[Wittrs] Is Homeostasis the Answer? (Re: Variations in the Idea of Consciousness)
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:48:32 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
> > What makes an action "about something"?
>
> Perhaps it's hard to give a general characterization, but it often
> seems evident. A cat playing with yarn, or a cat playing with a mouse,
> or a dog with a bone. It gets harder with insects, etc.
>
> > On my view, "aboutness" is when we can relate some symbol or
> > indicator to something else, when we can see meaning.
> To tie it to symbols might be a bit too restrictive.
>
Yes, I think this shows we are thinking about different things here though we
probably agree that they occur on the same continuum, i.e., that what you are
thinking about (your referent for "intentionality")is at the root of what I am
thinking about (my referent). And that has been part of our ongoing problem, I
think, in understanding one another.
My view is that consciousness can be accounted for by describing increasingly
complex and sophisticated functionalities found in various living entities and
that these functionalities, at a basic level, can be replicated on non-living,
manufactured platforms qua entities. If they can, of course, then there would
be no barrier, in principle, to making them more and more complex and
sophisticated until we have replicated the level of complexity and
sophistication found in us.
I think you reject this view because you are supposing something more is
happening in the organic entity, something that isn't found on the
theoretically possible machine. But if intentionality is describable as I've
suggested, then there would be no reason to think there is anything more going
on in the living organism.
But here, I think, we will find ourselves grinding to a halt again because I
suspect you will still want to say something more IS going on. If I am right in
THAT expectation, can you say what? If it is homeostasis or something growing
out of homeostasis can you describe what that is, identify the mechanism that
is or produces intentionality (and other relevant features of consciousness)?
>
> > Perhaps the issue between us hinges, to some extent at least, on
> > your focusing on the nature of computational programs themselves
> > (nothing conscious about them!) vs. my focusing on the nature of
> > computational systems (i.e., many different programs running many
> > different processes to accomplish many different functions in a
> > kind of orchestral arrangement)?
>
> That could be. When you get to the level of asking "how do I program
> that" you begin to see some difficulties that were not so obious
> before. Hubert Dreyfus says "I was particularly struck by the fact
> that, among other troubles, researchers were running up against the
> problem of representing significance and relevance
> <http://leidlmair.at/doc/WhyHeideggerianAIFailed.pdf> ". While those
> are not the words I would have chosen, it's a pretty good assessment of
> the kind of problem I ran into.
>
Yes, the issue must be what it means to recognize significance, relevance,
etc., i.e., what it means to see meaning (semantic content) in anything. As I
have suggested, I think this can be adequately described as a process of
connections made between particular inputs and complex and interlocking
networks of retained pictures of past inputs (which one might call
"representations" though I would be leery to equate this with any given symbol
representing anything else because this would be a different, if related, use
of the term "representation").
Are there other ways of characterizing this sort of recognition (seeing meaning
in things)? We know that we do it but the question is just what is "it" in this
case? Some, like Searle I think, want to say it is just not yet adequately
accounted for though perhaps it may be at some point and that it has a unique
"ontology", being first person rather than third. Against such a view, Dennett
proposes that we can fully account for it causally via third person
descriptions, even if we have an intuitive first person idea of what we mean.
His point is that we don't have privileged access to the inner workings of our
minds but only see the surface stuff, including the sense of being a self, what
it means to understand things, to see meaning, etc. He rejects Searle's
insistence on the primacy of the first person account when it comes to the
features we call "consciousness".
Thus far it seems to me that those who, like Searle, insist on the first person
picture over everything else simply have no real answer and make no attempt at
a real answer. They want the first person picture to remain unaltered. They
prefer the mystery. This is probably just a function of different preferences
in the end. But it makes for some lively and seemingly never ending debates.
>
> > Yes, the human eye is constantly moving about and the picture it
> > captures consists of many distinct imprints or partial images which
> > the brain somehow sees as a whole, a complete pattern. (Hawkins
> > uses this model quite a bit in his book On Intelligence.)
>
> I am quite skeptical of that view. It's a top down designer view of
> how to do vision, rather than a bottom up evolutionary view.
I don't think he excludes the evolutionary aspect at all. What he is interested
in, however, is not what the eye does per se (except as an instrument for
information gathering) and not even what different eyes in different organisms
can do. He is after an account of how intelligence works and he lodges that in
an account of the neocortex. It's already established that there are parts of
the brain, including the neocortex, that are implicated in vision.
(Ramachandran suggests there are at least two paths visual signals follow into
the brain and that both are implicated in seeing though only one, the part that
hits the cortex, is actually part of the conscious instance of seeing.) For
Hawkins what is important is how what is seen becomes part of what we know and
he links that to memory since his account of intelligence is that it is a
memory function. The neocortex, he argues, is essentially a very sophisticated
memory machine that captures, retains and recapitulates patterns at
progressively complex and more global levels. How that becomes part of our
consciousness he leaves to others so he is at least suggesting that we could
have a perfectly intelligent device, designed along the same principles,
lacking consciousness or, at least, the full gamut of what we mean by
"consciousness".
