my thought of geometric transformations of those objects when he discussed the color spindle and its relationship to what we call various skin colors. Turns out that the names we use for skin colors (White, Black, Red, etc) map nicely relative to each other onto a color spindle reduced and shifted (translated) within the domain of the larger color spindle. I see this as a model for creativity in the Hofstader version of creativity as metaphor making. (As in his book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465024750/qid=1144433067/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-1235912-0007049?s=books&v=glance&n=283155)) Say along the lines of having an conceptual object of a wheel and applying that shape (tranforming/translating it) into the different domain of thinking about the planets and the stars. Having the conceptual object of a solar system and translating onto the domain of considering atomic structure and creating the Rutherford model ... and so on. I further consider that the edges of these objects are somewhat "soft" to various degrees, probably in similar magnitude to what Grossberg would refer to as the "vigilance" for each potential matching process. I'd love to have the skill set to take this to the next level and integrate Gardenfors work with Grossberg's and with my image of geometric transformations/rotations/translations ... but it is, regrettably, one of the many areas where my desires outpace my knowledge set.

If you want a concise review of Grossberg's state of the art do look at that autism article I co-authored with him. Its linked to on that same page, at the top. In it he was forced to review most of ART, CogEM, and spectrally timed ART (START) fairly concisely, yet clearly enough that a clinical audience could absorb it, in order for us to apply it to the problem of understanding autism. You can skip over the first half in which I review autism and our joint application of his models to that particular problem.

[Digital Stimulus]

Well since we are overloading each others reading lists ...
Well, I asked, after all. :D And I'd like apologize to Daniel for sidetracking this thread yet again. But I don't feel too bad about it, as I figure you're OK with it. Nonetheless, I'll be brief.
Gardenfors' book is Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262572192/sr=8-1/qid=1144431756/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-1235912-0007049?%5Fencoding=UTF8)
Serendipity! As it turns out, I've been carrying around a paper (first one on Deb Roy's (http://web.media.mit.edu/~dkroy/publications.html) publications page; he works on Cog or Kismet at MIT) to read whenever I had some down time. A mate o' mine defended his PhD today, which gave me a chance to start it while waiting for the presentation to start. It turns out that Gardenfors is one of the first models he (Roy, that is) mentions; if I hadn't been sensitized to the name, I wouldn't have noted it. (It looks like there's yet another body of work with which I'm very much unfamiliar.) If you're looking for related work, it seems like Roy's survey is a good place to start.

From reading that first Grossberg paper you cited, I like ART. I don't fully grasp it (yet), but it looks like it fills some vital role(s). Interesting that he laid some groundwork for Kohonen nets -- I didn't know that. On your recommendation, I'll read that review; I hope it clarifies things for me. Are you familiar with (can you reference) any criticisms of ART?

[Digital Stimulus]

If you want a concise review of Grossberg's state of the art do look at that autism article I co-authored with him.
Jeez, Louise. 85 pages? From Psychological Review journal? You, sir, are a cruel, cruel, man. ;)

[RaftPeople]

Left Hand please remember that personality is not values. Other than by my genetic contribution I have had little influence on my biological kids' personalities and none on my adopted daughter's, yet I have a high degree of influence on their values. The importance of that cannot be overemphasized. Still, as a parent I depend on their natural strengths outweighing my capacity to screw them up ;).


If personality is 90% to 100% genetic, then how do we end up with such a variety of cultures?

Do the Japanese not learn how they are to act in accordance with the Japanese culture? And isn't this very distinct from that of the US?

While I am a strong believer in the genetic component of personalities, especially after having kids and seeing the variety from the moment they were born, I also believe there is a learned component. Given the amount of learning we do, how could our environment not make a substantial difference?

[RaftPeople]

DSeid, it's occuring to me that you are making a distinction between personality and values, to the point of calling personality the thing you get from genes, only, and values being stuff you learn, only.

I'm not aware that this is an accepted distinction, is it? If so, then the point in Ray's book is not a point at all, it's by definition that way, which means it's hardly worth printing.

[RaftPeople]

I meant Pinker's book.

[DSeid]

Dig, why do you think I told you to just skip all the autism specific stuff? Seriously, one of our concerns with this article has been that the autism background reading will be too much for the modelling people to wade through and that the modelling background will be too much for those on the clinical side to handle or at least stick through, so that no one will actually end up reading it. We'll see what actually happens. I am not familiar with any critics of Grossberg's stuff.

btw I bought "Wider Than the Sky" yesterday. It's in the queue.

RaftPeople, no that is not what I am trying to call personality vs values. Values are what we consider right and wrong and what we think is important. Personality is our essential traits, like adaptability/rigidity, introversion/extroversion, emotional lability, etc. Personality is what we use as our vehicle in pursuit of the goals we have based on our values.

As to cultural influences on personality, I am sure that it occurs but less so than it does for values. Stereotypes about a national character type seem to be less well founded than people think. See this Science article. (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5745/96?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=personality+trait+culture&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT) Beliefs about distinctive personality characteristics common to members of a culture are referred to as national character (1) or national stereotypes (2–4). National stereotypes include beliefs about social, physical, and mental characteristics, but the present article focuses on personality traits. Several factors are thought to influence these beliefs. They may be generalizations based on observations of the personality traits of individual culture members. They may be inferences based on the national ethos, as revealed in socioeconomic conditions, history, customs, myths, legends, and values. They may be shaped by comparisons or contrasts with geographically close or competing cultures. Stereotypes are oversimplified judgments, but if they have some "kernel of truth" (5), national character should reflect the average emotional, interpersonal, experiential, attitudinal, and motivational styles of members of the culture.

There have been few attempts to examine the accuracy of national stereotypes (3, 5–7), perhaps because researchers lacked appropriate criteria. However, recent advances in personality psychology and cross-cultural research make it possible to compare perceived national character with aggregate personality data (that is, the means of a sample of assessments of individuals) across a wide range of cultures.

National character may be a social construction, but personality traits are rooted in biology. Most personality psychologists today agree that the dimensions of the five-factor model (FFM) of personality—neuroticism versus emotional stability, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness—account for the covariation of most personality traits (8), and behavioral genetics studies (9) have shown that traits from all five factors are strongly heritable. As products (in part) of the human genome, traits are universal: Cross-cultural research suggests that the structure and development of personality traits is very similar in nations as dissimilar as India, Argentina, and Burkina Faso (10). In every culture examined, the five factors are hierarchically related to lower order traits or facets.
<snip>
..... the present study offers the best evidence to date that in-group perceptions of national character may be informative about the culture, but they are not descriptive of the people themselves. (From the actual article , the link is to the abstract.)

[SentientMeat]

Dig and DSeid - you two are far more erudite in these matters than I. I'm really just an intereted layperson. My opinion is only that the mind will be explained by some computational model, without really being able to comment on any particular aspect with any authority. Still do keep going, and I'll try to chip in occasionally.

[Digital Stimulus]

If personality is 90% to 100% genetic, then how do we end up with such a variety of cultures?
Besides DSeid's response, I think it's relevant to point out that Pinker's 10% figure is meant to express parental (or, "family environment", as Daniel quotes) influence. Pinker's claim is that the genetic contribution to adult personality is in the 50% range. Or perhaps I misunderstand your point, as you explicitly acknowledge the role of genetics.
Dig, why do you think I told you to just skip all the autism specific stuff?
I'd like to qualify my outburst, as I was considering it while making my morning coffee. Being in CS, most of the papers I read (and write) are on the order of 6-8 pages. Even so, they're really dense. Most journal papers end up being between 15-25 pages. I opened it up hoping to be able to skim it before bed, saw the 85 pages, and kinda wigged. It'll have to go on the queue to receive the attention it deserves; I have a journal paper to finish that should've been out a couple weeks ago (the move from gcc 3.x to 4.0 is totally screwing me).
Dig and DSeid - you two are far more erudite in these matters than I.
Well, thank you for the vote of confidence. However, in re-reading the thread last night, I realized that too often I approach this topic exclusively from my CS perspective. That is, I tend to focus on the low-level, "how would I implement this?" viewpoint, missing the high-level issues (a product of being a programmer prior to an AI researcher). For instance, I'm not sure I treated LHoD's points on evolution from the appropriate perspective.

In many cases, it seems to me that this is good -- for instance, I think a huge problem with many philosophy discussions is that they fall victim to an overapplication of Occam's razor. An example is the causal powers of mental states, usually of the form "Mental state M maps onto brain states B1, B2, B3". A problem with this is that states are treated as static entities, in which the dynamic process is ignored. Removed from implementation considerations, a crucial aspect gets lost. It may very well be that brain states B4, B5, and B6 are necessary for facilitating the formation and function of M, even though they seem to be incidental.

With that said, I have to be careful to recognize and acknowledge this bias. It's invaluable to me to have other viewpoints, particularly those that do not come from a computer science perspective. Not to mention the exposure to things outside my everyday interests and the fascinating discussions that result.

[DSeid]

Dig and DSeid - you two are far more erudite in these matters than I. I'm really just an intereted layperson. [Dr. McCoy]Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not an AI theorist![/Bones]

Really SM I doubt that I am any more erudite than you are. What happened with Grossberg is more a tribute to his open-mindedness that anything else. I had just been googling about (actually looking for some AI work on humor, thinking of it as a high level figure-ground reversal process, realizing that such required parallel processing streams working nonlinearly) and stumbled into his website. I found his articles fascinating, albeit hard to comprehend the first time through, and ended up e-mailing him some questions. He was gracious enough to answer my questions and engage in an ongoing give and take. I have a professional and intellectual interest in autism and was very familar with the then new work linking autism with cerebellar deficits, and became awed by how well plugging that into my understanding of his models resulted in much of autistic phenomenology. I wondered if was considering doing an article applying his model to autism and encouraged him to do so and he responded by saying that he didn't currently have the time but that he would be willing to comment on something that I wrote. From that emerged a several year process of collaborating along with multiple revisions. We actually only met more than a year into the process! Nah, I'm just a pediatrician with a pathologic case of intellectual curiousity and a big dose of chutzpah who was fortunate to come into contact with an intellectual giant who was open to unsolicited questions. One thing I learned in the process is that I am glad I chose a clinical rather than an acadamic life! Dig is the expert opinion here.

Speaking of whom ... Dig I really only suggested that article because the review of his models is quite good in it. It was written with the understanding that some readers would be from the clinical side, so clarity was essential, but it was also written knowing that our application of his models required integrating ART, START, and CogEM in a real world dynamic process in which forces become imbalanced, so the explanations had to be complete enough to allow for that. That background section should be a relatively quick read for someone who comes to it with your knowledge set. Now the autistism bits may be a bit harder on you! And seriously, no offence taken if you never read them and even less if you take a long time to do it. :)

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I'm still reading and still interested, but a lot of this is over my head. Don't feel bad about hijacking; it's very educational!

Daniel

[RaftPeople]

DSeid, thanks for clarification on the personality vs values and percentages. I had read the thread one day and remembered the 0-10% and hastily popped in and posted later on without really remembering the entire OP, so basically I forgot that he had allowed for signifcant "other" influences.


At any rate, my big problem with Pinker is (or was, possibly, as I've not kept up with his research) that he always seemed to take a hardline Chomskian position on the innateness of language (and I readily admit that I have only a shallow grasp of his actual position; perhaps I'm not doing it justice). I'd think that the same general stance -- that is, that language formation is at best partially innate -- is most accurate. And I always read him as dissing connectionist models, which is just misguided, IMHO.

I agree.

At the risk of sounding like a hobbyist that simplifies things a little too much (which I am), I think Pinker and Chomsky and others seem to be missing the elegance of a connectionist model. The structure is innate, which provides the general capability to abstract not just single words/ideas but groups of words/ideas. The actual combinations of valid types of words, phrases, sentences, etc. are learned.

This is exactly the strength of connectionism (matching unfamiliar inputs to previously experienced inputs) and eliminates the need for some super grammar, etc.

I don't think the computational model is worthless, but given the success with the connectionist model on duplicating some basic functions of the human brain (visual recognition, speech recognition), and given, what I would consider the lack of success with the computational model (are there any successes?), I don't understand how anyone could ignore the connectionist model.



To put it bluntly, we can get a lot of mileage out of reactive systems, but they don't come close to having the capabilities we want to require of an "intelligent" being. There's literally no theory (OK, that's an overstatement for effect; for instance, see Dennett's Consciousness Explained or work on reactive planning like Firby's RAPs) about how the result of these "initial" processing modules gives rise to what we'd consider "mind" in any meaningful sense. And I think that's where Fodor's objection about "global" vs. "local" comes in; there really is an issue here. Assuming the computational theory of mind, at the highest level, asserting strict "modules" makes the brain a sequential processor. But if that's the case, how can a module arise that is responsible for global coherency and control? (Personally, I think the computational model has an answer for this in terms of reflection, but again, have no well-formed theory for support.)

Why can't we get all of our mileage out of reactive systems?

Why does "mind" need to be anything more than a brain that not only reacts, but also incorporates itself into it's own world view for better predictive power?

Whether a simple or very complex brain, I don't see the need for anything beyond reactive, whether that is to external senses only or to a combination of external and internal state influenced by genetically provided structures (e.g. temporal mechanisms).

[DSeid]

I am only able to pop in extremely briefly but allow me to chime in that Pinker would very much object to being grouped with Chomsky. In Words and Rules (which was, btw, a great book) he provides critiques as damning of Chomsky as he does of strict connectionism. Hs actual position is much more nuanced and researched and evidence based than any of those dogmatic stances. I actually read his proposals as being very similar in structure to what ART proposes just specific to linguistics and without the mathematical modelling and consequent generalizability. I will quote from that long article I've referenced an introductary summary of ART;Adaptive Resonance Theory, or ART, proposes how the brain learns to recognize objects and events. This is accomplished through an interplay between bottom-up perceptually-driven inputs and learned top-down expectations. Bottom-up inputs attempt to match top-down expectations, and the top-down expectations can prime the brain to anticipate expected feature patterns. When a match occurs, the system locks into an attentive resonant state that drives the recognition learning process; hence the term adaptive resonance. ART predicts that all conscious events are resonant events. The degree of match that is required for resonance and sustained attention to occur is set by a vigilance parameter. Vigilance may be increased by predictive errors, and controls whether a particular learned representation will be concrete or abstract. Low vigilance allows the learning of broad abstract recognition categories; high vigilance forces the learning of specific concrete categories. If a match is inadequate, then the current input is processed as a novel stimulus. Attention is then rapidly reset so that memory can be searched for another, or new, representation of the event.

The problems with strict connectionism are many. Most of all there is no evidence that real systems operate in that way at all. Strict connectionist system require a teacher and are prone to catastrophic forgetting. Biologic systems have the ability to prime from the top-down to various degrees depending on the circumstance and the system. There are some top-down prototypes that we are wired to start with, as well as ones that are learned, and clearly these inate ones include some basic structures of language and the ability to recognize the exceptions to the rules.

The brain is not a sequential processor yet it does function with modules, just in a very nonlinear manner. The two concepts are not mutually incompatible.

[Digital Stimulus]

The structure is innate, which provides the general capability to abstract not just single words/ideas but groups of words/ideas.
There're a couple issues here, which I'll get to in a moment.
I don't think the computational model is worthless, but given the success with the connectionist model on duplicating some basic functions of the human brain (visual recognition, speech recognition), and given, what I would consider the lack of success with the computational model (are there any successes?), I don't understand how anyone could ignore the connectionist model.
You might want to go back to my post #16, where I quote from the computationalism article linked to by SentientMeat (in fact, it's chock full o' good information). Computationalism provides a bridge between syntax and semantics. And unless you're prepared to deny that humans use symbols in their thinking, the computational model provides the only model thus far that accounts for that (to my knowledge). I'd also like to echo your own words back at you: "success with the connectionist model on duplicating some basic functions". That's it in a nutshell, from what I know. Sure, neural nets have been designed to do some speech processing, etc. By the same token, one might consider SHRDLU or Flakey the robot resounding successes for symbolic computation. (Which they were; I'm not trivializing them.) But it's not enough; we don't know how to get symbols from connectionist models, much less, as I said to LHoD above, even have a good idea of how to analyze the networks.

