I'm awful at promotion!

Hello,

I want to make this place a relatively safe and fun place to talk
about philosophy of mind. If you know interested people, send me their
email addresses so that I can invite them.

I wish to post certain small essays from time to time, do not hesitate
to send in your stuff :)

Regards,

--
Eray Ozkural

On Friday 19 December 2003 18:53, Ozge Ekin wrote:
> Below is what I started as an explanation for pain and other mental states
> (!)...it is just the beginning for an explanation not the explanation
> itself.. Of course these are primitive level. But after all shouldn't we
> start our analysis from the beginning. I wonder what people/machines/ you
> think about it. I just wrote & did not review it so sorry for the editorial
> errors. Anyway just curious about the effects. Huh---Note: invite this guy
> :how_to_fly@... he usually has really original ideas about anything
> almost, should be fun to have him here.
>

Invited how_to_fly, cool email :)

>
> 1.Going back to uterus
>
>
> Let's start the analysis from the very beginning, from the birth. The first
> thing we encountered was pain after all. All this skull getting that much
> pressure on your head and all over your body while coming out of uterus and
> having your umbilical cord cut, blood all over, screams you hear while you
> are getting out where you rested for 9 months, unusual light probably doing
> something on your eyes (later you will call this hurting/pain after you
> learn the meaning empirically).

Of course this doesn't explain why pain experience is unpleasant (note that is
the core problem of any theory that explains pain)

> In cesarean (section) you only have your
> umbilical cord being cut and unusual light. And you still cry. (Scientists
> say crying needed for the first inhale to start but this is a Darwinian
> explanation that does not help for our purposes here). Then even if you
> only have the things happen to you in C it is still kind of strange and you
> are making that strange noise (you will say crying later, you do not even
> know these are noises at the moment)

Agreed. there is no conceptual scheme over audio data yet.

> and why you are crying then if you
> know anything about any of these after all you scream your lungs out and
> maybe that's a relief for you. You do not only cry you shake your hands;
> kick the air as if you are struggling with something. You are in pain but
> you do not even know this now.

I disagree. You know you are "experiencing something unpleasant" which is
pretty much pain, but you do not have a "theory of pain" (for instance you
don't know how the names of pain, what usually happens after pain, what might
cause pain) and a "memory of pain" (note how this overlaps with theory) yet.

> You are not in this comfortable warm silent
> dim place anymore you do not hear the music (breathing, beating heart etc.)
> You just know/realize/acquired whatever happened to you. You do not want
> any of this because you were so comfortable there. And that "crying" was
> somehow only thing you could do. But then suddenly you started to hear the
> same heart beat again, different but kind of something you are familiar
> with, then they make your mouth rest on some warm object and somehow you
> start to suck it and there was a resting warm feeling in your stomach and
> you cooled down, it was not so bad you were comfortable again you could do
> the usual thing and sleep (that was what you were most doing most of the
> time when you were in the uterus, but you do not know this yet). Oh no you
> wake up and then that horrible light again, where is this warm feeling on
> your mouth, you just want to do what were you doing before, going back to
> the same state, because you were so comfortable, where is the heart beat!!!
> Hmm suddenly you are making these sounds again, oh, you are taken to the
> comfortable place again. You realize/know/acquire, those strange voices
> take you back to the comfortable state again.

In this section, you are basically stating the (negative) reinforcement
learning associated with the state of pain, but this doesn't seem to explain
what pain is (yet).

>
>
> 2. Pain
>
>
> You have that something (gas) that you do not know in where people called
> stomach, you do not want to be in this state,
                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Here you are reducing pain to desire. What else do you think there is to say?
I could very well ask you "what is it to want something?" then.

> yes you cry again and they do
> something (patting) where people called your back and you relieved yourself
> hence you are back in the new comfortable state where nowadays you are
> adjusted yourself better. Now you know/acquire/ realize that when you feel
> this something in your stomach, if you cry it stops (actually your mom or
> dad made it stop). So crying helps a lot also shaking your hands and legs
> helped for you to get rid of this something and go back where you wanted.
> The more (people call this something pain) pain experience you got it
> accompanied with crying and always (or mostly) it helped you. So pain is
> something that keeps you away from your usual state and definitely this has
> no similarity to the place where you used to be (uterus). And whenever you
> get rid of it the place is more seem like that place.