Here I would suggest Stanislas Dehaene's work seems to take over.
> I think it
> more likely that it is similar to a single cell scanning back and
> forth, and looking for sharp signal transitions to find a boundary.
> However, it is being done a billion times in parallel by the different
> retinal cells.
>
Presumably it is the vast number (and consequent complexity) of all these cells
in coordination that make more sophisticated seeing possible as well as
awareness of what is seen. Hawkins view is that each neuron performs a fairly
simple, repetitive algorithm but that when organized together in complex
arrays, they work in unison to produce the complex pictures of the world that
we actually get from the inputs we receive all the time.
>
> > What is a visual feature but a pattern within a larger pattern,
> > a picture within a larger picture?
>
> No, I disagree with that. The features are marked by boundaries. And
> the thing about boundaries, if you are using a scanning method, is that
> you can locate boundaries with higher resolution than you can locate
> other things.
>
I would ask the same question: what are boundaries? At one level a line is a
line, of course, but at another it will be seen to be many much smaller points
aligned together or falling within or along a particular trajectory. The pixels
on a computer screen or a TV screen are tiny dots that form a picture and all
the boundaries we see within and around these pictures. Why would there be
boundaries in some natural state that we have access to? I would say it is
highly likely that all boundaries are relative. And if that's so, then a
feature is just another pattern within a larger pattern and contains within
itself still smaller patterns. Is there anything we can see in the universe
that is not capable of being understood as a combination of much smaller things?
> In any case, the visual part is guesswork. However, the standard AI
> approach is too dominated by top down thinking.
You may be right on that. Certainly to date AI has been singularly unsuccessful
in jumping this shark. At the least one may reasonably conclude that another
paradigm is needed (which is the point of Hawkins' critique by the way).
> From an evolutionary
> perspective, you need to find a use for a single retinal cell, and then
> an evolutionary benefit for proliferating that into many retinal cells.
>
I don't see why that would make a lot of difference? That particular
instrumentalities can effect certain functions doesn't mean they must be seen
as exclusively able to do it.
>
> > As I noted, Hawkins suggests the brain develops and retains templates
> > and that when a remembered image is called up we get more of an
> > adumbration which we then use to plug in details, presumably by
> > recognizing subsections and using this to call up detailed images
> > within the larger one.
>
> The templates part is okay, if intended as a recognizer. J.J. Gibson
> (the "direct perception guy") would have used the term "transducer"
> rather than "template." However, I am doubtful about the "call up
> detailed images" part. I doubt that there are any stored images to
> call up. Sure, we can have imagery in our thought, but it doesn't seem
> to be a called up image and is more likely a reconstruction.
>
Yes, that is Edelman's view and, in part, it's Hawkins' as well. Edelman argues
that memory in humans is dynamic and ever changing contrary to the precise
replication we get with computers (if they're working properly). Hawkins'
template picture is better, I think, though. Both allow for dynamism in memory
but Hawkins provides a mechanism while Edleman just notes the dynamic nature.
On the level of personal experience I suspect we can all describe instances of
remembering things either correctly or incorrectly, including pictures. But
mental pictures are not precise replications of every feature of the thing we
are remembering. When we close our eyes the image we get is sometimes little
more than a "pale" imitation of the real thing. Yet in dreaming it often seems
real enough. And I am reminded of that incident when, coming to, I saw a vivid
image of the computer screen I had been looking at only moments before -- until
I tried to focus in on the details and see what was actually written there and
then I realized that the writing I was looking at said nothing, it had the
appearance of gibberish. Then I was suddenly awake and aware I had been coming
to after having passed out. And yet the computer screen had looked so
brilliantly clear to me, in color, etc., etc. If that's not an instance of
recalling a picture, albeit without critical detail, I don't know what is and,
if it is, then we do call up images of things we have seen.
>
> > Isn't that true of us too? We only see in the world what we are
> > built to see. If we had been built differently the world might seem
> > entirely different to us, no?
>
> Do you really think that we were built to see (in the sense of
> "comprehend") jet aircraft, HIV virus, electron microscopes?
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
I think we were "built" to see certain wavelengths but not others, hear certain
sound vibrations but not others, smell certain kinds of olefactory stimuli but
not other, etc. I think we have equipment sufficiently suited for our
environment to allow us to survive and even prosper in it. Within the
parameters of that equipment, we see and comprehend jet aircraft, HIV viruses,
electron microscopic imagery, etc.
Again it seems we are here talking about different things! I am not denying
that we develop new ways to see the world. But I am saying that we have limited
equipment for seeing the world because of the limited type of creatures we are
and sometimes we can compensate for these limitations by technology but when we
can't we may not even know it.
A machine entity would similarly have the limitations specked into it by its
builder.
SWM
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