Which leads me to address the issues I alluded to first. In particular, assuming I'm reading your use of the term "structure" correctly, the structure of neural nets, at this point in time, are rigid, brittle, and must be divined through trial and error. Which is why I'm so enamoured of "growing neural nets", particularly of the hierarchical variety (paper by Rauber cited above). And not only that, but the networks we have are relatively simple and serve only one purpose. (Disclaimer: "neural networks" is a huge field with which I'm not heavily involved.) Now, the Roy paper I cited above gives some indication that work has been done in mult-modal networks. But I get the impression that they use a single network, simply expanding the number of inputs. Not only does this obviously not match actual brain development, but it also violates the essence of MMM (assuming you accept that).
Why can't we get all of our mileage out of reactive systems?

Why does "mind" need to be anything more than a brain that not only reacts, but also incorporates itself into it's own world view for better predictive power?

Whether a simple or very complex brain, I don't see the need for anything beyond reactive, whether that is to external senses only or to a combination of external and internal state influenced by genetically provided structures (e.g. temporal mechanisms).
The fact that you can make long term plans says that there's more to brain function than a purely reactive system. As you say, with "temporal mechanisms" (what would they be like? how would they work?), perhaps it would be adequate. But, in general, that's not what "reactive" is taken to mean -- we need to distinguish finer levels of function. This is not to say that you're wrong, just that you and I may be speaking in different terms.

So, in the literature, a distinction is made between reactive, deliberative, and reflective "layers", where "reactive" refers to tightly coupled sensor/effector connections or immediate stimulus/response mechanisms (e.g., motor control), "deliberative" refers to planning capabilites (e.g., "what path should I take to move from point A to point B?", in addition to "how do I handle situations where that plan fails?"), and "reflective" refers to the ability of an agent (robot, human, software program) to observe and reason about it's own states (e.g., "I don't feel good, so I'll go to the doctor" is reflecting on internal health state; "I have to be in court in an hour, so I'll go to the doctor after that" is reflecting on a deliberation).

So, to tie this back into the above (and the original text from which you quoted), this is an issue because reactive systems (such as the basic functions we've developed in neural networks) do not do the work that we need them to. How does one get a symbolic plan (e.g., to get to the doctor I have to get in my car, go out my driveway and make a left, etc.) from a neural network? We just don't know (yet).

[Digital Stimulus]

I am only able to pop in extremely briefly but allow me to chime in that Pinker would very much object to being grouped with Chomsky.
Thank you for elaborating on that; I had a feeling that my impressions were a tad off.
The problems with strict connectionism are many.
Can you tell me what you mean by "strict connectionism"? I think I get what you're saying, as you imply that ART doesn't fall in that category. But there are lots of connectionist systems that don't require a teacher, so I'm unsure as to where the boundary lies.
The brain is not a sequential processor yet it does function with modules, just in a very nonlinear manner. The two concepts are not mutually incompatible.
I'm occasionally looking at that autism paper -- obviously, ART has some tremendous benefits, but I'm not clear on how it works in detail. It's a bit early for me to ask these questions, but I can't resist, due to what you've just said. Does ART actually make use of multiple modules? Are these modules pre-designed? Has any work been done on dynamically changing the structure of the network? Just throwing those out there in case you can answer them...

[RaftPeople]

I am only able to pop in extremely briefly but allow me to chime in that Pinker would very much object to being grouped with Chomsky. In Words and Rules (which was, btw, a great book) he provides critiques as damning of Chomsky as he does of strict connectionism. Hs actual position is much more nuanced and researched and evidence based than any of those dogmatic stances.

My understanding of the position of anyone in this field is limited to the googling I've done after seeing their name posted, but Pinker and Chomsky certainly are lumped together in numerous places.

Not that I'm disputing what you are saying, just that it's not an unreasonable conclusion based on what is out there on the web.


The problems with strict connectionism are many. Most of all there is no evidence that real systems operate in that way at all.

Wouldn't you say we have evidence based on the information that biologists and neuro-scientists have accumulated, coupled with the ability to achieve similar results with ANN's for certain tasks?

Strict connectionist system require a teacher

Humans have 2 techers:
1) Evolution. Brain structures that processed input in an advantageous manner were passed along.
2) Our environment as we grow.

...and are prone to catastrophic forgetting.

If this is true, it doesn't mean connectionism is the wrong model, it could mean we have not learned how to create systems that avoid this problem.

Biologic systems have the ability to prime from the top-down to various degrees depending on the circumstance and the system. There are some top-down prototypes that we are wired to start with, as well as ones that are learned, and clearly these inate ones include some basic structures of language and the ability to recognize the exceptions to the rules.

Is there evidence that we recognize exceptions to the rule in language prior to learning the language? It seems logical to me that we have the ability to process language, but that we learn the specifics.

The brain is not a sequential processor yet it does function with modules, just in a very nonlinear manner. The two concepts are not mutually incompatible.

I agree, I think that the brain breaks down processing into what you might call modules, and feeds the output from one module to the input of other modules. But I think it would be a mistake to think that those modules are "clean" and independent.

[Digital Stimulus]

Sorry for picking up the post to DSeid, but I was just popping in and thought I could answer sufficiently.
Wouldn't you say we have evidence based on the information that biologists and neuro-scientists have accumulated, coupled with the ability to achieve similar results with ANN's for certain tasks?
I don't think anyone disputes that the brain is a neural network; the qualification of "strict connectionist" models is important. I think DSeid was specifically talking about backpropagation networks, which are distinctly unlike biological nets.
Humans have 2 techers:
1) Evolution. Brain structures that processed input in an advantageous manner were passed along.
2) Our environment as we grow.
I think there might be a disconnect in terminology here; when talking about "teachers" in the context of neural nets, it implies what is called "supervised learning". For instance, in backpropagation nets, there is a training set of data that is fed as input to the network (usually repeatedly, in a randomized order) for which there is a known output (or answer). The weights of the network connections are adjusted according to the error value of the network's output as compared to the input instance of the training set. I forget who it was (Widrow, I think?), but a huge leap was made when a formula for attributing credit/penalty to earlier layers of the network (that is, mathematically determining how much to adjust each connection weight, backpropagated from output nodes to the input nodes). I think that ART does something like this also, using "patterns" from memory as the output. I'm leery of making that claim, as Grossberg says that ART is based on similar principles to Kohonen networks, which are unsupervised.
If this is true, it doesn't mean connectionism is the wrong model, it could mean we have not learned how to create systems that avoid this problem.
I don't think that's what was implied; rather, "strict connectionist" models are prone to catastrophic forgetting. ART, on the other hand, are not.
Is there evidence that we recognize exceptions to the rule in language prior to learning the language? It seems logical to me that we have the ability to process language, but that we learn the specifics.
I'm not gonna really touch this one -- if you're interested, Elman created a recurrent network model (which bears his name) that proved that a network could indeed learn grammar rules, including "exceptions to the rule". If I recall correctly, there was quite a row between the connectionists and others (Levesque in particular, I think...it's been a long time) about whether connectionist models could meet the language challenge, or whether the Chomskian idea of innate, universal grammar was correct.
I agree, I think that the brain breaks down processing into what you might call modules, and feeds the output from one module to the input of other modules. But I think it would be a mistake to think that those modules are "clean" and independent.
Also not touching this one, as it's rather contentious. However, I pretty much agree -- I think connectionist models are up to the task.

[DSeid]

Well "connectionism" is usually used (and this includes its use in Pinker's books) to refer to what I understand to be "back-prop" models (eg McClelland's work) and usually to systems that make little or no attempt to model what we know about actual brain function. I may be biased by my admiration of Grossberg's models and his assesment of back-prop:The back propagation model does not have any top-down attentive matching, uses non-local transport of learned weights, cannot learn without supervision, can learn only slowly, and has an unstable memory in response to either changing exemplar statistics, fast learning, or even sustained maintenance of an input pattern(I wish that my copy of Words and Rules wasn't packed away, but we are trying to sell our house and it got stored in the "decluttering" effort. His critiques are quite good as I recall.) As someone obviously enamoured of Grossberg's work, I am frustrated that his models do not get as much wide play as I think that they deserve. He does not however write for a general audience as a general rule.
Does ART actually make use of multiple modules? Are these modules pre-designed? Has any work been done on dynamically changing the structure of the network?Boy, you will like that paper I think. Here is the continuation of the intro to the theoretical background section:The second model, called the CogEM (or Cognitive-Emotional-Motor) model, extends ART to the learning of cognitive-emotional associations, notably associations that link external objects and events in the world to internal feelings and emotions that give these objects and events value. These emotions also activate the motivational pathways that energize actions aimed at acquiring or manipulating objects or events to satisfy them. Resonance can also occur within CogEM circuits. Here the resonance is between sensory/cognitive representations of what is possible and emotional representations of what is valued. The resonance tends to focus attention selectively upon objects and events that promise to satisfy emotional needs. The emotional representations are proposed to be organized into opponent affects, such as fear vs. relief. These opponent affective circuits are energized by internal sources of arousal. Under normal circumstances, arousal is set at an intermediate level; that is, a Golden Mean is typically maintained at, or near, an intermediate arousal level, at least most of the time while we are awake. Either underarousal or overarousal can cause abnormal emotional reactions and, with them, abnormal cognitive-emotional learning. In particular, there is an Inverted-U in emotional reactivity in these opponent circuits. If the emotional center is overaroused, then the threshold to activate an emotion is abnormally low, but the intensity of emotion is abnormally small. In contrast, if the emotional circuits are underaroused, then the threshold for activating an emotion is abnormally high but, when this threshold is exceeded, the emotional response can be hyperreactive.
Output needs to be adaptively timed to deliver results. This is accomplished through adaptive timing using spectrums of outputs. This he calls spectrally timed ART or START. As the paper continues:The third model, called the Spectral Timing model, clarifies how the brain adaptively times responses in order to acquire rewards and other goal objects. Such adaptive timing is essential for all terrestrial animals, since rewards and other goals are often delayed in time relative to actions that are aimed at acquiring them. The brain needs to be dynamically buffered, or protected against, reacting within the time interval before a delayed reward can be received as a predictive failure. The Spectral Timing model accomplishes this by predicting how the brain distinguishes expected non-occurrences of rewards, which should not be allowed to interfere with acquiring the delayed goal, from unexpected non-occurrences of rewards, which can trigger the usual consequences of predictive failure, including reset of working memory, attention shifts, emotional rebounds, and the release of exploratory behaviors. ... The Spectral Timing model clarifies thalamo-cortico-hippocampal-cerebellar-basal ganglia interactions, among others in the brain. And the point of the application of his models to autism is that it shows what happens dynamically when these functions become imbalanced during early development. This then becomes imbalancedSTART or iSTART.

Raft, I tend to agree with much of what you said.

[RaftPeople]

You might want to go back to my post #16, where I quote from the computationalism article linked to by SentientMeat (in fact, it's chock full o' good information).

I will go back and read the articles, I've had limited time so I've been charging forward because I enjoy the topic (in my spare time for the last couple years I've been working on an alife/ann/ga project so I think about and analyze this stuff quite a bit, I just haven't read up on the published papers).

Side note:
Ok, I'm reading the links from Sentient's post and I see this in the "Weaknesses of NN's" department:
"For example, connectionists usually do not attempt to explicitly model the variety of different kinds of brain neurons, nor the effects of neurotransmitters and hormones"

This is exactly the type of thing I set out to do in my project. My thought was twofold:
1) Try to accomplish something small before trying to accomplish something big (unlike so many of the articles I did read about grand AI plans).
2) Explore the pro's and con's to: different types of neurons, different types of synaptic connections, different wave functions, etc.


Computationalism provides a bridge between syntax and semantics. And unless you're prepared to deny that humans use symbols in their thinking, the computational model provides the only model thus far that accounts for that (to my knowledge).

All depends on your definition of "symbol". I read the computational link (quickly) and could not find a satisfactory definition of "symbol". If it means "some abstract notion in the brain that represents either a set of other abstract notions in the brain, or it represents some physical entity", then I would say that yes we use symbols, sometimes, for some things.


I'd also like to echo your own words back at you: "success with the connectionist model on duplicating some basic functions". That's it in a nutshell, from what I know. Sure, neural nets have been designed to do some speech processing, etc. By the same token, one might consider SHRDLU or Flakey the robot resounding successes for symbolic computation. (Which they were; I'm not trivializing them.) But it's not enough; we don't know how to get symbols from connectionist models, much less, as I said to LHoD above, even have a good idea of how to analyze the networks.

I agree that SHRDLU and Flakey seem like successes (I just googled them). But for me, I feel that one of the most important aspects to human intelligence is it's flexibility and adaptibility. I've been programming for a long time and what bothers me about any system like those you listed is the "brittle" nature of software, all paths must be considered in advance.

Also, a slightly different thought is that it's possible our brain is emulating the type of processing that is programmed into SHRDLU, in which case it might be more efficient to go straight to LISP, but you might lose the benefits of an NN. Maybe a combination is the best of all worlds.


Which leads me to address the issues I alluded to first. In particular, assuming I'm reading your use of the term "structure" correctly, the structure of neural nets, at this point in time, are rigid, brittle, and must be divined through trial and error. Which is why I'm so enamoured of "growing neural nets", particularly of the hierarchical variety (paper by Rauber cited above). And not only that, but the networks we have are relatively simple and serve only one purpose. (Disclaimer: "neural networks" is a huge field with which I'm not heavily involved.) Now, the Roy paper I cited above gives some indication that work has been done in mult-modal networks. But I get the impression that they use a single network, simply expanding the number of inputs. Not only does this obviously not match actual brain development, but it also violates the essence of MMM (assuming you accept that).

Valid points. Some stumbling blocks in my project are:
1) How to modularize
2) How to encode ANN's such that genotype does not explicitly code for every detail but that resulting phenotype substantially operates the same.


The fact that you can make long term plans says that there's more to brain function than a purely reactive system. As you say, with "temporal mechanisms" (what would they be like? how would they work?), perhaps it would be adequate. But, in general, that's not what "reactive" is taken to mean -- we need to distinguish finer levels of function. This is not to say that you're wrong, just that you and I may be speaking in different terms.

So, in the literature, a distinction is made between reactive, deliberative, and reflective "layers", where "reactive" refers to tightly coupled sensor/effector connections or immediate stimulus/response mechanisms (e.g., motor control), "deliberative" refers to planning capabilites (e.g., "what path should I take to move from point A to point B?", in addition to "how do I handle situations where that plan fails?"), and "reflective" refers to the ability of an agent (robot, human, software program) to observe and reason about it's own states (e.g., "I don't feel good, so I'll go to the doctor" is reflecting on internal health state; "I have to be in court in an hour, so I'll go to the doctor after that" is reflecting on a deliberation).

So, to tie this back into the above (and the original text from which you quoted), this is an issue because reactive systems (such as the basic functions we've developed in neural networks) do not do the work that we need them to. How does one get a symbolic plan (e.g., to get to the doctor I have to get in my car, go out my driveway and make a left, etc.) from a neural network? We just don't know (yet).

Ok, I was thinking the term "reactive" covered all three layers you mention. You seem to be saying that an NN could not handle all 3 layers, but to me it seems like it could.