All of this talk reminds me of the role of creativity in learning thread on
comp.ai.philosophy. If you dig it out, there were some interesting
theories....

There is obviously a random component which helps bootstrap learning
procedures out of the blue.

> 3. Happiness
>
>
> What happens after you get rid of "pain" (now you do not know the word yet
> but you know/acquired/realize what pain is not: not the place you used to
> be in)? All those worried faces are gone, pain is gone, people looking and
> smiling at you they are touching your face and making these strange noises,
> they smile over and over so you acquire this is something related with the
> good state, after all you trust those guys now, whenever you have pain it
> seems like they made it gone, and they smile at you over and over after you
> have come to the good state. Hmm it is good state. That shape of the face
> included in the good state so if you do it, it is good state, good. Next
> time try to remember this. Oh no again this pain, smile… no, those people
> are not taking you back to the good state, cry…there it is. After a while
> smiley faces all over.

Yet, pain isn't merely some environmental contingency that includes smiling
faces, that'd be a very behavioristic explanation and consequently a poor
one.

> 3.Want
>
>
>  Wanting, you will acquire later on, what made you repeat the crying for
> going back to this good state.

I didn't quite understand this....


> 4. Love
>
>
> So we all know how frustrated you were in these last couple of months. All
> you did was going back and forth between good state and bad state and
> couple of more things like breast feeding and trying to define new good
> states for your self (none of them seemed as good as the first one though
> but you had no choice, further crying did not help) and all the time those
> guys were around and taking you back to the good state again. So you
> acquired that if they are not around that bad state does not change. You
> want them around, always!!!You want to feel the warmth, heart beat, warm
> stomach and relaxation of the breast feeding, you want to be in a curly
> position as once you used to be and between the arms were the best place
> for this purpose. -----------5 or 15 years passes-----

Note how you are transforming the question of pain experience to certain
nameless mental states. What is the content of these states I must insist on
asking! In what sense, say, a state of belief different from a state of
pleasure?

I do not deny that there is a good deal of truth in your exposition. However,
"love" is usually given a specific neuroscientific cause associated with
dopamine. It seems to be a rather specific mental response evolved in mammals
while pain is probably present in reptiles.

What I did like in this explanation is that you have identified the
transformations between "goal states", and that is how Minsky had given a
simple theory of pain and pleasure in The Emotion Machine via Model G. I
think it is just the right time that you go to Marvin's website and read that
chapter :)

> You do not need those guys what you call mom and dad now as much as you do.
> You do not care if you are not sleeping between their arms they seemed like
> not being able to take you to the good state (it is much more complicate
> now) as much as they did before. Moreover they sometimes take you to the
> bad state. But this guy, his looks causes something in your stomach and you
> feel some other comfort -good state--  between his arms, you need this guy
> to take you to the good state. You want him to be around always!!!

Well said, still love seems to be more than pleasure for some reason.
Interestingly, there is a recent news item on cognews.com about love
research, I suggest you have a look at it, it's quite interesting.

Regards,

--
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@...>
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunction: http://mp3.com/ariza
GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C

Thanks for inviting me to this group.  I will post some messages as
soon as I get some time.  I am involved in an interesting discussion
on the Yahoo group "artificial_intellige" right now about the nature
of complexity, understanding and causality and I would like to reply
to a message there as soon as possible.
Jim Bromer

Steven Pinker asks in 'How the Mind Works'
"What if we took [a brain simulation computer] program and
trained a large number of people, say, the population of
China, to hold in mind the data and act out the steps? Would
there be one gigantic consciousness hovering over China,
separate from the consciousness of the billion individuals?
If they were implementing the brain state for agonizing pain,
would there be some entity that really was in pain, even
if every citizen was cheerful and light-hearted?"

