Consciousness and Computers.

Issues and Concepts.

There continues to be great interest in creating conscious machines. Sadly, there is also much confusion concerning the nature of consciousness or the difficulties of the challenge in modelling, mathematically, human consciousness for artificial intelligence devices.

I recently read an article by Christoff Koch and Giulio Tononi, "A Test for Consciousness: How Will We Know When We've Built a Sentient Machine? By Making It Solve a Simple Puzzle," in Scientific American, June, 2011, at pp. 44-46.

Regrettably, this article reveals flawed or false assumptions -- also common logical and conceptual errors -- that are fundamental to these authors' discussion undermining their affirmative suggestions or any arguments to be found in their text. The concept of "representation," for example, is used extensively in this article without being defined or recognized as problematic by the authors. Reality and other crucial terms are not defined. There are "category mistakes," including the failure to distinguish knowledge from understanding, recognition or identification from interpretation regarding photographic images. Ted Hondereich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 769. (Defining "representation.")

These errors are worsened by the absence of relation between the concepts that are used, incorrectly, and the ambiguous notion of "integrated information" ("integrated" with what and for what purpose?), a term that is also unassociated with the familiar philosophical concepts that surface late in this discussion, by implication -- concepts such as "coherentism," or "absolute idealism," even quantum epistemologies, that are equally unseen and unlabeled by the authors. Compare Brian Greene, The Hidden Dimension: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), pp. 274-307 ("Universes, Computers, and Mathematical Reality") with Leonard Susskind, The Black Hole War (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2008), pp. 309-334 ("Weapon of Mass Deduction"), then see Arkady Plotinsky, "Quantum Anti-Epistemology," in Complementarity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 89-148 ("Photomena") and Christopher Norris, Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics (London: Routledge, 2000), entirety.

No effort is made by these alleged scientists (I wonder if this article is a hoax?) to respond to a priori objections to A.I., or well-known challenges to the very possibility of conscious machines, a good example being John Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment. ("Mind and Machine.") John Searle, Mind, Language, and Society: Philosophy in the Real World (New York: Basic Books, 1998), and the classic article dealing with this issue, John Searle, "The Myth of the Computer," in The New York Review of Books, 7, 450-456 (1982). (The "Chinese Room" scenario.) John Searle, "The Mystery of Consciousness," in The New York Review of Books, June 9, 2011, at p. 50. (Criticizing Antonio Damasio.)

I examine flawed scientistic assumptions in this essay. I set forth what I take to be fundamental category mistakes and confusions that disfigure the analysis contained in Scientific American's essay. I conclude with a comment on possible future directions in consciousness studies and computers, or A.I. technology. ("A Doll's Aria" and "The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem.")

Does a Photograph "Depict" or "Represent" Reality?

The authors' first sentence raises a serious and unrecognized difficulty for the analysis offered to readers:

"Computers inch ever-closer to behaving [metaphor?] like intelligent human beings -- witness the ability of IBM's Watson to beat the all-time champs of the television show Jeopardy." (p. 44, emphasis added.) ("Metaphor is Mystery.")

"Behavior" is assumed to define the sum total of consciousness which is "reduced" to what is externally observable. Qualia is not discussed, having been dismissed ab initio -- along with the notions of internal states of self-awareness or sentience, emotive understanding or feelings (experience) -- as essential components of consciousness even if they are not externally observable, or reducible to what is "seen" on the outside of us, or conveyed by our words. ("John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness.")

Please see David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), entirety, and Daniel Robinson, Consciousness and Mental Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), also entirety, then Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics (New York: Anchor, 1988), pp. 11-15.

It seems that this internal phenomenology is what consciousness studies seeks to explain and not to deny. Confused statements concerning consciousness (or A.I.) leads to a more confused suggestion:

"Our strategy relies on the knowledge that only a conscious machine can demonstrate subjective understanding of whether a scene depicted in some ordinary photograph is 'right' or 'wrong.' ..." (p. 44, emphasis added.)

The word "knowledge" is used "unselfconsciously" (if you will forgive the expression) to refer to the capacity to interpret a photographic image or representation in order to then compare or relate the representation to a postulated reality external to and independent of the photographic representation and all of this is assumed to constitute "understanding."