[Digital Stimulus]

Well "connectionism" is usually used (and this includes its use in Pinker's books) to refer to what I understand to be "back-prop" models
That's what I had guessed.
As someone obviously enamoured of Grossberg's work, I am frustrated that his models do not get as much wide play as I think that they deserve.
Yes, I'm rather surprised, given the little I've read, that no one ever forced me to read up on it.
Boy, you will like that paper I think.
Yes, I like what I've read thus far. The emotion part is of particular interest because that's one of the things people in my lab are looking into.

[RaftPeople]

DSeid and Digital Stimulus,

With respect to back-propagation:
I agree, we are not going to emulate human thought with back-prop.

[Digital Stimulus]

All depends on your definition of "symbol". I read the computational link (quickly) and could not find a satisfactory definition of "symbol". If it means "some abstract notion in the brain that represents either a set of other abstract notions in the brain, or it represents some physical entity", then I would say that yes we use symbols, sometimes, for some things.
Well, "symbol" is used here as the means to perform computation. That is, a syntactic entity as might be found in a universal Turing machine.
I agree that SHRDLU and Flakey seem like successes (I just googled them). But for me, I feel that one of the most important aspects to human intelligence is it's flexibility and adaptibility. I've been programming for a long time and what bothers me about any system like those you listed is the "brittle" nature of software, all paths must be considered in advance.
Exactly why they aren't sufficient.
Also, a slightly different thought is that it's possible our brain is emulating the type of processing that is programmed into SHRDLU, in which case it might be more efficient to go straight to LISP, but you might lose the benefits of an NN. Maybe a combination is the best of all worlds.
As I said before, I don't think anyone disputes that the brain is a neural net. The issue is more along the lines of "how in the hell does it work?"
Valid points. Some stumbling blocks in my project are:
1) How to modularize
2) How to encode ANN's such that genotype does not explicitly code for every detail but that resulting phenotype substantially operates the same.
Welcome to the "stumbling block" club. :D
Ok, I was thinking the term "reactive" covered all three layers you mention. You seem to be saying that an NN could not handle all 3 layers, but to me it seems like it could.
Oh, no. I too think a neural net can handle all three layers (using ourselves as concrete evidence that it can). We just have little idea how it does it!

[Digital Stimulus]

DSeid and Digital Stimulus,

With respect to back-propagation:
I agree, we are not going to emulate human thought with back-prop.
Right; it's not a biologically plausible model. But it's a really nifty technique for other things. There's a distinction between biological and non-biological nets that is important. For some purposes, non-biological models are just the right tool for the job, if you'll allow me some programmer-speak.

[Digital Stimulus]

Well, "symbol" is used here as the means to perform computation. That is, a syntactic entity as might be found in a universal Turing machine.
Sorry for the triple post, but I think I was a little o'erhasty in this response and feel the need to clarify. The above refers to computationalism (as in the article to which SentientMeat linked). However, I was using the term in a much looser sense in the bit to which you (RaftPeople) replied.

We seem to be able to use and manipulate symbols, as when we do propositional logic (to take a simple example). The power of symbolic manipulation is indisputable; surely something we want to attribute to human cognition. But computationalism is (may be?) the best model we have for how this all works. (SentientMeat -- know anything about dynamical systems or other models?) The question, then, is: how do we reconcile symbols (as in computation) with symbols (as in the ambiguous, ethereal, multi-representational concepts we use so deftly)?

If consciousness really is exclusively a product of brain matter and we accept that brain matter forms a neural network, then we have to explain the basis of "symbols" (in the loose sense). We have some of this, for instance at the percpetual level, but not at a higher level. Furthermore, if computationalism is correct, we need to explain how such symbols (again, in the loose sense) are related to / are derived from symbols (in the syntactic entity sense).

Good -- I feel better now for having clarified that.

[Digital Stimulus]

There are some top-down prototypes that we are wired to start with, as well as ones that are learned, and clearly these inate ones include some basic structures of language and the ability to recognize the exceptions to the rules.
Y'know, I had missed this before. Perhaps it'll put the discussion back into the realm of Pinker. Here goes...

Is it clear that there are innate prototypes? I'd assume that they'd have to be genetically encoded; is there evidence of this?

Personally, I've always viewed language as merely statistical learning; since we exist in space/time, obviously objects (which exist in space) and actions (which exist in time) are foundational in our existence. If language is taken strictly as a means of communication (ignoring its use to augment "mentalese"), then it seems to me that there is a very limited set of things that need to be expressed. With a small enough basic set, there's a very finite number of possible ways (i.e., permutations) in which these things can be combined. I believe these permutations are described by the universal grammar. I always felt like Chomsky was imposing a description on the world, rather than providing an explanation. Is there any consensus about that?

[SentientMeat]

Sure, Elman networks have been shown to be able learn language rules. Sure, Kohonen feature maps are stellar classification machines. Sure, Hebbian learning is biologically plausible (in fact, grounded in ethology). But we have little idea how to extract representations from any neural net currently in existence
I'd like to ask Digital and SM what they think of Steven Grossberg's Adaptive Resonance Theory and CogEM models in which he portrays conscious states as being resonant states.
SentientMeat -- I assume that would be Laird of the SOAR cognitive architecture? Do you have any opinions on SOAR? It's invaluable to me to have other viewpoints, particularly those that do not come from a computer science perspective. Not to mention the exposure to things outside my everyday interests and the fascinating discussions that result.
Really SM I doubt that I am any more erudite than you are.
SentientMeat -- know anything about dynamical systems or other models?

Guys, guys, I only just know what these are. I’m not even sure what they’re capable of or not, and certainly can’t comment on how ‘promising’ each might be.

We have the computer scientist and the clinical experimentalist here, so I’ll offer to be the philosopher (not that I’ve any recognised accomplishment there either, but hey ho). I’d suggest that my job is to stop each other talking at cross purposes: in this thread it will likely be trying to point out the scope and limits of computational psychology (which is, of course, the subtitle of The Mind Does Not Work That Way).

So, what I appear to have kicked off here is a discussion of how far down top-down (ie. syntactic CTM proper) gets these days and how far up bottom up (connectionist neural modelling) gets us. And the only thing my level of technical expertise allows me to say with confidence is that the gap is no Sistine-Chapel-ceiling finger width. It’s more like the supernatural how-the-hell? CTM waving frantically to the poor, blind, catastrophically incompetent Neural Network from across the Grand Canyon (which is why I always call an explanation for human cognition and consciousness the Challenge of the Millennium).

And I think one of the major causes of crossed wires comes from what I said above: Just as a full account of the development of, say, the wing doesn't actually tell you the engineering principles of how wings actually work, so the book How The Mind Works is yet to be written. But Pinker's would definitely make an excellent follow-up entitled How The Mind Got Like That In The First Place.I think that Digital ought perhaps to look at his endeavour a little like molecular biologists trying to build an amoeba from proteins. It’s made of proteins, so why the hell can’t we just go ahead and assemble one?

The key difficulty (nay, impossibility) in both quests strikes me as essentially being one of encryption (which I haven’t actually seen explicitly in my admittedly limited reading list – any suggestions? I haven't read Freedom Evolves yet). I’m not sure we’ll ever know every relevant biochemical reaction on the timeline from molecules to amoebae – somewhere in that timeline evolution might well have used some crucial neat little trick which we simply cannot identify – it’s as though a message has been encrypted numerous times using different keys. Most of the keys are easily guessable (the equivalent of a simple Caesar shift), some of them need vast computational modelling (like PvP). Some, I venture, are effectively perfect, unbreakable one-time hashes. These, I suggest, are the crucial steps which can be characterised by Dennett’s phrase “…and then a miracle occurs”: if a computation exceeds the landauer Lloyd limit (http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v88/i23/e237901), one might as well call it a “miracle”.

So it may well be with this thing we call “consciousness”: the vast computer called biological evolution might yield outcomes which we can never decrypt. Think about how one might get a computer to feel pain. We could simply type a line IF input=X THEN Pain=100. But could that newly introduced variable “Pain” ever actually be pain as we know and viscerally hate it? Even if we make the sensors out of literal biological cells, their output will still only be an electrochemical action potential of a certain voltage. The development of those very cells themselves, together with those in the thalamus (or wherever else) might have required numerous evolutionary ad hoc (or the beautifully appropriate spoonerism odd hack) jumps which we will simply never appreciate, lost as they are in the noise of history. This is what I think Fodor meant when he said that even computational psychology at its most optimistic might not be any of the truth about consciousness.

Anyway, that’s my rather Eeyoreesque philosophical take on the matter. I truly hope that a neural network might one day embody (Lakoff’s favourite term) a syntactic computer-proper, given enough ingenuity from Digital and his colleagues (and, yes, I understand that back-prop was recognised as a dead end 20 years ago – layer upon hidden layer seems the utterly unpredictable way forward). But, for now, just filling in the feasibly fillable gaps is an eminently noble endeavour, so best of luck Dig.

[Digital Stimulus]

Guys, guys, I only just know what these are. I’m not even sure what they’re capable of or not, and certainly can’t comment on how ‘promising’ each might be.
Right. But personally, I'm not necessarily looking for an expert's evaluation; I admit my ignorance in relation to many of the topics and hope that any tidbits thrown my way might fill in the blanks. At the same time, I fully understand not wanting to hold forth on something one knows little about (although it doesn't seem to stop me for the most part :D ).
So, what I appear to have kicked off here is a discussion of how far down top-down (ie. syntactic CTM proper) gets these days and how far up bottom up (connectionist neural modelling) gets us.
Which appears to be one of the major strengths of ART; Grossberg mentions that he's given a mathematical proof that top-down is required to keep bottom-up in line.
The key difficulty (nay, impossibility) in both quests strikes me as essentially being one of encryption (which I haven’t actually seen explicitly in my admittedly limited reading list – any suggestions?
You mean technical suggestions? Like something with formulas about how to calculate secure keys? It seems to me, from your description, that you have a firm grasp on "encryption as a metaphor for historical evolution".
But could that newly introduced variable “Pain” ever actually be pain as we know and viscerally hate it? Even if we make the sensors out of literal biological cells, their output will still only be an electrochemical action potential of a certain voltage.
So, I recently attended a seminar on "emergence for the reducto-phobe". As I said above, lack of knowledge doesn't usually stop me from making claims (qualified though they may be), and I did exactly that. I said that I didn't understand the issues involved -- it's not clear to me why people want to attribute causal efficacy to mental states that are separate from brain states. I also said that, taking my cue from Dennett, while such mental states are convenient for us to refer to and do some actual work (if not philosophical, at least communicative), they are not independent entities that have their own reality; rather they are reifications we create as shorthand to refer to physical states.

After that long introduction, finally, the link to what you've said. The philosopher of mind in attendance said, "If that's the case, then pain is fictitious and you should have no problem with me punching you in the nose." I don't get it; my response was that I didn't deny that pain was real, just that it's not separable and independent from our physical body. It seems close to a "philosophical zombie" argument in support of qualia. I've always had problems with that -- the immediate response from me is that it's a misdirection: no, you can't have a "zombie" that is an exact duplicate of a person except without qualia. I'm still looking for a simple case as to what the issues are.

So, I think that's squarely in the philosophical realm. Any help?

[SentientMeat]

You mean technical suggestions?God, no, I read them for a living! (Telecomms patents, amongst other things). I meant, as you say, multiple encryptions as a metaphor for the explanatory steps we're seeking in the emergence of life, cognition or whatever from non-life, non-cognition or non-whatever. Dennett was in Cardiff last year doing a lecture on Freedom Evolves but, damn, I missed it.
I said that I didn't understand the issues involved -- it's not clear to me why people want to attribute causal efficacy to mental states that are separate from brain states.Oh, of course - it's abhorrent proto-panpsychic dualism through and through, the equivalent of positing an elan vital separate from physical processes in cells. But we understand mental states intuitively, whereas configurations of neuron fire just seem too far away from mental states to some that they despair of ever explaining one in terms of the other like we do with life and molecules.

And this is another place where I think wires are easily crossed. “Reduce” is a very ambiguous word (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7152662&postcount=38). Is it my position that mental states ultimately are (in philosophy terms “supervene on”) physical (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/) states? Yes. Is it my position that mental states can be reduced to physical states? Ah, therein lies the Challenge. And my answer is therefore not yet, and maybe never.

So, what you are seeing from such dualists in these debates is a kind of Mind of the Gaps – they mighn’t like the dualism either but it’s just an easier port in the current storm than the utterly unsatisfactory (to them) explanations provided by cognitive science to date.
my response was that I didn't deny that pain was real, just that it's not separable and independent from our physical body. It seems close to a "philosophical zombie" argument in support of qualia. I've always had problems with that -- the immediate response from me is that it's a misdirection: no, you can't have a "zombie" that is an exact duplicate of a person except without qualia. I'm still looking for a simple case as to what the issues are.Hey, I’m right with you there, brother. Again, I think Dennett explores the issues very well in this classic essay (http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/quinqual.htm), in which he uses various ‘intuition pumps’ to eg. demonstrate that, given what we know about the brain and what some philosophers say of qualia, there could be cases wherein you couldn’t experience your own qualia! In short, if someone says that they can imagine such a zombie, they’re not imagining hard enough.

So I, too, think that philosophers need to reword their objections if they don’t want to sound like 19th century vitalists. But that is not to say that there aren’t major objections worth making, especially on these subjects of reduction, explanation, scope and limits. I think that chap in your lecture should have asked what it is about our biological computer which makes pain painful instead of merely being a simple flag-up of some input signifying damage to the apparatus (which can be ignored). It is the difference between being punched in the nose and being shot in Doom – both involve signals of “damage” being received and processed in offal, but only the signals received at offal called the “thalamus” hurts. I suspect that no matter how closely we study that particular offal, we will not find any distinguishing characteristic which explains this difference. It will be as though the answer will have been strongly encrypted by its historical development. We would just have to shrug and say “evolution done it” - again, a page in the book How The Mind Got That Way rather than Actually Works.

[other-wise]

All-You-Can-Eat (sorry) Zombie Resources (http://consc.net/zombies.html)

(Personally, I've never liked Chalmers take on Zombies. I find more of interest in
Jaron Laniers (http://www.well.com/user/jaron/zombie.html) work, despite his, er, informal style of discourse.)

[Digital Stimulus]

And this is another place where I think wires are easily crossed. “Reduce” is a very ambiguous word (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7152662&postcount=38).
I have to confess that I threw out the terms "reductionist" and "eliminitavist", which kinda set the philosophers on edge. :D At the same time, I did preface it with a "I'm most likely using these terms incorrectly..."
I think that chap in your lecture should have asked what it is about our biological computer which makes pain painful instead of merely being a simple flag-up of some input signifying damage to the apparatus (which can be ignored).
So, there's another example (stolen shamelessy from someone in my office) that I think is better for these purposes. (And I go into this not looking for answers necessarily, but just for discussion.) Pain is really not such a good example of a non-physical mental state, as it has obvious physical ties. What about a data structure? That is, a purely conceptual...um...thing...that we can talk about, assign properties to, etc. Clearly, we can use and manipulate such symbols (in the loose, non-syntactic sense); how can this be? It seems to me that such mental states (i.e., concepts) need to be characterized in a functionalist sense. But certainly, that's merely descriptive and not explanatory.

Furthermore, as this came up as an afterthought to that seminar I mentioned, does it make sense to talk about such a thing being causally efficacious? Would it make sense to deny some mental states (e.g., a data structure) efficacy, but not others (e.g., intentions)? Or am I perhaps making a category error, falling into a pseudo-dualist trap in which I'm assigning mental states the properties and qualities that I'd deny in other circumstances? This is all fairly murky to me, as I think my philosophy of mind isn't as robust as it needs to be...

