Friday 29 January 2010

The Problem Of Thought






One of the hardest tasks for researchers of consciousness, aside from providing a suitable definitive explanation for the term itself, is to try and explain how it might be constructed. Philosophers of mind have generally had a very difficult time in categorising the component parts of consciousness and have struggled for centuries to agree on even the kind of language that should be used. We might talk about emotions, feelings and thoughts but who could possibly say where one ends and the next begins? Thinkers from Plato onwards have grappled with the implications of qualia but have never managed to fully tie this expression down.

The problem is that consciousness is intangible and invisible and we are beings who rely our senses and memories to explain configurations of the matter around us whereby we can settle on a common, albeit subjective, understanding. You can not imagine a thought... although trying to do so depends entirely on thought itself; but you can think about other things. Not being able to imagine or visualise thoughts as distinct units of the mental process means that we can not visualise how they might link and merge to form part of the spectrum of consciousness; at least not in the same way that we can visualise how bricks can be combined in certain configurations to construct buildings.

Added to this is the problem that it quickly becomes redundant even trying to understand mental events as distinct linear phenomena given that we can all attest to having had several things on our minds at any given time, not to mention the constant onslaught of sensory and nervous information and even the subconscious processes that are continually contributing to the ever changing mesh of experience we call the self.

Do you look at a river and see individual droplets of water? Could you decipher how each one of these droplets is influencing the movement of those around it? No, but that doesn't mean that any section of that body of water couldn't be broken down to its component parts and measured.

Even if thoughts could be looked at as unique pieces or blocks, are they entirely individual? We might often think of the same thing at different times but does that mean that we are experiencing the same thought again?

Surely a truly deterministic theory would have to allow for the fact that a mental event that seems to have been repeated or experienced before is actually unique in that it comes at the end of a chain of events concerning bother matter and consciousness. You might think of an object one day, and that thought will be coloured by feeling, emotion, recall and sensory input but thinking of that same object two days later will very possibly result in an entirely different experience given that the conditions will have changed. Thus, the same thought can never be thought of twice.

It might take the kind of systematic process of analysis that only a supercomputer could apply before we are able to discuss this subject in a less ambiguous and speculative way. The kinds of causal chains, interlinked events and variable looping configurations we would like to quantify are beyond our current understanding of quantum and chaotic engineering. The problems of decoding consciousness seem to echo those that still frustrate scientists looking at finding a harmonic resolution in the macro and micro aspects of the physical universe. It seems as if we are not yet intelligent enough to understand our own intelligence.
However, as technological progress accelerates, so too do our chances of finally facilitating the framework of tools and conditions needed to turn theory into fact on one of the greatest enigmas of existence... the conscious self.

Sunday 24 January 2010

Generative Aesthetics



I've recently become a little bit obsessed with Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers' iPhone app Trope. This beautiful little piece of generative software demonstrates a concept that Eno especially had admitted to have been fascinated by for a long time... the idea that complexity can arise from simplistic systems. In this case, potentially infinite harmonic patterns can be triggered by the most basic programming; as basic as a single touch on the screen.

Its appeal lies not only in its capacity to stroke the ego of the non-musician but also in the mesmerising, almost hypnotic formations, both sonic and visual, that come to life after activation. Many people have used generative software in the past to explore the possibilities of digital evolution in art but very few have every produced anything that is genuinely aesthetically pleasing.

And so, as a back nod to my previous post, I'd like to begin looking at aesthetic fulfilment as part Darwinian means to an end but also as an end in itself. An area of our lives that probably governs our decisions in more ways that we could be possibly ever be aware; and becomes centrally important as an enriching and life-affirming principle when we concede that free-will is at best illusory... and almost certainly totally redundant.

In the case of Trope, and other generative programmes, we are watching evolution take place before our eyes and ears in the digital realm and we feel instantly attuned to its progress, if unaware of the intricacies of the processes running in the background; and thus unable to predict what will happen next. In this way, we feel passive, even dumb; but we feel comfortable.

I would like to propose that such windows into the live arena of natural selection are beneficial for us as we begin to surrender our beliefs in the mystic and replace them with full conviction in the biological. We may be unable to see the wholeness of the picture but we can remain absolutely unconvinced in the involvement of an intelligent designer.