Each of these controversial theoretical moves is based on flawed philosophical assumptions -- for example, that a photograph could ever depict a pristine empirical reality, aesthetic or otherwise, or that a "reading" of a photograph is ever free of a priori cultural, aesthetic, religious, or even gender-based assumptions concerning what the photo "shows," or that any "relation" between a representation and so-called external reality ("subjective/objective"?) could fail to include or imply a kind of "coherence theory" or absolute theory in terms of Bradley's philosophy, or any objective idealism.

To read a photograph or decide on what any photo "shows" or captures is inevitably a cultural judgment. "Reality" is not a glossy, flat, "8&1/2 by 12" item bearing an image even if a photograph is something "real." Roger Scruton, "The Eye of the Camera: Photography and Representation," in The Aesthetic Understanding (New York: Methuen, 1983), pp. 102-127 and Brand Blanshard, "Bradley on Relations," in A. Manser & G. Stock, eds., The Philosophy of F.H. Bradley (Oxford: Clarendon press, 1984), pp. 211-227, then John W. Yolton, Realism and Appearances: An Essay in Ontology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 2-26. ("Mind, Matter, and Sense Qualia.")

"This ability to assemble a set of facts into a picture of reality that makes eminent sense -- or know, say, that an elephant should not be perched on top of the Eiffel Tower -- defines an essential property of the conscious mind." (p. 44, emphasis added.)

What is a "fact" is also a determination based on cultural assumptions -- as is what constitutes a "picture" as well as the boundaries of the picture -- or how to make "sense" of an image. ("'Westworld': A Review of the T.V. Series.")

Reality and our so-called pictures of reality, stepping outside the representation to compare what is "depicted" in a photo with a world free of human cognitive devices or concepts has been the great epistemological illusion of Western thought.

Concerning the notion of boundaries and borders as well as transgressions of both, see the FX series "The Bridge" and Ian Chambers, Border Dialogues: Journeys in Postmodernity (New York & London: Comedia, 1970). I also suggest the novels of Pat Barker on this issue.

No, you do not, therefore, lose the concepts of truth or objectivity in contemporary nuanced theories of knowledge or science. All photos are representations of a reality that is both "mirrored" in and "created" by the image. There are no "pure" depictions of reality. Reality -- especially today -- is a plural concept.

Assembling a "picture" from "facts" is an act of construction or judgment which a computer may perform (without a sense of meaning attached to the act) deriving no significance from the operation. This is the exact opposite of conscious awareness or consciousness.

Compare Richard Rorty with Hilary Putnam concerning our epistemological history. Better yet, allow Professor Yolton to perform this task for you: "Mirrors and Veils, Thoughts and Things: The Epistemological Problematic," in Alan Malachowski, ed., Reading Rorty (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), pp. 58-73. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")

In surrealist art, an elephant belongs on top of the Eiffel Tower. Conscious beings can interpret the image to "understand" (hermeneutically) as opposed to "knowing" (scientifically) the meaning(s) of the image. Patrick Waldberg, Surrealism (London: Thames & Hudson, 1966). (Andre Breton's "Surrealist Manifestos" are recommended.)

Hindus may read such an image as a message concerning the bountifulness of Lord Ganesha.

Salvador Dali, or another surrealist artist, may wish to paint or interpret the image of an elephant on the Eiffel Tower "in" the photo as a Freudian description of the ego poised "on" the id.

Conscious computers would not exclude meanings by deciding that one interpretation is "right" and the other is "wrong" without fixing on the purposes of each description of what is "seen" in the image by the viewer.

Computers that are truly conscious would create their own meanings for any image. ("The Galatea Scenario and the Mind/Body Problem.")

Conscious subjects multiply -- sometimes without limits -- the meanings conveyed by as opposed to trapped "in" photographic images. No photograph can be "right" or "wrong" apart from intentionality, or its phenomenological status within a network of meanings only made possible (or coherent) by something like the possibilities, plots, or readings of its maker and the recipients of the photo. ("Hilary Putnam is Keeping it Real" and "Cornel West on Universality.")

Consciousness is a freedom of possibilities with regard to meanings and self-makings that can never be cut-off or encapsulated without a loss of consciousness. ("The Mind/Body Problem and Freedom" and "'The Adjustment Bureau': A Movie Review.")

Does Consciousness Amount to "Behavior"?

Alan Turing's test is only one approach to the mystery of consciousness. Turing's focus on behavior is convenient for scientists because observable behavior that can be duplicated by machines is scientifically testable. Much of what we need to know about consciousness may not be observable or scientifically testable in terms of outdated paradigms.