[Digital Stimulus]

I should preface this with a note that I'm not trying to be insulting (especially not personally), but I am trying to be disagreeable enough to provoke a response.
I find more of interest in
Jaron Laniers (http://www.well.com/user/jaron/zombie.html) work, despite his, er, informal style of discourse.)
Perfect example of why I generally avoid Laniers' work. It seems like there might something of merit buried in there somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

He has a problem with Dennett, that's for sure, and it seems science in general (at least, as normally practiced). Is he a pantheist? A continental philosophy disciple? A "clever" person who takes delight in mental masturbation? A near-total knob? It's not clear to me (well, except that last).

It looks to me like he's deperately clinging to obfuscation in an effort to retain his self-importance -- and what I mean by "self-importance" is the primacy of egocentric experience to the point of arrogant, yet adolescent, stamping of feet and gnashing of teeth meant to proclaim to the world "Not only am I unique, but I'm important!".

But what do I know -- after all, you can't argue with a zombie, and I'm most definitely a zombie.

Do I misunderstand? Can you decipher what he's talking about?

[DSeid]

Dig:Is it clear that there are innate prototypes? I'd assume that they'd have to be genetically encoded; is there evidence of this?There is no clear path from gene to prototype but there are clear hardwired starting points. Most simply there are the hardwired tendency to complete borders, etc. that lead to various perceptual illusions; these are very much the imposition of prototypes upon experience. And of course there are easy higher level examples. We are wired from birth to respond to certain stimulii preferentially. The tendency, for example, to respond preferentially to facial features, and to particular smells, is inate. These are fairly low level matches that are made automatically. From there we develop an association of those stimulii with warmth, comfort, and being fed, and we associate the particular facial features, and the particular smells, along with other features like voice, into a higher level prototype that we eventually learn to identify as "Mom". "Mom" perhaps is not, in itself, an inate prototype, but the lower level matches are, and they unavoidably set up the sequence that results in "Mom", albeit different precise prototypes, in most circumstances. To bring this back to the op, we are not blank slates; a blank slate is an inefficient item to be when some features of our environment will be predictable generation to generation and the best response to those predictable stimulii also consistent generation to generation. In that case the expense of behavioral flexibility would be a drain on resources. Behavioral flexibility is expensive; save it for that which both changes and for which different sorts of responses effect survival and reproductive success.For some purposes, non-biological models are just the right tool for the job, if you'll allow me some programmer-speak.Well sure. For some tasks catestrophic forgetting may be just what is needed. There is no need that an AI accomplish the goal in the same way as a human brain does. Modelling human function, figuring out how the brain works, and creating AI are not, per se, the same thing.

As to the philosophy side and zombies and qualia: If a zombie was me in every physical way then it is me. How would I prove that an AI experiences qualia? The same I prove that you experience qualia. .... Oh right. I cannot prove that you experience qualia, I merely assume so because you say you do and you are put together similarly to me. Consciousness will alway be a difficult bird to study because all we can do is measure correlates of what is reported as conscious experiences. Qualia and conscious experiences are not "things"; they are dynamic emergent processes.

Last, I can't help but promote ART just a little bit more. Once the basics are understood it is really a very simple and intuitive concept. Of course we always have a constant interplay between our expectations and our experiences, with our hypothesizing the rest of a whole from incomplete data and then being very primed to see what we expect to see. We do it from basic perceptual processes (see perceptual illusions) and we even do at societal levels. An example of the latter is the scientific method: data evokes a hypothesis and the hypothesis evokes a search for specific data that supports it; if we instead do not find it and find data that goes against it then we begin a search for another hypothesis that matches the data better. Functioning in a real environment always means functioning with incomplete information. We complete the pictures in our heads. What ART does is elucidate exactly how that process occurs and how and why we vary the degree of match we need (what vigilance is required).

[other-wise]

It looks to me like he's deperately clinging to obfuscation in an effort to retain his self-importance -- and what I mean by "self-importance" is the primacy of egocentric experience to the point of arrogant, yet adolescent, stamping of feet and gnashing of teeth meant to proclaim to the world "Not only am I unique, but I'm important!".No real argument here. Egoic bloviating aside, I still find Lanier’s comments on zombies more interesting than the Chalmers/Dennett exchange. Their marathon nit-picking through contrived minutia buried in layers of hypotheticals reminds me of two theologians arguing over whether Jesus’ sandals were brown or black, and the grave significance thereof.

My opinion on the matter is similar to DSeid’s; a being with brain and behaviors similar to mine would be conscious, with the caveat that there is no definitive test for consciousness, including Turing’s.

Still, the concept of zombies does raise interesting questions: we’re capable of some pretty complex cognitive processing, and even behavioral output, without conscious awareness. Makes one wonder why everything’s not just on auto-pilot.Do I misunderstand? Can you decipher what he's talking about?Well, for me, one interesting point was that just as there is no definitive, objective test for consciousness, there is no definitive, objective test for computation, either:
Any purported computer we study can be fully understood as a non-computational complex phenomenon. Computer science is unnecessary to explain the behavior of computers. Computers are simply pieces of the physical universe obeying physical laws. Everything a specific, physical computer can be observed to do can be understood without having to think of it as a computer. What makes a computer a computer is our way of thinking about its potential, not its observed actuality. Putnam, I believe, made a very similar argument. I tend to agree with Lanier’s observation that a Martian landing in my house might very well be unable to distinguish which appliance is the toaster and which is the computer.

Lanier also points out that in computer science, “information” is a concept that’s loosely defined and troublesomely subjective. There appears to be no objective criteria for differentiating information from noise.

[SentientMeat]

Pain is really not such a good example of a non-physical mental state, as it has obvious physical ties. What about a data structure? That is, a purely conceptual...um...thing...that we can talk about, assign properties to, etc. Clearly, we can use and manipulate such symbols (in the loose, non-syntactic sense); how can this be? It seems to me that such mental states (i.e., concepts) need to be characterized in a functionalist sense. But certainly, that's merely descriptive and not explanatory.Well, we're now squarely into philsophy of mathematics territory (have you read Lakoff and Nunez Where Mathematics Comes From BTW? Essential reading IMO), but I think the same objection applies. Put me in a brainscanner/imager and tell me to think about that data structure, and you'll again see physical activity just as if you'd punched me on the nose. The question remains: what is it about that activity in those neurons which makes it "conceptualising", when activity elsewhere is "pain"? The pain example is no less descriptive, really. Of course, I accept that that activity is what pain is, just as the cellular processes is what life is, but I hesitate to call it a complete explanation.
Furthermore, as this came up as an afterthought to that seminar I mentioned, does it make sense to talk about such a thing being causally efficacious? Would it make sense to deny some mental states (e.g., a data structure) efficacy, but not others (e.g., intentions)? Or am I perhaps making a category error, falling into a pseudo-dualist trap in which I'm assigning mental states the properties and qualities that I'd deny in other circumstances?Well, if you're a physicalist then no matter how abstract or 'conceptual' a mental state is, it must supervene on the neurons (or glial cells, or whatever). All thoughts or differences in mental state are ultimately physical changes, somehow.
But that is not to say we can, or will ever, identify the relevant physical changes: again, I think the encryption metaphor is useful. I suggest that some concepts can be characterised as an average of memories - eg. the 'concept of a tree' is based on all the trees you've ever seen in your lifetime. And since that encoding activity is now lost to history (since we didn't detect it back then in infinite detail), we've effectively lost the 'key'. The activity in your brain when you conceptualise trees is now no more decodable than the apparent white noise from perfectly encrypting coding.

This balance between what's innate and what comes from the environment is, of course, as old as philosophy itself (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/). (I strongly tend towards the latter, actually, but there clearly are innate modules which selectively act on some kinds of input exclusively, such as language and Cheater Detection, say.) You might remember this thread (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=304969&page=1&pp=50), in which I sought to estblish the physicality of visual memories. Visual cognition seems to me to be an important part of all kinds of 'thinking' - even communication. One reason I don't understand Chinese is because no utterance or written shape is associated with any memories of mine, whereas sentences in English can be mentally Photoshopped immediately (or, for the congentially blind, Cubased immediately or something, and for Helen Keller, ... errm patchwork-quilted together??). Saying that people can think in sentences might draw scorn from linguists and philosophers alike, but I don't see a problem with it.

[Digital Stimulus]

We are wired from birth to respond to certain stimulii preferentially. The tendency, for example, to respond preferentially to facial features, and to particular smells, is inate.
I suppose I could have worded my question better. It is not only obvious that there are top-down effects/constraints at work, but experiments support it (as does Grossberg's proof?). What I was really asking about was specifically the innateness; that is, are there experiments to back the assertion up? Sure, I've seen some results concerning infants and face recognition. Are we sure there's hard wiring going on and not statistical preference? If there is proof of literal hard wiring, are the mechanisms by which the wiring gets hardened understood?
Qualia and conscious experiences are not "things"; they are dynamic emergent processes.
Now, I might have an issue with this, but it might be due to semantics. Emergence implies a quality or characteristic that is not dependent on "lower levels" (e.g., "mental states" have properties and such that cannot be derived from neuronal function). I'm with Dennett on qualia; IMHO, they are chimeras.

[Digital Stimulus]

My opinion on the matter is similar to DSeid’s; a being with brain and behaviors similar to mine would be conscious, with the caveat that there is no definitive test for consciousness, including Turing’s.
The way I always read Turing's test is exactly as you describe; that is, the only sufficiently definitive test for intelligence/consciousness comes down to "it takes one to know one".
Well, for me, one interesting point was that just as there is no definitive, objective test for consciousness, there is no definitive, objective test for computation, either:

Lanier also points out that in computer science, “information” is a concept that’s loosely defined and troublesomely subjective. There appears to be no objective criteria for differentiating information from noise.
The problem is that Lanier doesn't want to claim there's a definitive anything. (*rub, rub, rub* Definitions? Pah -- they're for analytical philosophers. *stroke, stroke, stroke* Objects? No, no, you misunderstand; there's only waves. Unless you're talking about waves; then there's only physical reality. *whack, whack, whack* Consciousness? Oh, you must be a poor misguided zombie. *AAAH! Mental orgasm!*)

The thing is, there is a precise definition of information (see Claude Shannon). With that in hand, there is a precise definition of symbol, which in turn provides a precise definition of computation. Perhaps you mean semantics? Perhaps that would be better characterized as meaning? If you (or Lanier or Putnam...and I hesitate to question a giant like Putnam) are saying that informatin can have different interpretations -- and subjective ones, at that -- sure, I'll agree. But I'm not really sure what the objection is. Can you clear this one up for me?

[DSeid]

Dig, you are asking two things that really require overlapping answers. I'm at least not alone in my viewpoint. I'll quote a little from Edelman's Wider Than the Sky which I have really just begun to read*: "consciousness is a process, not a thing." (p.6 setting up the case that it is the pattern of activities that determine conscious experiences.) I believe that the search for a genetic marker of a prototype, or for specific hard-wiring of a prototype, is a categorical error. Analyzing specific neurons or genes will as fruitful to understanding the dynamics of consciousness as the analyzing of individual water molecules is to the understanding of wetness and of fluid dynamics in a vortex. The brain is a massively non-linear dynamic system subjected to external forces. Chaos theory tells us something about how to understand systems like this and about how not to. Attempts to follow the individual billiard balls are doomed to fail; attempts to understand which patterns are stable (attractor basins) and which are not, and how external pacers influence the systems are much more useful.** It is the dynamic pattern that matters even if the pattern is emergent from the individual bits. I can cite articles showing just how far rat barrel cortical cells can adapt to other stimulii and how far they cannot, or a host of other cortical wiring patterns that are "experience-expectant" (develop fully without experiential input) vs those that are "experience-dependent" (only develop fully with environmental inputs, idiosyncratic or otherwise) but that really doesn't answer the question I think. The appropriate level of analysis is higher than that, since the neuronal columns are not themselves prototypes any more than individual water molecules are flow.



*You had asked about Edelman visavis ART and consciousness. I'm not far enough yet to comment too much but so far his "dynamic reentrant interactions" do seem similar in form to what Grossberg would refer to as resonant circuits. ART just seems to be a bit more powerful of a conceptualization so far. I'll comment more as I get around to reading further.

**Chaos theory also tells us something else that I for one find fascinating: massively nonlinear systems have a tendency to be self-similar at different levels of analysis. Which theory shows that self-similarity tendency from basic perceptual processes to the societal level, eh?

[other-wise]

Disclaimer: I’m about to tread on very thin ice here. My knowledge of computer science/AI is sparse at best, and my readings of the subject were done quite awhile ago. Please treat whatever follows as tentative statements; perhaps even as inquiries.The thing is, there is a precise definition of information (see Claude Shannon). With that in hand, there is a precise definition of symbol, which in turn provides a precise definition of computation. Perhaps you mean semantics? Perhaps that would be better characterized as meaning?Yes, I was using the word “information” to refer to data content, not data transmission (IIRC, Shannon’s definition was strictly related to the latter, not the former). I apologize for not making my usage clear; in philosophy of mind, and especially in the Zombie Wars, I’ve frequently seen the two meanings used interchangeably, with predictably confusing results. If you (or Lanier or Putnam...and I hesitate to question a giant like Putnam) are saying that informatin can have different interpretations -- and subjective ones, at that -- sure, I'll agree. But I'm not really sure what the objection is. Can you clear this one up for me?I believe Lanier’s objection boils down to: one man's signal is another man's noise. Data isn't information unless it's interpreted as information. Interpretation implies subjectivity, and subjectivity implies subjective experience… which Zombies aren’t supposed to have.

[Digital Stimulus]

I'm pretty tired tonight, so I'm gonna keep this brief.
Well, we're now squarely into philsophy of mathematics territory (have you read Lakoff and Nunez Where Mathematics Comes From BTW? Essential reading IMO), but I think the same objection applies.
I haven't read it. But using numbers as the example occurred to me; to be honest, I just couldn't remember the appropriate term (ordinals?).
Put me in a brainscanner/imager and tell me to think about that data structure, and you'll again see physical activity just as if you'd punched me on the nose. The question remains: what is it about that activity in those neurons which makes it "conceptualising", when activity elsewhere is "pain"? The pain example is no less descriptive, really.
This does bring up all kinds of issues, though, doesn't it? (Out of my league, so an honest question.) For instance, semantic content. Isn't there some issue with identity also? Something about duplicating a person exactly, punching them both in the nose, and them experiencing the same brain states -- but, obviously, their pain is different, being "located" in different people.

I have to say, I'm pretty OK with leaving things at a functional description; after all, I do consider myself a physicalist. Although I would like a deeper explanation. And obviously, lots of people aren't OK with functionalism. More on that when I tackle a response to other-wise...
...but there clearly are innate modules which selectively act on some kinds of input exclusively, such as language and Cheater Detection, say.
I still question the innateness of language; note that I'm not claiming that language isn't innate, just that innate and hard wired are awfully strong terms. I see that DSeid's post deals with that more directly. Drat. I'll have to put it off until tomorrow. As far as understanding Chinese goes, I tend to think of the mind as adhering to it's own hermeneutic circle, at least as I understand more recent work in hermeneutics (i.e., not bible interpretation). That is, it's not a closed system, but does allow "input" that accretes via experience and learning, progressively giving rise to an expanded conceptual "library". Strange to find myself squarely in the contiental philosophy camp (*shudder*) in that regard.

Augh...it's too late and I'm too tired. Was that at all comprehensible?

