[Wittrs] Is Homeostasis the Answer? (Re: Variations in the Idea of Consciousness)
- From: "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:20:01 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> What I am interested to know, of course, is a little different,
> i.e., it's the mechanism, or whatever one wishes to call it, that
> actually effects awareness as we have it in ourselves and I don't
> think an evolutionary account (however true and reasonable it is)
> does more than contribute to an understanding of that.
Whenever I try to address that, either you don't notice it or we get
into a serious miscommunication.
> And which already requires a high level of conscious development
> in you, the measurer. The question before us is where does that
> development come from, what is there about you (or any of us)
> that makes us measurers in this way?
A homeostatic process is already doing measurement, as in the
self-measurement required for its primitive self-awareness.
There's a bit of a communication problem here. If I try to illustrate
a point by commenting on something that happens at a low level (say
homeostasis), you respond that you don't see how that leads to
anything. If, instead, I try to illustrate by giving a high level
example (that measuring with a ruler), you complain that this already
requires consciousness. Either way, it is clear that I am failing to
get the point across.
> Yes, but we can't say that the phenomenon of being a consciousness
> with the capacity to measure comes from having the capacity to
> measure, can we? The latter depends on the former.
No, the capacity to measure does not depend on consciousness, as
illustrated by homeostatic processes.
> By "intentional signals" then, you mean signals that we integrate
> into a framework of meaning, signals that take on intention because
> they fit into our existing structure of data association? And
> non-intentional signals are just raw events, information for no
> one because no association is going on?
This is where major miscommunication sets in. I did not mention
"intentional signals", yet you ask what I mean. I only mentioned
signals that are not intentional.
> But don't you see that the very question is being missed in all
> this because what really needs to be explained is how such signals
> do take on meaning, intention, in the process of being received
> and stored by a conscious system.
It isn't really missing. I was trying to make the point that it never
happens. That is, existing non-intentional signals never take on
meaning. It is the other way around. That is, meaning is the basis
for generating intentional signals.
Let me restate that a different way. Harnad raised what he called "the
symbol grounding problem." It is his version of Searle's
intentionality problem. And it seems to at least approximate what you
are questioning. I am saying that there is no symbol grounding problem
for cognitive systems. Rather, there is a "symbolizing the ground"
problem. The symbols used by a cognitive agent are automatically
grounded, because those symbols came from solving the "symbolizing the
ground" problem.
A computer based AI system (at least as invisioned by most AI people)
does not do "symbolizing the ground". That's what is missing.
> The issue is WHAT is this associative process that links signals
> and thereby gives them form and meaning?
I am skeptical of associationism. It seems to me that the later
Wittgenstein was also skeptical of it, and his argument on the
impossibility of following a rule is related to that skepticism.
> You have suggested that AI cannot work because it cannot be
> homeostatic. (Have I got that right?)
No, you don't have that right. What I have said, is that when
attempting to come up with an AI account of cognition, I ran into
problems that I could not solve with computation but which could be
solved with homeostasis.
Regards,
Neil
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