It is good for us to interact with chaotic generation and engage with it, even if we don't yet have the tools to decipher every branch of the real-time coding that underpins it. With new technology like Trope, and its sister application Air, and we are given the chance to develop a new aesthetic appreciation of the art of bits... as they swarm and cluster, as they mutate, as they replicate, as they form new configurations within deterministic and indifferent environments.

As Brian Eno said, speculating on the future of generative music:

"The works I have made with this system symbolise, to me, the beginning of a new era of music. Until a hundred years ago, every musical event was unique: music was ephemeral and unrepeatable, and even classical scoring couldn't guarantee precise duplication. Then came the gramophone record, which captured particular performances, and made it possible to hear them identically, over and over again.

But now, there are three alternatives: live music, recorded music, and generative music. Generative music enjoys some of the benefits of both its ancestors. Like live music, it is always different. Like recorded music, it is free of time-and-place limitations — you can hear it when and where you want.

I really think it is possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder and say: 'You mean you used to listen to exactly the same thing over and over again?' "

Thursday 21 January 2010

Is Freedom So Important? Part 1



"Natural selecton is an explosion of evitability"

So said Daniel Dennett in trying to explain that free will may not necessarily be diametrically opposed to determinism. As a 'compatibilist' he asserts that the possibility of free will evolves, in itself, over time. His explanation being that natural selection may have favoured those who were able to make choices in favour of longevity; illustrated by the example of the person who can decide to duck, to avoid being hit by a flying spear.

The problem is that if you decide on a course of action whereby you remain alive and have avoided the option that could have left you for dead, then surely you're just following nature's programmed, deterministic inclination towards survival. Put simply, because of your programming, you never had the choice to ignore instinctive reflexes and allow yourself to be killed by the spear.

Evitability in this case, Dennett explains, is synonymous with avoidability. If something is 'inevitable' then it is 'unavoidable'. Thus further problems arise when you talk about the future as being inevitable... rather it should be individual events that should be assessed as avoidable or unavoidable.

An interesting rationale for support of Dennett's propsal is given in A Case for Free Will AND Determinism, where the author helps to qualify the concept, as follows:

"Causality provides constraints, not unfreedom. Gravity limits the conditions under which a person can fly, but it does not prevent flying."

Still though there are holes here... you can't pick and choose what ares of existence are governed by causality. Picking up from the above comment, the very idea that you might be able to fly in the first place is the result of any number of preceding phenomena. In essence, the Big Bang happened... and everything since has occurred as a direct result. The development of consciousness is as bound to this as anything else.

And so to the multitude of scenarios that have been envisaged for the technologically enhanced future. Singularitarians declare 'inevitability', transhumanists engage immanentisation... the willed bringing about of the apocalypse, the eschaton, the point where all predictive theory breaks down.

No matter how it all pans out though, no matter whether our meagre brains are able to imagine the futurist's future or not, nothing is guaranteed and nothing is out of the question. But just because certain aspects of our future can or can not be avoided, there is no reason to start looking at the results as anything other than the most recent events in a chain of cause and effect that has been extrapolating for the last 14 billion years.

To be continued...

Monday 18 January 2010

The Science of Consciousness















"While neural activity of a certain kind is a necessary condition for every manifestation of consciousness, from the lightest sensation to the most exquisitely constructed sense of self, it is neither a sufficient condition of it, nor, still less, is it identical with it." (Ray Tallis, writing for New Scientist)

In recent years, big players in the world of philosophy of mind have joined forces with neuroscientists and psychologists to try and work towards building a complete science of consciousness. This has so far resulted in a stream of unfinished theories that show the proponents, philosophers especially, dismsissing valid lines of enquiry beacuse they seem to be speculative or out of tune with pre-defined schools of thought.

The above quote seems to be representative of the core issue: subjective supposition is totally at odds with scientific methodology and objective measurement. That is to say, you may hypothesise that a person without a brain can not be conscious, therefore consciousness must reside in the brain. But objective measurement of the brain will only be able to expose the presence of neural activity which, although essential to consciousness, is not synonymous with it. Therefore consciousness is immeasurable and fundamentally unfit for scientific attention.