[Digital Stimulus]

I believe that the search for a genetic marker of a prototype, or for specific hard-wiring of a prototype, is a categorical error.
That may be. More in a minute...
Chaos theory tells us something about how to understand systems like this and about how not to. Attempts to follow the individual billiard balls are doomed to fail; attempts to understand which patterns are stable (attractor basins) and which are not, and how external pacers influence the systems are much more useful.
So, as I mentioned earlier, along with Dennett, I agree that the terms we use (e.g., "pain", "intention", perhaps "hard-wired", which is what I'm questioning) are useful, allowing us to discuss...well...let's just say "things" that it wouldn't make a lot of sense to talk about in other ways. This is one of the reasons I brought up "data structure" above -- it is an abstract concept of just this sort, but we can most assuredly trace it back to it's elementary physical properties (i.e., wires on a circuitboard). I'm not sure if talking about these things at the "individual billiard ball" level is "doomed to fail"; rather, I think that while that level may be confusing and hide the properties or characteristics that we want to talk about, it's there nonetheless.
I can cite articles showing just how far rat barrel cortical cells can adapt to other stimulii and how far they cannot, or a host of other cortical wiring patterns that are "experience-expectant" (develop fully without experiential input) vs those that are "experience-dependent" (only develop fully with environmental inputs, idiosyncratic or otherwise) but that really doesn't answer the question I think.
The former (that is, "experience-expectant") is, I suppose, what I'm asking about. Very interesting. The question in my mind is whether we conflate the natural growth process with "innateness for" something. Perhaps there's not really a difference; perhaps it's just a manner of speaking. I'm not sure, but question it nonetheless.
You had asked about Edelman visavis ART and consciousness. I'm not far enough yet to comment too much but so far his "dynamic reentrant interactions" do seem similar in form to what Grossberg would refer to as resonant circuits.
Yes, the two struck me as being similar enough that I thought you'd appreciate the reference. Do post more about it as you get through it...

[Digital Stimulus]

Yes, I was using the word “information” to refer to data content, not data transmission (IIRC, Shannon’s definition was strictly related to the latter, not the former). I apologize for not making my usage clear; in philosophy of mind, and especially in the Zombie Wars, I’ve frequently seen the two meanings used interchangeably, with predictably confusing results.
No apologies necessary, so long as it's clear now. But the confusion is rampant and propagating, IMO, in Lanier's writing...
I believe Lanier’s objection boils down to: one man's signal is another man's noise. Data isn't information unless it's interpreted as information. Interpretation implies subjectivity, and subjectivity implies subjective experience… which Zombies aren’t supposed to have.
This is (one of) my issue(s) with Lanier -- he conflates various things in, actually, not so subtle ways. For instance, there seems to be no distinction in the essay to which you linked regarding "computer" and "program". Perhaps referring to -- what was it? the "metor shower"? -- as a "computer" was misguided and confusing to me. His essay is rife with such things. (*wank, wank, wank*)

Is it true that zombies aren't supposed to have subjective interpretations? That doesn't seem right to me -- I doubt sincerely that Dennett, that paradigm of zombieism, would deny it.

At any rate, the little reading I did in HTMW last night gave Pinker's view on some of this:
Information is a correlation between two things that is produced by a lawful process (as opposed to coming about by sheer chance)....Correlation is a mathematical and logical concept; it is not defined in terms of the stuff that the correlated entities are made of....We can reagrd a piece of matter that carries information about some state of affairs as a symbol; it can "stand for" that state of affairs....All we have is a carefully contrived chain of ordinary physical events, whose first link was a configuration of matter that carries information....a symbol carries information, and it causes things to happen....When the caused things themselves carry information, we call the whole system an information processor, or a computer.
He then ties this to Turing machines and algorithms, qualifying it in saying that the human is brain is not necessarily a Turing machine. He then sets up the notion of "virtual machine", but that's where I stopped.

At any rate, my question to Lanier might be -- does it really matter if information can be interpreted in various ways? If I have an encrypted data stream that I cannot decipher, is it not still information? Why is that an issue with the notion of computer?

[SentientMeat]

I believe Lanier’s objection boils down to: one man's signal is another man's noise.I'll just quickly comment on this: noise is Gaussian. Any statistical deviation from[i] a Gaussian distribution distinguishes itself from noise. Yes, at first glance the toaster and the PC just show some kind of activity or other, but if the aliens investigated both more rigorously and studied the outputs given various inputs, the PC would show statistical quirks in its outputs. Sure, they might waste time on all kinds of dead-ends like the cooling fan or the like but eventually, the aliens would look at the states of teh switches in the RAM and realise that the PC could be characterised by a working memory which, given a particular input configuration, could take on another output configuration in a repeatable, re[i]settable non-random manner. Now, they might very well never understand what any of that activity means (cometh once more the encryption metaphor!), but the activity clealy isn't random. The toaster, on the other hand, would just yield fan-like noise no matter how closely it was examined.

To extend the analogy, there's me in their lab, next to my first indentical triplet comatose and my second identical triplet dead. By studying the response to various inputs, they can distinguish that I'm processing the inputs in some statistically odd way, which the unconscious brother didn't (although further PET scanning migt yield such variations) and the dead one certainly didn't. Saying "there's no objective test for consciousness" is only as useful a statement as "there's no objective test for life" (or, indeed, anything).

[other-wise]

This is (one of) my issue(s) with Lanier -- he conflates various things in, actually, not so subtle ways. For instance, there seems to be no distinction in the essay to which you linked regarding "computer" and "program". Perhaps referring to -- whatwas it? the "metor shower"? -- as a "computer" was misguided and confusing to me. His essay is rife with such things. (*wank, wank, wank*)Let me just clarify something; I am by no means championing Lainer, I merely find the few points he makes (once you’ve unearthed them from the Ego-Lube) more interesting than the endless hair-splitting I’ve seen in most Zombie debates. Is it true that zombies aren't supposed to have subjective interpretations? That doesn't seem right to me -- I doubt sincerely that Dennett, that paradigm of zombieism, would deny it.From the website I linked to:Their defining feature is that they lack conscious experience, but are behaviorally (and often physically) identical to normal humans. (bolding mine)Conscious experience is inherently subjective experience (or at least, that seems to be the most widely-held view in Philo of Mind).At any rate, the little reading I did in HTMW last night gave Pinker's view on some of this:Here’s a quote from Richard Dawkins you might be interested in: There are aspects of human subjective consciousness that are deeply mysterious. Neither Steve Pinker nor I can explain human subjective consciousness -- what philosophers call qualia. In How the Mind Works Steve elegantly sets out the problem of subjective consciousness, and asks where it comes from and what's the explanation. Then he's honest enough to say, "Beats the heck out of me." That is an honest thing to say, and I echo it. We don't know. We don't understand it.-Richard DawkinsAt any rate, my question to Lanier might be -- does it really matter if information can be interpreted in various ways? If I have an encrypted data stream that I cannot decipher, is it not still information?It might be, or it might be meaningless gibberish, and that’s the rub… there’s no non-subjective way to tell which is the case. Why is that an issue with the notion of computer?I think the caveats are raised because, to the best of my knowledge, no one knows how information representation and processing works in people, let alone computers.

[other-wise]

I'll just quickly comment on this: noise is Gaussian. Any statistical deviation from[i] a Gaussian distribution distinguishes itself from noise. Yes, at first glance the toaster and the PC just show some kind of activity or other, but if the aliens investigated both more rigorously and studied the outputs given various inputs, the PC would show statistical quirks in its outputs. Sure, they might waste time on all kinds of dead-ends like the cooling fan or the like but eventually, the aliens would look at the states of teh switches in the RAM and realise that the PC could be characterised by a working memory which, given a particular input configuration, could take on another output configuration in a repeatable, re[i]settable non-random manner. Now, they might very well never understand what any of that activity means (cometh once more the encryption metaphor!), but the activity clealy isn't random.Well, a couple things here: first off, the whole question is whether pattern-detection is subjective and open to interpretation, and that certainly appears to be the case. I might detect a pattern where none exists (http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/cog_kanisza/index.html), or I might not detect a pattern where one does exist (http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/cog_blur_nosex/index.html). So might the aliens. Secondly, the non-randomness of a signal is no guarantee that it has meaningful content, and meaningful content is the issue here. To extend the analogy, there's me in their lab, next to my first indentical triplet comatose and my second identical triplet dead. By studying the response to various inputs, they can distinguish that I'm processing the inputs in some statistically odd way, which the unconscious brother didn't (although further PET scanning migt yield such variations) and the dead one certainly didn't. Saying "there's no objective test for consciousness" is only as useful a statement as "there's no objective test for life" (or, indeed, anything).Well, if the inputs were, say, aiming a megaphone at you and bellowing: “Angelina Jolie is waiting for you, stark naked, in the next room”, then yes, your response would show that you’re processing the input quite differently compared to your comatose and dead brothers. However, if the lab was run by Transylvanians and they bellowed in Romanian, the measurements of your input-processing wouldn’t be all that different from your brothers. To you, Romanian is noise, to the Transylvanians, it’s signal.

[SentientMeat]

I might detect a pattern where none exists, or I might not detect a pattern where one does exist. So might the aliens.Of course, which is why those aliens would need their paper to be peer-reviewed., like ours would be if we analysed their stuff.
Secondly, the non-randomness of a signal is no guarantee that it has meaningful content, and meaningful content is the issue here. Then that's effectively a mundane encryption issue, which I dealt with.
if the lab was run by Transylvanians and they bellowed in Romanian, the measurements of your input-processing wouldn’t be all that different from your brothers.I'd still make a noise and move in response to 20Hz-20kHz frequencies, while they wouldn;t. Again, meaning is a mundane 'encryption' issue, while "statistically interesting behaviour" isn't.
To you, Romanian is noise, to the Transylvanians, it’s signal.No, human utterances are not Gaussian noise, unless the entire language is one infinitely continuous sibilant s.

[other-wise]

Of course, which is why those aliens would need their paper to be peer-reviewed., like ours would be if we analysed their stuff.You mean peer-reviewed by other aliens with the exact same modes of perception and perceptual processing? How would those peer-reviewers detect a pattern the original aliens couldn't?
Then that's effectively a mundane encryption issue, which I dealt with. meaning is a mundane 'encryption' issue, while "statistically interesting behaviour" isn't.I either missed the reference or didn't understand it. How is meaning a mundane "encryption" issue?

[DSeid]

Yes, the two struck me as being similar enough that I thought you'd appreciate the reference. Do post more about it as you get through it...Okay, I've finished Edelman's book. First off my quibbles.

Despite my liking his phrasing of conscious experiences as a process, not a thing, I am dissatisfied with his portrayal of conscious experience being caused by the neurologic processes. To me the proper perspective is to consider issues of qualia/consciousness and issues of neuronal activity as different levels of analysis. I seem to recall that was Pinker's perspective as well.

I am also annoyed by his harping on his "the brain is not a computer" mantra. For a smart guy he has a limited conceptualization of computers: his image is exclusively a sequential processing device reading out some tape. Of course the brain is not a computer but obviously computers can be, and today sometimes are, parallel processing devices operating in massively nonlinear manners. His point is that the neurons are special; my view is that how the neurons are organized to produce and process representations of the world which includes its everchanging self is special, but not by definition restricted to neurons.

He also seems unaware of the importance of the cerebellum in cognitive function and in attention, although to be fair, that work may have been quite recent when he was formulating his concepts.

And his emphasis on "degeneracy", that is multiple paths that represent the same output, is nice, but he fails to make much of an evidenciary case for it, or to be convincing that such is necessary.

All that said, there is much of note in his presentation. I very much appreciate and respect his attempting to place the development of consciousness within an evolutionary context.

Most notable are the parts of his presentation that strike themes that others have (I believe independently) also espoused. I have of course already noted Grossberg's portrayal of conscious states as being resonant states and his computer modelling of how a brain does that with nested levels of processing. Much of Grossberg's work is not incompatible with Edelman's formulations albeit expressed in a more mechanistic fashion. But others have struck this resonance/reentrant circuit/strange loop theme as well. See, for example, this Patricia Churchland (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/296/5566/308?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=self+representation&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT) article in Science (again link is to the abstract, the quote is from the article but paid subscription required):Self-representations may be widely distributed across brain structures, coordinated only on an "as-needed" basis, and arranged in a loose and loopy hierarchy. .... The most fundamental of the self-representational capacities probably arose as evolution stumbled on solutions for coordinating inner-body signals to generate survival-appropriate inner regulation. .... An appealing hypothesis defended by Damasio (12) is that the self/nonself distinction, though originally designed to support coherencing, is ultimately responsible for consciousness. According to this view, a brain whose wiring enables it to distinguish between inner-world representations and outer-world representations and to build a meta-representational model of the relation between outer and inner entities is a brain enjoying some degree of consciousness. Thus, such a system could represent the relation between the thistle and itself as "that (outer) thing causes me (inner) pain." Conceivably, as wiring modifications enable increasingly sophisticated simulation and deliberation, the self-representational apparatus becomes correspondingly more elaborate, and therewith the self/not-self apparatus. On this hypothesis, the degrees or levels of conscious awareness are upgraded in tandem with the self-representational upgrades. And that "loopy" phrase may strike a chord to some of us: years ago Doug Hofstadter proposed (in Godel, Escher and Bach) that consciousness was the result of an information processing system having levels of "strange loops" which including its ever changing self as a member of the set of information that it analyzed. The more nested and self-referential these processing (resonant/reentrant?) loops were, the more conscious an information processing system would be. Edelman brushes against this Hostadteresque concept slightly as he attempts to explain how "C states" (the conscious experiences) smoothly follow each other (p122-123)linkage of C' [the underlieing neural processes that give rise to consciousness] states involves cyclic and concatenated reentrant interactions. Such "looped" an overlapping interactions would be favored over linearly connected dynamic circuits, even degenerate ones.So several trains of thought seem to be headed to the same station by different tracks. Makes one think that there may be something to it.

[Digital Stimulus]

Let me just clarify something; I am by no means championing Lainer, I merely find the few points he makes (once you’ve unearthed them from the Ego-Lube) more interesting than the endless hair-splitting I’ve seen in most Zombie debates.
No, of course not. But thank you for reminding me -- I was pretty careful in my original response to indicate that I was just provoking a response. In the course of discussion, I've stopped being quite so careful. Sorry about that.
Conscious experience is inherently subjective experience (or at least, that seems to be the most widely-held view in Philo of Mind).
Yargh, what the hell was I thinking? I had it in my head that "zombie == Dennett", not "zombie == person without qualia". Lainer successfully screwed me up...trying to assimilate his conflations set me up. I feel so dirty.
It might be, or it might be meaningless gibberish, and that’s the rub… there’s no non-subjective way to tell which is the case.
Hmm. There's an issue here that I think is due to yet another conflation. Lanier has an essay in which he is attempting to say -- what? There's no such thing as zombies? There are only zombies? The "zombie" concept is silly on its face because we can't identify other conscious beings, much less zombies? What?

Let's see...a zombie is a person without qualia. Would it be correct to say that Lanier equates consciousness with subjective experience with qualia? Let's say he does. Now he flips it (or shifts viewpoints): there is no objective (external?) test for consciousness (where consciousness is equated with information processing), as there's no objective test for information processing. But that last is silly, isn't it? Information is defined, essentially (although speaking loosely), as a changing signal. As SentientMeat points out, (white?) noise is gaussian. The fact that something can be identified as an information-giving process means that an information stream has been identified -- regardless of whether the information can be deciphered. (There's an interesting tie in to DSeid's introduction of chaos theory here; at either end of the spectrum -- be it a constant or totally random signal -- information is uninteresting. It's in the chaotic range that things get interesting. Also interesting, to my mind, is the notion of encryption as a transformation that makes a non-random and non-constant information stream appear to be more random than it is. Not a groundbreaking observation, but I never cast it quite that way before.)