Can machines think? or achieve consciousness? are not the same question. These questions are distinct from whether machines can be conscious of themselves, as selves, or "self-aware entities" (Hegel) in relation to their observers and programmers, who are also self-aware, in a participatory universe. ("A.I.")

The second formulation listed above is closer to reality for all conscious entities in a post-quantum setting.

I will address this issue in my conclusion discussing "tangled hierarchies" in mathematics: A "tangled hierarchy" is a loop between levels of categories -- observer and observed, readers and writers, lovers and missing loved-ones -- or a hierarchy (dialectic) that cannot be causally traced without encountering a discontinuity. An example is the liar's paradox or other self-referential paradoxes. ("Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism" then "Metaphor is Mystery.")

Consciousness is paradoxical as it arises, relationally or dialectically, or only among or between subjects, while achievement of subjectivity is one of the features of the same consciousness that only arises between or among subjects in the first place. Consciousness is a classic example of the "chicken and egg problem." Jean-Paul Sartre, "The I and the Me," in The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness (New York: Hill & Wang, 1961), pp. 31-60 and Robert B. Laughlin, A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Down (New York: Perseus, 2005), pp. 59-70, pp. 205-220 and Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 71-98 ("Closed Loops"), finally, Christopher Norris, "The Limits of Naturalism: Further Thoughts on McDowell's 'Mind and World,'" in Minding the Gap: Epistemology and Philosophy of Science in the Two Traditions (Amherst: University of Mass., 2000), pp. 197-250. ("'Unknown': A Movie Review.")

"Integrated" information must be totally -- or potentially -- totally inclusive of themes in NARRATIVES that alone make the information meaningful.

A fossil makes "sense" in light of Darwin's theory of evolution and our knowledge of geology, not in isolation from such theories or knowledge. All knowledge must be understood (notice how these terms are used), contextually, as capable of transcendent meanings in ever-larger contexts, or to use these authors' preferred term, "pictures" of reality.

Inclusiveness is the goal, not an artificial or narrow completeness or closure. Consciousness is never complete or finished while it "lives." From Being, we move to Becoming in a quantum universe where change is the one constant feature of life. S.D. Ross, Metaphysical Aporia and Philosophical Heresy (New York: SUNY Press, 1989), pp. 303-327 and F.L. Baumer, Modern European Thought: Continuity and Change in Ideas 1600-1950 (New York: MacMillan, 1977), pp. 516-519, then Robert Brandom, Reason in Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 111-129. ("From Being to Becoming" then "Philosophy as Freedom.")

Do brains "give rise" to subjective experiences? Isn't this merely a metaphor instead of an argument? This is the usual charge levelled against Continental thinkers by analytical philosophers and scientists. ("Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism.")

The notion that brain processes suffice for consciousness is a failure of integration with regard to environments, languages, and/or cultures that make cerebral processes meaningful in terms of "plots" created by conscious organisms, persons, as agents in their own lives.

To see consciousness as an "objective" result of biochemical processes and nothing more is to see persons as scientifically interesting "objects" and not as "subjects" worthy of respect and attention in terms of their purposes and meanings.

Each conscious state requires and implies all other conscious states and does not rule them out. (p. 46.)

No picture is right or wrong except as a choice among alternative readings or projects that make the photographic image meaningful. This observation does not condemn us to relativism or some such nonsense. (Again: "Hilary Putnam is Keeping it Real" and "Why I am not an ethical relativist.")

A giant banana placed next to a gas station in a photo may not be out of place for Andre Breton or Christopher Nolan.

Much will depend on the hermeneutics of freedom offered to the recipient of the work -- who may be invited to ponder the deformations of nature for which we are all guilty, or to have the banana turn to the audience and speak in a Carmen Miranda-like voice about the horrors of life as a banana in a world where all the good stuff is reserved for apples:

"Objects thus reassembled have in common the fact that they derive from, and succeed in differing from, the objects which surround us by a simple change of role." (Waldberg, p. 86.) ("Metaphor is Mystery.")

Rosalind Hursthorne, "Truth and Representation," in Oswald Hamfling, ed., Philosophical Aesthetics: An Introduction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992), p. 239 (defining "representation") and Lisa Randall, Warped Passages: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions (New York: Harcourt Collins, 2005), pp. 127-130 then Simon Blackburn, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 328-329 ("Representationalism").