There is surely no reason to abandon all hope though. This is a very modern field of emergent enquiry and those involved must not be scared to a lay a few well held beliefs on the line now and then if they are to discover truly valuable lessons. After all it was only a few decades ago that seemingly chaotic systems in the natural world seemed to be utterly repellant to the classes of categorisation available within classical Newtonian physics. In the end, the establishment was forced to revolutionise its own deep-routed convictions to allow for the evidence that had become apparent.

But what methods are there to measure consciousness itself? Well, there's nothing much at the moment... EEG scans can measure brain waves, facial observation technology can decipher a range of emotions and first person psychoanalytic testing can shed a certain amount of light on how and why we behave as we do; but none of these provide a direct route. They only interpret symbolic or representative phenomena. We don't know how to qunatify consciousness so we have no way of measuring it. However, some have glimpsed the kind of innovations that might become available in the future.

Needless to say, philosophers and scientists are not going to start producing cohesive findings in such a complex and diverse field until they move towards shedding the restraints of their allegiances to ideological silos or 'isms'. What's needed is a little open-mindedness and the willingness to start from the ground up.

Wednesday 13 January 2010

Fluid Mechanics

John Searle's Chinese Room argument has been criticised as an "absurd thought experiment that panders to false intuitions, and has done nothing but sidetrack philosophers for decades".

He asserted that computers may very well be able to emulate human thought in such a way that people will not be able to distinguish the two; but they will never be anything more than a counterfeit in this respect as it is beyond the talents of a human creator to invest a machine with semantic intelligence.

Over the last couple of days, the blogosphere has been buzzing with tales of 'wet computing', whereby researchers will aim to develop "information processing technology inspired by chemical processes in living systems".

On the face of it, this is really exciting news. It conjures up images of complex fluid neorological interplay and massive machine speed and efficiency working in perfect harmony.

Dr Maurits de Planque, a biochemist and spokesman for the project had said "Our system will copy some key features of neuronal pathways in the brain and will be capable of excitation, self-repair and self-assembly."

So far a very tantalising proposition. But it still doesn't give us any scope to belive that machine intelligence will transcend the Chinese Room... yet. In fact it seems to echo some of the oldest science fiction, namely Frankenstein, where a human's attempts to create life end up flawed... producing only a sum of many parts, composite as opposed to complete.

There may of course be problems associated with trying to build a new and improved model when the spec is based on an imperfect and very breakable, albeit wonderfully elaborate, source design.

It's likely that we will see this story repeat itself in different forms over the next years as we enter the age of replication, where syntax doggedly gains on semantics but does not yet have the capacity to make the next leap forward. There may indeed be many convincing replications in the near future and you may find yourself quick to declare that we are at the tipping point. Given our present position though, it might be wiser to accept this stage as intemediary... but very possibly antecedent to the escape from the Chinese Room.

Sunday 10 January 2010

The Joy Of Faith

It's a shame that atheism and its proponents seem to be viewed as austere miserablists by the vocal majority, even those who would refer to themselves as 'not particularly religious'. We have bought into the image of the atheist as the rather tired old academic who is left sullen and stoic after weighing up the big questions, before resigning themselves to a cheerless fate at the cruel hands of Mother Nature.

These people seem to be in their element when arguing with elements of the fundamental right but lost in the wind when faced with more indifferent mainstream opposition. No doubt the former scenario allows them to easily present scientific proof as a winning hand, and make the detractor seem clownish and deluded; while the latter leaves them open to accusations of sneering misanthropy.

If there's anything that comes across strongly in the rhetoric of the transhumanists and singularitarians it's that the future is something to be thought of with excitement. A futurist outlook is an optimistic outlook. AI can be friendly and a revolution in the spread of information can signal the beginning of a revolution in collective consciousness.

Interestingly, research from recent years has suggested the existence of a 'God gene' and pointed to familial tendencies towards choosing religion as a signifier that faith, at least in template form, may be passed via bio-chemical means and not just through indoctrination post birth.