So, then, my question is: Why does the (in)ability to decipher certain information streams invalidate the notion of consciousness? Or is Lanier simply ridiculing the notion of zombies? (If so, why not simply agree with Dennett?) Or, is Lanier simply making the (trivial) point that there are "things" we don't know?

[other-wise]

Yargh, what the hell was I thinking? I had it in my head that "zombie == Dennett", not "zombie == person without qualia". Lainer successfully screwed me up...trying to assimilate his conflations set me up. I feel so dirty.:) Yeah, I know what you mean. When other commentators set you up, they force you to take the wrong cards through smooth, skillful slight of hand. Lainer just throws the deck of cards in your face. Let's see...a zombie is a person without qualia. Would it be correct to say that Lanier equates consciousness with subjective experience with qualia?I don’t know, and for the record, I’ve never liked the concept of “qualia”. Sure, we need some label to even talk about this stuff, but the term is used so blithely and ubiquitously that it’s taken on an aura of legitimacy and definitiveness, even though it’s actual definition (“what it is like”) strikes me as horrendously vague.Information is defined, essentially (although speaking loosely), as a changing signal. As SentientMeat points out, (white?) noise is gaussian. The fact that something can be identified as an information-giving process means that an information stream has been identified -- regardless of whether the information can be deciphered. With your indulgence, I’d like to explore this a bit. How does one determine whether something is an information-giving process in the first place? (i.e., what criteria must an information-giving process meet? What criteria would disqualify it from being an information-giving process?)Also interesting, to my mind, is the notion of encryption as a transformation that makes a non-random and non-constant information stream appear to be more random than it is. Not a groundbreaking observation, but I never cast it quite that way before.)How does one tell the difference between a random data stream and an encrypted, non-random, non-constant information stream that only appears to be random?

I’d like to hold off on attempting to answer the rest of your questions (which frankly, I ain’t so sure I can answer at all) until I get your response to the above.

[DSeid]

I am now even more sure that I've made the right choice in not reading much on the Zombie wars, but do allow me to comment on noise from the perspective of intelligence. While white noise is, by definitiion, Gaussian, real-life noise is not usually. At least I do not think so. Noise is just that which gets in the way of understanding the meaning of the designated signal. It is irrelevant data that obscures what we are interested in. So, for example, in functional MRI (fMRI) studies of brains performing cognitive tasks, and in evoked response potential (ERP) studies of brain responses to various stimulii and processing demands, we average out responses over many trials. The noise cancels out and we are left with a true signal, but that noise is not necesarily Gaussian, it comes from a variety of coincident processes that are not the item of analysis: heartbeats, blood flow, muscle artifacts, other brain activity not in response to the task that is being analyzed. Those noises could in fact be signals themselves which I could analyze if I approached the data set differently. Likewise anytime my perceptual processes have a complete object not in view, blocked partially in someway, yet my brain completes the whole, it has dealt with noise.

Now whether this has anything to do with Zombie wars, I don't know ....

[Digital Stimulus]

How does one determine whether something is an information-giving process in the first place? (i.e., what criteria must an information-giving process meet? What criteria would disqualify it from being an information-giving process?)
Since I don't see the connection Lanier is trying to make, I'm flying blind as far as context for the question. In accord with what I said at some point earlier, I would say "information-giving process", at least in the way I think you mean it, be given a functional definition. The reason I qualify that statement in that way is that an unchanging signal does provide information of a sort -- we can interpret it as "nothing is happening", which is sometimes useful itself as information, although no information exists under the Shannon definition. So, strictly speaking, an information-giving process is not necessarily subjective, nor is it necessarily decipherable. But, in the way I think you mean it, it at least requires a subjective interpretation. One step further removed from the strict definition might very well require decipherability -- although I'd point out that the fact information is indecipherable might in and of itself also be useful information.

So, as to the criteria for disqualification as an information-giving process: if it does not adhere to the functional definition in use.
How does one tell the difference between a random data stream and an encrypted, non-random, non-constant information stream that only appears to be random?
I'm not sure that there's one method. For instance, by observing the packets transferred between computers, one might notice a cause / effect relation. In another scenario, one might find a stimulus / response relation (different, I think, due to the behaviorist baggage the word "stimulus" carries with it). On the other hand, identification of simple patterns -- either adherence to or deviation from -- can also be used to differentiate. I suppose one might characterize it as statistical, though there might be other viewpoints I'm not considering.

[Digital Stimulus]

I am now even more sure that I've made the right choice in not reading much on the Zombie wars,
Yes, they do get tedious. But they are somehow unavoidable, it seems.
Noise is just that which gets in the way of understanding the meaning of the designated signal. It is irrelevant data that obscures what we are interested in.
I think that illustrates the issue nicely. The word "information" is really easy to twist around. People try to make it do somersaults, and generally it just happily goes end over head. But, every so often, especially when we try to exert our dominance and attempt to force it to behave in the way we want, it goes off and runs madly about the room screaming bloody murder.

The point of that bit of anthropomorphism (beyond the fact that it amused me to write it) is that it seems to me the various ways in which people use the term are generally consistent. However, information (in the Shannon sense) may not be information (in the functional / interpreted sense); on the other hand, information (in the functional / interpreted sense) may not be information (in the Shannon sense).

I also don't know what impact this has on zombies (or more specifically, the arguments about them), as I just see the conflation without the point.

[DSeid]

More on noise.... Just a noisy thought, so to speak.

So I have a random number generator picking numbers zero to nine sequentially and transmitting them obscuring some other data. Noise? "Information"?



Now I am sequentially transmitting the digits of pi on top of the same data stream. How about now? Can you know the difference without already knowing pi or that the transmission world be pi?

[SentientMeat]

You mean peer-reviewed by other aliens with the exact same modes of perception and perceptual processing? How would those peer-reviewers detect a pattern the original aliens couldn't?Detect a statistically significant deviation from Gaussian noise? Why, just as we do in our studies of all kinds of phenomena: by repeating the observations numerous times and arguing whether or not it's significant or just wishful thinking.
I either missed the reference or didn't understand it. How is meaning a mundane "encryption" issue?Having demonstrated statistical significance, finding out what each signal represents might be fairly easy (the same input yields the same output each time), difficult or impossible, just like the Allied attempts to crack Enigma by repeatedly using known inputs. That is still an everyday, well-understood computational issue at heart.

Perfectly efficientcoing (from a one-time hash, say) is indistinguishable from noise. So, yes, an encoded or encrypted message could look like Gausiian noise. And, conversely, a signal which deviated from Gaussian noise could still not mean anything at all, like me making up nonsense words which still obeyed general rules of English pronunciation.

But, in principle, the aliens could notice we or our computers weren't outputting boring old noise and could learn English by flashing up pictures (or repeating inputs to the RAM) and seeing what outputs repeatedly came out. After all, this is just Roinson Crusoe an Man Friday learning mutual language by pointing and repeating.

[other-wise]

After reading DSeid’s post, I realize I might not be using the term “noise” correctly. I was under the impression it described either of two scenarios: If I transmit the message “We’re getting married!” to you, and you receive “W&$e’r^(e %ge*@tt(@#in@#$g 2M##a%#$rr)(r#^*ie$%d!”, the extraneous symbol-crap would be considered “noise”. And if I transmit the message “#%%$ &^&^ #@# **%*” to you, you would:
A) Recognize the code and decode it, or
B) Be unable to determine whether the signal contained meaningful content or whether it was just “noise” that looked like it might be a signal.
So, strictly speaking, an information-giving process is not necessarily subjective, nor is it necessarily decipherable. But, in the way I think you mean it, it at least requires a subjective interpretation. One step further removed from the strict definition might very well require decipherability -- although I'd point out that the fact information is indecipherable might in and of itself also be useful information.That’s one of the reasons I keep harping about the role of meaningful content in a signal. The fact that a signal is indecipherable might be useful information, but that’s information about the signal; it’s not the information encoded in the signal. And if the signal is indecipherable, there’s no way to tell whether the content of the signal is meaningful or just gibberish.So, as to the criteria for disqualification as an information-giving process: if it does not adhere to the functional definition in use.For encoded information to be functional, it has to be decoded, and I think that’s where the whole Zombie question comes in: I’m aware of the informational content of my consciousness, and it’s subjective (I’m the only one that is or can be aware of it). So what exactly is subjective awareness? And how does the encoding/decoding process occur?

[SentientMeat]

So I have a random number generator picking numbers zero to nine sequentially and transmitting them obscuring some other data. Noise? "Information"?

Now I am sequentially transmitting the digits of pi on top of the same data stream. How about now? Can you know the difference without already knowing pi or that the transmission world be pi?If we just receive numbers (ie. signal levels) from either a RNG or pi-generator, it's noise as far as we can tell. If we were allowed to repeatedly choose our own inputs and observe the subsequent outputs, we could tell if those outpts deviated from noise in any systematic way, implying information. If we were allowed to choose inputs which we knew represented specific things in the world, we might find out what that information meant.

But we could still be foiled by (near) perfectly efficient encoding, strong encryption or "worlds" so utterly unrecognisable that they shared no common element.

[Digital Stimulus]

For encoded information to be functional, it has to be decoded, and I think that’s where the whole Zombie question comes in: I’m aware of the informational content of my consciousness, and it’s subjective (I’m the only one that is or can be aware of it). So what exactly is subjective awareness? And how does the encoding/decoding process occur?
It seems to me that this just points to the silliness of the entire zombie concept. I'm not trying to be evasive or cut off discussion; I'm just not sure where to go with this...if prompted, I'll certainly try.

[SentientMeat]

For encoded information to be functional, it has to be decoded, and I think that’s where the whole Zombie question comes in: I’m aware of the informational content of my consciousness, and it’s subjective (I’m the only one that is or can be aware of it). So what exactly is subjective awareness? And how does the encoding/decoding process occur?If I may, again, briefly interject here, the issue is again one of encryption in memory formation. The initial stimilus, whatever it was (say, the preise pattern of reflected photons) acts as the perfect one-time hash private key, which only you are privy to. Everyone else can only see the neuronal activity caused by that past stimulus whenever the memory is reactivated.

So, subjective awareness is the reactivation of private-key-encrypted memories, and the "how" of the coding process is simply one of memory formation. (And as you remember from that "Memory is a Physical Thing" thread I referenced before, those neuronal pathways can break down if the memory is not 'rehearsed' often enough, such that the key, the initial stimulus, can no longer be generated distinctly from neuronal noise - I think it was Hoodoo who proposed such a scenario, which seemed to get everybody prematurely excited for a reason I never understood.)

[Digital Stimulus]

So, subjective awareness is the reactivation of private-key-encrypted memories, and the "how" of the coding process is simply one of memory formation.
Seems to me that there's a little more to subjective awareness than just memory, although I may not be properly accounting for your use of the term "memory" here. (I remember the thread you refer to, but don't remember the exact points brought up, whether or not I participated, nor do I have time right now to go back and skim it.) What I mean by that is that subjective awareness can have a sense of immediacy to it -- e.g., I'm very happy right now. The more visceral the emotion, say, the more immediate the subjective content. Of course, if one is including short-term (or working) memory, or if one includes the notion of resonance (as in ART, where "conscious == resonant"), then certainly I'd agree.

However, I (personally) think there's a more explanatory mechanism that is responsible, one which incorporates memories. Perhaps this is just a "by definition" point, and it raises lots of other questions, but "self-awareness" can be attributed to the notion of reflection -- defined as "being able to observe and reason about internal states". The mechanisms that we (humans) use to reflect on our mental contents (perhaps not all that well, nor all that completely) are exactly those responsible for subjective awareness.

An analogy for subjective experience (i.e., qualia) occurred to me last night after posting my response to other-wise. The question was, "So what exactly is subjective awareness?" My answer would be that it's an inherent result of (human) brain function. The analogy is: heat produced by a circuit. Resistance in a wire produces heat, due to the flow of electricity, during a circuit's operation. That's inherent in the operation -- not necessary to the circuit as an information device qua information device (although perhaps it is in practice? due to entropy, or physics, or somesuch?), but a by-product of the process. And I don't mean to trivialize subjective experience (i.e., it's just a "by-product"), as I think reflection is part of (again, perhaps by definition) the self-awareness ability that humans have.

[other-wise]

So, subjective awareness is the reactivation of private-key-encrypted memories, and the "how" of the coding process is simply one of memory formation. Can computers currently form private-key-encrypted memories and reactivate them?

[DSeid]

I am presuming that no one participating here believes that there is "a ghost in the machine"? Given that let me ask a few questions:

Are our experiences of qualia, consciousness, and a sense of "self" a function intrinsic to neurons acting in concert, or is it a function of the dynamic patterns of activities that those neurons engage in that result in a cognitive/emotional system that handles its data in such a way as to result in such an experience, patterns of activity that could, theoretically, be created by non-neuronal elements?

Now several different writers (from different perspectives and with different specifics), and some data, suggest that the particular ways in which this processing loops about itself is what results in the sense of subjective self with qualia and consciousness. Does this seem right to each of you?

Yet this subjective sense of a unitary self experiencing a world emerges out of many many individual elements: neurons are seperated from each other and just each doing their jobs, unaware (so to speak) of the consciousness in which they participate (I'll ignore glia et al for now). In my way of thinking, the brain is a massively nonlinear processing system and those principals of chaos theory come into play. In particular I am thinking of the tendency to self-similarity at different levels of analysis. If this is true, then neurons operating in subsystems are able to produce a certain level of awareness and those systems operating in concert are able, despite their communicating across some finite distance of time and of space, to result in a the experience of a unitary conscious subjective self. It follows that, without any particular intentional action to do so, those individuals brains acting in concert will also organize self-similarly, even though they as unaware of that than individual neurons are aware that they are participating in a single brain. Would such organization of many indidual brains also result in an emergent metaconsciousness operating on a different timescale with something selfsimilar to qualia of its own just beyond our individual comprehension?

[other-wise]

The question was, "So what exactly is subjective awareness?" My answer would be that it's an inherent result of (human) brain function. The analogy is: heat produced by a circuit. Resistance in a wire produces heat, due to the flow of electricity, during a circuit's operation. That's inherent in the operation -- not necessary to the circuit as an information device qua information device (although perhaps it is in practice? due to entropy, or physics, or somesuch?), but a by-product of the process. And I don't mean to trivialize subjective experience (i.e., it's just a "by-product"), as I think reflection is part of (again, perhaps by definition) the self-awareness ability that humans have.It sounds like (don’t let me put words in your mouth here) that you consider subjective awareness epiphenomenal; an effect that’s produced physically, but it’s basically just a by-product and does not itself produce any physical effects (a similar and frequently quoted analogy would be the steam from a locomotive: it’s produced by the train but has no effect on the train whatsoever).

[other-wise]

Are our experiences of qualia, consciousness, and a sense of "self" a function intrinsic to neurons acting in concert, or is it a function of the dynamic patterns of activities that those neurons engage in that result in a cognitive/emotional system that handles its data in such a way as to result in such an experience, patterns of activity that could, theoretically, be created by non-neuronal elements?I haven’t come across anything that would lead me to conclude that consciousness, whatever it is, is intrinsic to neurons and neurons alone, so I vote for your latter proposition.Now several different writers (from different perspectives and with different specifics), and some data, suggest that the particular ways in which this processing loops about itself is what results in the sense of subjective self with qualia and consciousness. Does this seem right to each of you?Yes, but I want to be careful not to conflate the sense of subjective self with consciousness; the two are not synonyms. The sense of subjective self is one of the things I’m conscious of. It follows that, without any particular intentional action to do so, those individuals brains acting in concert will also organize self-similarly, even though they as unaware of that than individual neurons are aware that they are participating in a single brain. Would such organization of many indidual brains also result in an emergent metaconsciousness operating on a different timescale with something selfsimilar to qualia of its own just beyond our individual comprehension?Damn interesting question. You might want to google “Global Consciousness” (or maybe it’s “Global Brain”). I recall encountering a few essays on this very speculation, most of which were fluffier than “What the bleep”, but a few were quite erudite and thought-provoking.