To create a conscious machine is the opposite of limiting the options or readings of images and realities, but an invitation to decide what and why some meanings of images and realities are preferred to others on some occasions but not others while realizing that such judgments may be right or wrong for one conscious entity and not for others, also without denying the concept of truth, or even "right" and "wrong" as nuanced judgments that are internal and context-sensitive to a discourse, discipline, or aesthetic. ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")

This very statement may be "true" without being especially "meaningful" to a person who defends alternative interpretations.

Welcome to postmodernity in a quantum age. ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism" and "John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness.")

Metaphysics, Patterns and Chaos as "Tangled Hierarchies."

"Data" -- the speed and quality of processing information -- "may be what the cult of information most often emphazises in its celebration of the computer. But quite as important as the data is the mathematical precision with which the computers' program manipulates the information fed into them. This is what computer scientists mean by the term effective procedure. We are told that a computer can do anything for which an 'effective procedure' is given."

Theodor Roszak, The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence and the True Art of Thinking (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 113-114 (emphasis added).

It may not yet be possible to model or "represent" consciousness, mathematically, in terms of ultimate options ("right" versus "wrong") because consciousness is multidimensional and self-constituting awareness.

Consciousness is about deciding what is right or wrong, creating the realities that we will inhabit in terms of our meanings. These created realities may nevertheless be quite objective or true -- for example, our gender roles or identities, nationalities, professions.

Human beings create images or pictures for themselves then come to resemble the images and pictures. ("Is Western Philosophy Racist?" and "Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")

Consciousness is a "tangled hierarchy" emerging socially through the unity of brain states with actions involving others in SHARED communications, representations, communities of texts ('there is nothing outside the text") in which we must live. Accordingly, representation in art may be seen as both "mirror" and "window" for consciousness. ("Michel Foucault and the Authorship Question" then "Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" and "Conversation On a Train.")

Compare Ian Stewart, Nature's Numbers: The Unreal Reality of Mathematics (New York: Basic Books, 1995), pp. 146-147 and Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 442-492 with Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World (New York: Putnam, 1995), pp. 190-198.

John McDowell (analytical philosopher) comments on the ideas of Hans-Georg Gadamer (hermeneutic philosopher) by fusing the "horizons" of science with philosophical awareness:

"This physicalism" -- as in reductivist consciousness studies -- "about causal relations reflects a scientistic hijacking of the concept of causality, according to which the concept is taken to have its primary role in articulating the partial worldview that is characteristic of the physical sciences, [see David Foster Wallace on "free will,"] so that all other causal thinking needs to be based on causal relations characterizable in physical terms. This might be warranted if there were a reason to credit physical science with a proprietary capacity to penetrate to the REAL CONNECTEDNESS OF THINGS. But I follow Gadamer in holding that there is no such reason."

John McDowell, "Gadamer and Davidson on Understanding and Relativism," in J. Malpas, U. Arnswald, et als., eds., Gadamer's Century: Essays in Honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), p. 178.

The real connectedness of things is the direction to follow in future consciousness studies that take seriously the social nature of human self-awareness and seek to duplicate the phenomenon through learning software for A.I. devices capable of interpretation and reconstitution of the meaning(s) of images -- as opposed to mere recognition of faces -- based on predetermined criteria.

Unlike Professor Penrose I am not convinced that this achievement of consciousness is (in principle) impossible for computers. I am sure only that present technology cannot achieve this goal of organic-self-constituting machine minds. ("'Elysium': A Movie Review.")

With the development of quantum computers this goal may become achievable. The real connectedness of things may be a task for more than science, however, which is only one of the "connected" disciplines needed to achieve the desired goal -- "connected" is the right word not only for integrated information but also for synthesizing networks or systems that make information "meaningful" in terms of self-chosen goals of agents in a total entanglement of self and other, knowledge and world in which we are and must be. (Again: "The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem.")

"I fear that literal-minded, narrowly focused computerized research is proving antithetical to the free exercise of that happy faculty known as serendipity. ... Would the existence of radio galaxies, quasars, pulsars, and the microwave background ever have been revealed if their discovery had depended on the computerized radio observations of today? ... The computers act as very narrow filters of information; they must be [subject to] new orientations. In other words, [today,] they have to be programmed for the kinds of results that the observer expects. Does this mean, then, that computers are [obstructing progress?] And if they are, should we be troubled that they may be obscuring from our understanding of major features of the universe?" (Roszak, p. 115.) (Quoting Sir Bernard Lowell.)