So, belief in transcendence becomes the latest territory of the supernatural or mystic to be wrestled back to the realm of the rational by men in white coats. This shouldn't make it any less magical or startling... nature can work in mysterious ways too and that in itself is beautiful. When looking to the era of the conscious machine, we are looking at the prospect of true and pure transcendence... in a way that rivals the description given in any religious text. It simply suggests that we get a say in it as intelligent and aware individuals, which is surely more of a deal breaker than anything offered by any representative of the 'divine'.

Wednesday 6 January 2010

The Eschaton Meme













It has been suggested that all the current theorising about the technological singularity is analogous to, if not a direct mimic of, the kind of end of the world predictions that sufface most religious doctrine. For Christians there is the Book of Revelation, for Muslims the Day of Judgement. For Hindus, there is both death and immediate rebirth for the universe courtesy of Shiva. Then there were the Vikings who lived and died against the backdrop of Ragnarök, where the gods go into battle for the last time, the dead wake and the Midgard Serpent eats it own tail; symbolising infinite continuum.

The memetic transfusion of the eschaton appears to know no bounds. It infects even those who pride themselves on being able to see past the constraints of human nature, unsentimentally categorising our behavioural makeup as the product of a series of evolutionary safeguards, designed to keep our genomes safe from extinction.

So what? There's nothing new here... just the emperor's new clothes with computers rather than angels and trumpets. Rapture for the nerds! What is striking is that this form of eschatological immanentisation comes with promises of advanced longevity, if not full blown immortality. Very interesting considering that the momentum of the eschaton meme could probably be attributed to its usefulness as an anti-insanity device, keeping us self-aware mammals safe in the knowledge that we will definitely die.

Makes sense doesn't it? If you see the end of the world as a collective synonym for your own expiration, in every direction you look, then surely nature's want for you to service the proliferation of the selfish gene will be given both emphasis and immediacy. Basically, keeping death front of mind makes you want to get it on... before it's too late.

So the Singularitarians preach the end in much the same way as bible-bashing ministers do. The difference is that they ask you to consider eternal life... not in Heaven, or in Valhalla... but right here.

Sunday 3 January 2010

Digital Evolution

In the future, the success of life within a programmed reality will rely on coherent and flexible streams of code duplicating and mutating in much the same way that our DNA does now. Whether the mechanics of these mutations are driven by our own consciousness or by the will of machines that we will have given prior instruction remains to be seen...





The evolution of our genetic code depends on a series of motivating factors that guide each new mutation, steering the development of our bodies to ensure that they are best suited to our physical environment at any given time. An example of this is the theory that ice age conditions prompted Homo sapiens to develop the guts needed to digest meat because plant life was so scarce.

The challenges presented by our environment (adverse weather, difficult terrain, scarcity of food) have governed the process by which evolution has found its solutions. Living with cold temperatures and rain in some climates has forced us to develop the skills needed to identify or construct suitable shelter. So we have the mouse (evolution) and we have the maze (physical environment). But the mouse won’t even attempt to try and run through the arduous process of trial and error needed to solve the maze unless there’s cheese at the end of it. The cheese is the motivation.

The need to eat, the need to find shelter and the cohesion of a group or herd might be motivating factors that have shaped our evolution over the course of several millennia but they themselves are only in place to facilitate the possibility of reproduction. Evolution in living things is absolutely and entirely powered by reproduction. In this reality, reproduction is the Ultimate Motivating Factor (UMF).

So, how does this apply to the programmed reality? Surely we will have broken through the constraints of sex for procreation, family and herd behaviour that have governed the progress of life up to this point. If reproduction is the UMF behind the replication and mutation of DNA against the backdrop of challenges presented by physical environment, resulting in the beauty and horror of life in its present form, then what’s the equivalent that will apply to our steps beyond transcendence?

When the digital environment becomes conscious, it is going to need a reason to develop, to mutate. Call it God or Mother Nature or Gaia or whatever, but there is a programmer behind our progress. Who’s to say it’s not us in a higher form engineering realities through which we can experience subjective existence? Who’s to say this reality, the ‘Sex Programme’ if you will, isn’t one of many occurring simultaneously across inter-dimensional lines; each driven by different UMF’s?

The point is that if we are to truly step through into the age of intelligent technology and become the programmers, become Gods, then we are going to need to take responsibility for our programming and make sure that we are all clear on what we’re going to say when the machine asks ‘What’s my motivation?’