[SentientMeat]

Can computers currently form private-key-encrypted memories and reactivate them?Of course - the last time you resubscribed to the Straight Dope your computer used Public-Private Key cryptography. Now, like I say ad infinitum, the huma brain is different to the silicon one in your PC in all kinds of ways and so humn subjective awareness will differ from whatever subjective awareness a PC ever has. However, my point is that the private, ineffable aspect of this process called subjective awareness is a mundane computational matter at heart. Just because I can't access your (or your PC's) consciousness doesn't make consciousness any more myseterious than my not being able to read your credit details.

[other-wise]

Of course - the last time you resubscribed to the Straight Dope your computer used Public-Private Key cryptography. Now, like I say ad infinitum, the huma brain is different to the silicon one in your PC in all kinds of ways and so humn subjective awareness will differ from whatever subjective awareness a PC ever has.In what ways is my PC's subjective awareness different than mine? Also, since subjective awareness is private in both cases, how do you claim to know that they're different? Most importantly, how does your claim differ from panpsychism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism)?

[SentientMeat]

In what ways is my PC's subjective awareness different than mine?It's 'aware', if such a word applies, of completely different inputs. The signals which propagate from our sensorial equipment along these mushy, analogue channels called neurons are themselves very different to those propagating along the metallic channels of the chips, an the filtering and processing thereof yield yet more significant differences. When I look at my newsagent, the signal reaching my visual cortex is very different to that reaching the PC RAM of a digital photo of her.
Also, since subjective awareness is private in both cases, how do you claim to know that they're different?I don't claim to know anything for certain, but unless one wishes to entertain some kind of ludicrous pansychic equivalence, ascribing similar subjective awareness to a PC isn't so much different to ascribing it to a rock. It has working memory, unlike the rock, but the similarities largely stop there, so ascribing a similar whole process would be like drawing equivalence between the life of a plant and the life of a chimp.
Most importantly, how does your claim differ from panpsychism?Because it suggests a basis for 'awareness' that most things don't have: working memory.

[other-wise]

It's 'aware', if such a word applies, of completely different inputs. The signals which propagate from our sensorial equipment along these mushy, analogue channels called neurons are themselves very different to those propagating along the metallic channels of the chips, an the filtering and processing thereof yield yet more significant differences. When I look at my newsagent, the signal reaching my visual cortex is very different to that reaching the PC RAM of a digital photo of her.We’ve already established that when it comes to subjective awareness, the signal is irrelevant. What’s relevant is the information the signal encodes. For example, if I go to the store and see letters on a sign that say “We’re closed”, I’ll know not to bother trying the door handle. If a blind person touches the Braille dots on the same sign, she’ll get the same information, despite completely different sensory input and processing. Of course, the exact information and the meaningfulness of that information will be unique to each of us, but there is apparently enough similarity in the information we acquire (and it’s meaning to us) to produce the same behavior, i.e., not trying the door handle.

I can see that with computers and humans, there might not be enough overlap. But how is the awareness a difference in kind rather than merely a difference in content? After all, we’re shuffling physical particles around to encode memory too; our particles are just wetter.Because it suggests a basis for 'awareness' that most things don't have: working memory.I don’t see how one can reliably determine whether or not a working memory is in play. What measures would be used, given that a private-key-encrypted memory can be indistinguishable from noise?

[Digital Stimulus]

Are our experiences of qualia, consciousness, and a sense of "self" a function intrinsic to neurons acting in concert, or is it a function of the dynamic patterns of activities that those neurons engage in that result in a cognitive/emotional system that handles its data in such a way as to result in such an experience, patterns of activity that could, theoretically, be created by non-neuronal elements?
As I'm a firm believer in strong AI (most likely with some caveats, if pressed), most assuredly the latter.
Now several different writers (from different perspectives and with different specifics), and some data, suggest that the particular ways in which this processing loops about itself is what results in the sense of subjective self with qualia and consciousness. Does this seem right to each of you?
Yes, although I'm not sure "loops about itself" is enough. In other words, to agree without qualification might misrepresent my actual position.
...neurons operating in subsystems are able to produce a certain level of awareness and those systems operating in concert are able, despite their communicating across some finite distance of time and of space, to result in a the experience of a unitary conscious subjective self....Would such organization of many indidual brains also result in an emergent metaconsciousness operating on a different timescale with something selfsimilar to qualia of its own just beyond our individual comprehension?
And I think that that, in a nutshell, strikes close to my current line of research. I balk at using the word qualia, though, not just because I think the notion is silly, but also because what I'm currently doing is far from anything that might be considered that way. Especially since I don't work at the level of neurons, as that's too "low-level"; that is, it would take decades to implement various components of an intelligent system from the neuron level. Rather, my line of work is to make individual components "aware", put them in a planar graph relation or even a hierarchy of some sort, and provide the mechanisms by which "awareness" can propagate throughout the system, both in bottom-up and in top-down fashion.

[Digital Stimulus]

It sounds like (don’t let me put words in your mouth here) that you consider subjective awareness epiphenomenal; an effect that’s produced physically, but it’s basically just a by-product and does not itself produce any physical effects (a similar and frequently quoted analogy would be the steam from a locomotive: it’s produced by the train but has no effect on the train whatsoever).
Not exactly, which is why I made the attempt to qualify the term "by-product". There's a definite effect; I think I'd rather stick with "inherent in the process". I don't think you can divorce the subjective awareness from the physical substrate, so it's neither separate nor distinct from brain function.

[DSeid]

I'm not sure "loops about itself" is enough. In other words, to agree without qualification might misrepresent my actual position.
Which of course is why I said "the particular ways in which .." So what are your qualifications?

... my line of work is to make individual components "aware", put them in a planar graph relation or even a hierarchy of some sort, and provide the mechanisms by which "awareness" can propagate throughout the system, both in bottom-up and in top-down fashion.Now you know that you have to tell us more. I showed you mine, show us yours. Details my freind. How do you define "awareness" in your system, for example, and how would you measure it?

BTW, I've been thinking about how to implement my concept of analogy making as geometric transformations of fuzzy-edged n-dimensional conceptual objects. Would you, off-line, be at all interested in participating if it seemed doable and not too much effort? I think that if I presented it right, and brought on board someone like you who could both participate (in spades) on the conceptual side, and also on the implementation side, that I could possibly tempt Grossberg into another article ... called ARTanalogy perhaps. (I don't think that I entirely wore out my welcome, although I suspect that my lack of experience with the protocols of publishing preparation began to annoy after a bit. Being as it was aimed at audiences both clinical and theoretical and also being as it by necessity required convering both a large amount of background on autism research and a comprensive review of Grossberg's models ... well let's say we had a few more revisions required than he is used to having.) Let me know if you want the details of what I'm thinking; my e-mail link is part of my profile. (Alternatively I might have to eventually contact clinical experimentalists to follow up on our autism predictions ... and collaborating with them is a lot more work!)

[SentientMeat]

We’ve already established that when it comes to subjective awareness, the signal is irrelevant.Have we? I missed that meeting. I think it is entirely possible that the kind of signals which propagate through neurons are simply not reproducible by other means, thus possibly making all the difference in the world.
What’s relevant is the information the signal encodes. For example, if I go to the store and see letters on a sign that say “We’re closed”, I’ll know not to bother trying the door handle. If a blind person touches the Braille dots on the same sign, she’ll get the same information, despite completely different sensory input and processing. Of course, the exact information and the meaningfulness of that information will be unique to each of us, but there is apparently enough similarity in the information we acquire (and it’s meaning to us) to produce the same behavior, i.e., not trying the door handle.And I agree entirely that so subtle and ‘many-layered’ a communication might not be “understandable” by silicon for many decades yet. I’d suggest we stuck for the moment on car computers recognising road signs and taking appropriate action and the like, which is rather simpler.
I can see that with computers and humans, there might not be enough overlap. But how is the awareness a difference in kind rather than merely a difference in content? After all, we’re shuffling physical particles around to encode memory too; our particles are just wetter.It’s a threshold I’m drawing on the continuum of complexity, just as I could say that my life was more complex than that of an amoeba. If you disagreed, so be it.
I don’t see how one can reliably determine whether or not a working memory is in play. What measures would be used, given that a private-key-encrypted memory can be indistinguishable from noise?Statistical deviation from noise, as I’ve already explained. The aliens, given enough time, would find the RAM of the PC and see similar inputs becoming similar outputs repeatable and reliably in that configuration of physical particles. The encryption would just hamper their understanding of what those configurations referred to in the world (if anything).

[other-wise]

Not exactly, which is why I made the attempt to qualify the term "by-product". There's a definite effect; I think I'd rather stick with "inherent in the process". I don't think you can divorce the subjective awareness from the physical substrate, so it's neither separate nor distinct from brain function.Ok, I got confused because earlier you had said that it was a result of brain function and here you seem to be saying that it is brain function (and presumably, theoretically circuit function as well).

My questions here would be similar to Dseid’s; How do you measure awareness? How do you measure the effect of awareness? What function does awareness perform that can’t be performed by neuronal activity sans awareness?

[other-wise]

Have we? I missed that meeting. I think it is entirely possible that the kind of signals which propagate through neurons are simply not reproducible by other means, thus possibly making all the difference in the world.Well, since nobody knows how information is encoded in neural activity, the speculation that whatever it is, it may not be reproducible by other means is extraordinarily moot. And again, the issue is not the signal in se, but the meaningful content of that signal (if any).

Perhaps we’re getting our terminology crossed. When you say “kind of signal”, are you referring to the original input that the meaningful content of the signal is based upon?It’s a threshold I’m drawing on the continuum of complexity, just as I could say that my life was more complex than that of an amoeba. If you disagreed, so be it.Not sure what you’re saying here. Are you saying that amoebas have some subjective awareness, my PC has more, my brain has even more, and human communities and/or the internet may have even more, ala Dseid?
The aliens, given enough time, would find the RAM of the PC and see similar inputs becoming similar outputs repeatable and reliably in that configuration of physical particles. The encryption would just hamper their understanding of what those configurations referred to in the world (if anything).So any system that appears to be reliably producing similar outputs from similar inputs is guaranteed to have a working memory and is processing meaningful information. Is that correct?

[Digital Stimulus]

Which of course is why I said "the particular ways in which .." So what are your qualifications?
Well, my qualification is mostly due to the potential expansiveness of "looping about itself". The notion of feedback and stable states (which I'm linking to "looping") is definitely necessary. Which is why I like ART -- the resonance / vigilance mechanism is an elegant solution, made better by it's prediction of empirical findings. But without a more complete description, I can't determine the possible implications.
How do you define "awareness" in your system, for example, and how would you measure it?
First, a caveat: I'm approaching this from a computer science / engineering perspective. I think it'll be wholly unsatisfying as a philosophical stance, but I also think that in just the same way we leverage the (deceptively) simple process of computation to do a lot of work for us, so can a rudimentary characterization of "awareness" be built up into something surprisingly meaningful.

I think earlier I gave a definition of "reflection" as "the ability to observe and reason about internal states". "Awareness", at the level I'm talking about, might simply be characterized as a monitor of some sort. But not a monitor as in a sensor (e.g., a photovoltaic cell that detects light), but something that can detect the state of another part of the system (e.g., in the simplest case, a toggle that indicates that the photovoltaic cell has detected light). I see little reason to discount extending it to more abstract...um...things. (Actually, as an aside, I think the way people generally use the term "reflection" assumes self-awareness, turning it on its head in a form of question begging.)

Measuring it, in a generic sense, is a tricky business. I believe there's a whole subfield of control theory (or cybernetics) devoted to exactly that. How can we tell an oscillating signal (worse, a chaotic signal) is not functioning appropriately? Is it possible to determine proper function of a black box solely by looking at its input / output couplings? And those questions are made infinitely more difficult when we're guessing about (or reverse engineering) the subject matter under examination. At this point, that's out of my area; in general, I have to be satisfied with explicitly assuming (or, if I'm designing the thing, defining) the boundary conditions. As I say, unsatisfying when discussing the wonder of consciousness, but it's one avenue into the system that'll hopefully pay off.

[SentientMeat]

Well, since nobody knows how information is encoded in neural activity, the speculation that whatever it is, it may not be reproducible by other means is extraordinarily moot. And again, the issue is not the signal in se, but the meaningful content of that signal (if any). I’m suggesting the two issues may not be separable: read on. When you say “kind of signal”, are you referring to the original input that the meaningful content of the signal is based upon?No, the entire process which takes place, given the enormous feedback we know occurs in our sensory processing. What feedback means is that, for any signal, there is then a little bit of processing of it, which modifies the next portion of signal, which is then processed again, ad almost infinitum. The massively parallel processing which takes place in biological brains might simply not be anything other than merely approximated by silicon devices due solely to the weird, poorly understood analogue nature of the channels themselves.
Are you saying that amoebas have some subjective awareness, my PC has more, my brain has even more, and human communities and/or the internet may have even more, ala Dseid?OK, there’s two words here: subjective and awareness, and were getting caught up in conflating aspects of one or the other. My privacy and encryption arguments concerned the subjective aspect. We’re now talking more of what counts as awareness and what doesn’t. I’m suggesting a threshold based on working memory, which I can’t really say an amoeba has at all. I don’t count human communities as having one, either, - they’re rather separate working memories: a multitude of awarenesses, if you like. The PC just about has some kind of working memory containing inputs with some “relevance to the world”, but the processing thereof is so meagre that it can just barely be said to be ‘aware of’ those inputs, rather like an insect’s brain, say.

So, my ‘awareness’ thresholding, which you can of course consider arbitrary and absurd if you like, goes rock: none; amoeba: none; PC: just about some; human: lots; human community: none. Similarly, you might say regarding life, rock: none; virus: just about some; amoeba; yes, etc.
So any system that appears to be reliably producing similar outputs from similar inputs is guaranteed to have a working memory and is processing meaningful information. Is that correct?Reliable processing of inputs to outputs is what I’m suggesting comprises working memory, yes, but those inputs aren’t necessarily meaningful, no. Like I said, the inputs can statistically deviate from noise (ie. be information) but still be nonsense (ie. not be meaningful), like me making up words which still obeyed general rules of English pronunciation (such that the strings weren’t absolutely random, most of which you simply couldn’t pronounce).

[Digital Stimulus]

Ok, I got confused because earlier you had said that it was a result of brain function and here you seem to be saying that it is brain function (and presumably, theoretically circuit function as well).
Sorry about that. I try to qualify things and provide context, but am not always successful. I'm not sure where the line gets drawn between "result of" and "inherent part of" brain function. One thing that needs to be accounted for is the structure and complexity of the system (echoing SentientMeat's sentiments). That is, while snails (I forget the genus/species of the particular example I'm thinking of) have brain function, I'm not sure anyone would attribute self-awareness to them, much less consciousness (in extremely rudimentary form). And yet, they have neurons just as we do.

I'd contend that there's a continuum along which awareness (or self-awareness, or consciousness) arises as part of (or a result of) brain operation. One benefit of this is that it provides some sort of answer to the question "is a snail / fish / chipmunk / monkey / human self-aware?" Well, if you mean "self-aware" like a human, then only humans are (with caveats about degnerate cases like persistent vegitative states). If you mean "self-aware" like a monkey, then perhaps humans are too. If you mean "self-aware" like a snail, then maybe, maybe not. These answers also depend on how strictly you mean "self-aware like X"; can humans know what it's like to be a bat? Not exactly, but we have some idea of what it would be like. There's an essay by Aaron Sloman (http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/misc/like_to_be_a_rock/rock.html) that you might find interesting that examines this question.
My questions here would be similar to Dseid’s; How do you measure awareness? How do you measure the effect of awareness? What function does awareness perform that can’t be performed by neuronal activity sans awareness?
See my response to DSeid. Is that adequate?

[other-wise]

No, the entire process which takes place, given the enormous feedback we know occurs in our sensory processing. What feedback means is that, for any signal, there is then a little bit of processing of it, which modifies the next portion of signal, which is then processed again, ad almost infinitum. The massively parallel processing which takes place in biological brains might simply not be anything other than merely approximated by silicon devices due solely to the weird, poorly understood analogue nature of the channels themselves.Feedback only confirms that meaningful content is the issue that still needs to be dealt with. After all, if the signal had no meaningful content, it couldn’t be processed: no processing, no feedback. Also, if feedback “modifies the next portion of signal”, then it’s no longer the same signal; it’s effectively a new signal and we’re right back where we started.

But no worries; we can run with the idea that PCs may only approximate the subjective awareness humans have. However, that addendum (along with the addendum I address at the end of this post) disembowels your original answer: So, subjective awareness is the reactivation of private-key-encrypted memories, and the "how" of the coding process is simply one of memory formation. … leaving my original question (below) unaddressed.

OK, there’s two words here: subjective and awareness, and were getting caught up in conflating aspects of one or the other. My privacy and encryption arguments concerned the subjective aspect. We’re now talking more of what counts as awareness and what doesn’t.Well, I have to admit I’m very interested in exactly what non-subjective awareness would be like. What is its nature? What properties distinguish it from subjective awareness? How do you measure non-subjective awareness?
Reliable processing of inputs to outputs is what I’m suggesting comprises working memory, yes, but those inputs aren’t necessarily meaningful, no.Since the inputs into my working memory are meaningful, you still haven’t even addressed my original question: I’m aware of the informational content of my consciousness, and it’s subjective (I’m the only one that is or can be aware of it). So what exactly is subjective awareness? And how does the encoding/decoding process occur?

Maybe it would be easier if I highlighted what I see as the main problems with the following scenario/questions:

In order to become aware of something visually, photons have to enter my eye and be absorbed by receptors in my retina. At this point, any information the light energy carries has been encoded as electro-chemical energy.

Sometimes the information triggers behavior on my part before I become aware of the information, if I become aware of it at all (There are so many examples of this in the literature that I assume there is no need for me to dig up references). Sometimes, however, I do become aware of (at least some of) the information (“Hey, look, it’s a poodle!).

So in one case, some sort of neural activity is able to decode a sensory signal as having enough meaningful content to trigger behavior without awareness on my part.

In another case, however, some sort of neural activity is able to decode a sensory signal (not necessarily the same signal of course, but one that necessarily encodes at least some of the original information) as having meaningful content that I am aware of.

So… is the first case a case of subjective awareness even though there is no awareness on my part? If so, how is that determined? What’s your best guess as to what exactly is aware?

In the second case, what measurable difference is there between the neural activity that’s my awareness and the neural activity that’s not, considering that the neural activity that’s my awareness is information that is unbreakably encrypted, and to anyone but me, indistinguishable from noise?

In this second case (and possibly the first), I can’t see that there is any way to physically discern between neural activity that is my awareness, and neural activity that is not.

[other-wise]

See my response to DSeid. Is that adequate?Yeah, mostly, but with the same caveat I gave DSeid: Awareness and self-awareness are not synonyms. A sense of subjective self is one of the things I’m aware of.

[SentientMeat]

Feedback only confirms that meaningful content is the issue that still needs to be dealt with. After all, if the signal had no meaningful content, it couldn’t be processed: no processing, no feedback. Hang on, what? Why can’t a signal which deviates from Gaussian noise not still be processed regardless of it representing something in the world or not? Are you sure you’re talking, like I am, about signal processing in telecommunications terminology?
Also, if feedback “modifies the next portion of signal”, then it’s no longer the same signal; it’s effectively a new signal and we’re right back where we started. By that criterion, there’s no such thing as a signal at all, since voltage/action potential levels must change with time in order to carry information: an infinite string of zeroes is not a “signal” as such.
But no worries; we can run with the idea that PCs may only approximate the subjective awareness humans have. However, that addendum (along with the addendum I address at the end of this post) disembowels your original answer:
(“So, subjective awareness is the reactivation of private-key-encrypted memories”) Sorry, I though I’d clarified the context with the immediately preceding sentence: “Everyone else can only see the neuronal activity caused by that past stimulus whenever the memory is reactivated.”
Perhaps a few more italics will be helpful:
subjective awareness is the reactivation of private-key-encrypted memories. (I’m not, of course, suggesting that awareness is solely memory reactivation. In fact, I’m not really addressing the “awareness” part of the phrase “subjective awareness” here at all - that’s rather a threshold for you to draw yourself wherever you dare, as I said in subsequent posts.)
Well, I have to admit I’m very interested in exactly what non-subjective awareness would be like. Me too, but this is rather a bifurcation. If we were talking about what constitutes or explains biological life, an exclamation of interest in nonbiological life would rather come out of left field, so to speak. For what it’s worth, if “awareness” is based on inputs to working memory which somehow relate to things in the world, then two devices whose inputs and associated connections therebetween (as per connectionism, referenced earlier) were identical might be said to have the exact same awareness, such that neither shielded anything from the other by any encryptive process whatsoever. The word “subjective” might make less sense in this case, since both devices could experience exactly the same rather than the differences necessitated by biological devices, which simply cannot be identical. But, like I say, this is rather unfocussed jazz-improv debating if you ask me.
How do you measure non-subjective awareness? Whoa, where did this come from? If awareness (subjective or not, but let’s put that aside) is a process, then the “measurements” we can make are not things like “weight” or “hardness”. Processes are measured in other terms (like, for a start, whether they’ve happened or not according to some demonstrable outcome.)
Since the inputs into my working memory are meaningful Not all of them: Spendle crarm debensier pinogrets. Read that sentence a few times: input it to your working memory. It is not meaningful.
So… is the first case a case of subjective awareness even though there is no awareness on my part? If so, how is that determined? What’s your best guess as to what exactly is aware?Ah, right – yes we’re a long way from what I was talking about with Digital here. We’re now full square in the enormously complex quicksand of human consciousness/awareness, and if the threshold of what counts as awareness is raised so very, very high, then it’s as though you’re asking me to explain sociology in terms of cells or something. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the ‘awareness’ in the first case is so ‘faint’ compared to the “full” awareness which succeeds it that the “you” which such processing comprises is statistically almost totally the latter (ie. if, somehow, the initial stimulus-response could be disconnected from the rest of the neural activity, “you” could be said to be aware of it, given that “you” would be more like an insect than a human). But we’re well into the weirdness of blindsight and the like here, so I don’t make any particular claims about what’s explained and what isn’t, because so much isn’t. (Just like any other science has gaps, of course.)
In the second case, what measurable difference is there between the neural activity that’s my awareness and the neural activity that’s not, considering that the neural activity that’s my awareness is information that is unbreakably encrypted, and to anyone but me, indistinguishable from noise?You mean, what measurable difference is there between noise-activity and unbreakably encrypted activity? None. I never said you could “measure” such attributes of activity as whether or not they constituted “awareness”, which is why I was surprised by what came from left field earlier (although heterophenomenology could be said to constitute such measurements, I suppose - see next).
I can’t see that there is any way to physically discern between neural activity that is my awareness, and neural activity that is not.For other people than you? Of course there isn’t. I’m just trying to couch that in everyday computational terms so that it doesn’t become this big scary “mystery” everyone bangs on about. Not being able to "physically measure" something directly is irrelevant - so long as there are still physically detectable consequences then we're OK, it's still science. In cgnitive science, the only way other people can reliably tell what activity you’re aware of or not is by asking you (http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/JCSarticle.pdf) repeatedly in controlled conditions (ie. the physical measurement being an audibly uttered "yes" or the like).




Actually, o-w, I’ve been reading some past threads and I think it would be helpful for just the two of us to discuss a whole load of simpler things we have somehow got rather confused over in the past. If I set forth a fairly general OP, will you have time to take part?

[Digital Stimulus]

Yeah, mostly, but with the same caveat I gave DSeid: Awareness and self-awareness are not synonyms. A sense of subjective self is one of the things I’m aware of.
Good, I'm glad it fit the bill. The only additional thing I'd posit in response is that "self-awareness" is similar in kind to "awareness" (at least, as I described it earlier) -- just at a different "level" (in quotes to signify that it's not at all clear right now what comprises a "level").

[other-wise]

Sentient

bah. We’ve been talking past each other again. I was assuming (not unreasonably, I think) that everything we’ve discussed since post #79 was, directly or indirectly, ultimately in reference to human subjective awareness.

Look, here’s the problem, boiled down to the best of my ability:

Light enters your eyes, sound waves enter your ear and we can (in principle) observe the resulting complex cause and effect cascade of neurons firing, glands excreting, muscles twitching and lips moving. And that’s it.

So where’s the awareness? As you say, the only way to find out is to ask, and even then, according to the heterophenonomenologists, the best you get is an abstraction; a story about what the subject believes about their awareness. Heterophenonomenology remains agnostic as to whether awareness really is how it seems to be to the subject.

But that’s not the issue here. The issue isn’t whether awareness is what it seems to be, but that there is any awareness, any “seeming” at all.

What physical purpose does awareness serve? You say that “Not being able to physically measure" something directly is irrelevant - so long as there are still physically detectable consequences… ”. Well, that’s the question: What are the physically detectable consequences of awareness?

If neurons can process sensory information in ways that result in physically-detectable behaviors without awareness, what physically detectable consequence does awareness add?

Even if awareness does have some physical effect, how could we tell, even in principle, if that effect is different, or even separate from, the effects we already observe, since there’s no third-person way to measure (in a given brain) a difference between neural “noise-activity” and the “unbreakably-encrypted activity” associated with awareness?

Actually, o-w, I’ve been reading some past threads and I think it would be helpful for just the two of us to discuss a whole load of simpler things we have somehow got rather confused over in the past. If I set forth a fairly general OP, will you have time to take part?That’s probably a good idea, and I think I should have the time. (I’m waffling because a couple of work-related projects have gone vampiric on me: twice now I’ve driven a stake through their hearts, dusted off my hands and walked away, only to get an email informing me they’ve risen from the dead and are heading straight for my throat.)

[SentientMeat]

What are the physically detectable consequences of awareness?Like I said, the compression-rarefaction of the air comprising an utterance "yes, I was aware of that". (Again, that physically detectable consequence can come from all kinds of apparatus, so we have to design our experiments carefully for them to be useful.)
If neurons can process sensory information in ways that result in physically-detectable behaviors without awareness, what physically detectable consequence does awareness add?Different answers in heterophenomenological (HP) tests (eg. frigid versus frightening in that example I linked to).
Even if awareness does have some physical effect, how could we tell, even in principle, if that effect is different, or even separate from, the effects we already observe, since there’s no third-person way to measure (in a given brain) a difference between neural “noise-activity” and the “unbreakably-encrypted activity” associated with awareness?Ignoring third-person measurements (a la HP tests), who said there has to be one? My point is that computational encryption explains the difficulties in such measurements, and so an absence of a physical telltale which distinguishes aware activity from non-aware activity is no more serious a flaw in cognitive science than not being able to measure, say, the life itself in biological science, the Uncertainty itself in quantum mechanics or the climate change itself in climate science. Hypotheses in these sciences are still falsiied and verified based on things we can measure.

That’s probably a good idea

OK, give me a couple of days.

[other-wise]

Like I said, the compression-rarefaction of the air comprising an utterance "yes, I was aware of that". (Again, that physically detectable consequence can come from all kinds of apparatus, so we have to design our experiments carefully for them to be useful.)Exactly. So what HP test design would allow one to determine whether or not an apparatus was aware solely by a compression-rarefaction of air comprising an utterance "yes, I was aware of that"?
Different answers in heterophenomenological (HP) tests (eg. frigid versus frightening in that example I linked to).What? The subjects in that hypothetical HP test didn’t give different answers, they gave the same answer: “I do not remember being aware of the stimulus”. In the HP “frigid versus frightening” test, A and B are both examples of a subject reporting a lack of awareness. How does that show me what physically detectable consequence awareness adds?Ignoring third-person measurements (a la HP tests), who said there has to be one? My point is that computational encryption explains the difficulties in such measurements, and so an absence of a physical telltale which distinguishes aware activity from non-aware activity is no more serious a flaw in cognitive science than not being able to measure, say, the life itself in biological science, the Uncertainty itself in quantum mechanics or the climate change itself in climate science. Hypotheses in these sciences are still falsiied and verified based on things we can measure.If there’s no physical telltale to distinguish aware activity from non-aware activity, what is the justification for deriding panpsychism as ludicrous, especially when we know that some activity is patently aware?OK, give me a couple of days.Looking forward to it (we can move this over there or just start fresh, if you prefer)

[SentientMeat]

Exactly. So what HP test design would allow one to determine whether or not an apparatus was aware solely by a compression-rarefaction of air comprising an utterance "yes, I was aware of that"? Solely? Who said there was one? That's like asking for a single definitive test for life or climate change or something.
A and B are both examples of a subject reporting a lack of awareness. How does that show me what physically detectable consequence awareness adds?No, the different answers I referred to were the statistical differences over many repetitions between the cases where fri- had no "cold" precursor (ie. nothing to be aware of), the cases where it did have such a masked precursor (they say "not aware" but clearly there is some statistical deviation which needs explaining), and the ones where the precursor wasn't masked at all ("I am aware" and the statistics are different, too). Again, the statistics would show interesting differences in the answers in the three cases.
If there’s no physical telltale to distinguish aware activity from non-aware activity ... only by ignoring HP tests, remember ...what is the justification for deriding panpsychism as ludicrous, especially when we know that some activity is patently aware?Do we? How, exactly? Understand, I'm not feigning anaesthesia here, I'm just asking you why you're asserting so. I'd then ask whether it was just as "patent" to you that other activity was not aware. Really, the justification I present is only to parallel other sciences, in which the elan vital or the like are clearly ludicrous (as I'd hope a clever chap like yourself would agree).
Looking forward to it (we can move this over there or just start fresh, if you prefer)Done ( http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=367983). I don't think it's worth carrying this on there, however - the stuff there is rather more fundamental than the IMO unfocussed free-association here, so I'd suggest we stop this one. I leave you the last word here.

[Digital Stimulus]

DSeid -- in reference to your question about computer creativity, I just came across this article about John Koza and genetic programming (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/0e13af26862ba010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html) in which you might be interested. Not overly detailed, and not necessarily what you had in mind, but good for a quick read.

[DSeid]

Thanks. Interesting. I certainly agree with his belief that "revolutionary ideas don’t come at random but are 'new combinations of fairly standard parts with which we’re already familiar.'” and the approach shows how a machine solution to a demand of intellignt behavior may be very different than that used by the human brain.

The article also touches on the different intents involved in AI research: some are more interested in modelling the human brain and use computer AI as a way to explore human cognitive function; some are more interested in producing different aspects of intelligent output, that may or may not be the same character as human output, and may or may not use human cognitive processes as a model. These intents may overlap but are quite different nonetheless. The latter can look to other models as well: evolutionary selection; swarm intelligence; octopodii; etc. None of which may give insight to human cognitive function but may give quite impressive results.

Thanks again for thinking of me.