This argumentation is nice, but it contains a fundamental
flaw : it considers pain as something what maybe happens to
the individual agent, but consciousness as something that
hovers hover the agents. Only our image of consciousness
hovers over the system, if we want to explain it, we
must look at the interactions between the agents.
Although consciousness is of course complicated, it is
like pain/displeasure and joy/pleasure an emergent
phenomena, which arises from the local interactions of
millions of agents. Consciousness, Pleasure and Displeasure
can be explained entirely as arising phenomena in
multi-agent systems. Pain is related to splitting and
destroying of agents. Joy is related to merging and creating
of agents. Consciousness is complicated and complex, it involves
the whole system and is characterized by a merging *and*
splitting of agents, by creation *and* destruction of
agents.

Displeasure arises from compressing (folding) of neural information
flow or an obstacle for it. In the terms of nonlinear dynamics
and chaos theory, pain is a sink for neural flow, where agents
dissappear. Pain is the decay of the system, a inevitable and
unavoidable civil war among agents where agents get lost. Some agents
continuously destroy other agents. Displeasure is merely a
contradiction between agents, for example an incongruity in
meaning. Pain is a heavy struggle or fight between the individuals.

Pleasure arises from expanding (stretching) of neural information
flow or a release for it. In the terms of nonlinear dynamics, Joy
is a source for neural flow, where agents appear. It is the
unexpected growth of the system through a source which creates
new agents. Pleasure is merely an unexpected mutual confirmation
between agents, a sudden aggreement or relief. Insights cause joy,
because a sub-group of previously unrelated agents will suddenly
reinforce and confirm each other.

Emotions in general are floodgates for neural flow :
special "emotion" agents reinforce or surpress other agents to
control the neural flow of information. The system can be in
different emotional "states", which depend on the currently
opened gates.

Consciousness is like a whirl or turbulence in the neural
information flow: it is characterized by heavy discussions
with few results among *all* agents. Consciousness is like
the feeling of being strong because you have climbed a huge
mountain, but it also like watching yourself from a distance
standing on this mountain peak at the same time. It is to
recognize yourself (that means every agent is affected) as a
small part of the environment (that means only a few special
agents are affected).

Moreover, the results of the "discussions" which characterize
consciousness on the agent level often interfere with the
emotion agents which act through reinforcement. The capacity
to act is constrained. The agents are confused and the system
eventually shows chaotic behavior. Consciousness is complex.
It is the recognition of the familiar in the unfamiliar. It
leads for example to the insight of the own death. Insight
causes pleasure, death the strongest displeasure. So
consciousness is related to pleasure in displeasure.

Because the topic concerns the whole system, all agents
think it is important. But the insight of consciousness
says in turn the system as a whole is only a part
of a much larger system. Consciousness is a reconcilation
of the whole with the part, similar to eternity in a
moment (Goethe's Faust), or a lifetime in a day
(James Joyce' Ullysses). A continuous merging (aggreement)
and splitting (disaggrement) of agents. A self-conscious
agent is able to see eternity in a moment and a lifetime
in a day.

Hi all,

thank you for inviting me for participating in this group.

I'm a frequent lurker, doesn't have a lot to say and am very, very
interested in ai and philosophy ever since (since the time I've read
what I. Assimov and others wrote about :)

Merry christmas and a happy new year to everybody inside and outside
of cyberspace.

/Klaus

Hi Discrete,

What I said was quite clear. At any rate, let us start with a positive
discourse in which I will state those parts of your post I agree with:

1. There is no conceptual scheme over audio data yet. In response to:
you don't know what crying is sound-wise when you are in uterus.

2. All of this talk reminds me of the role of creativity in learning
thread on comp.ai.philosophy. If you dig it out, there were some
interesting theories.... There is obviously a random component which
helps bootstrap learning procedures out of the blue.... This in
response to your observation that the baby generates somewhat random
actions in order to learn which actions he would benefit from and
which others would harm him. Could you please make a google groups
search for these discussions? It might be relevant.

3. Your analysis of emotions experienced during a state of love is
  neutral and convincing.

Regards,

--
Eray Ozkural

Hi Eray,

Thanks for the invite.

Um, I don't really have much to say these days. I think the last several months
on c.a.p. pretty much did it for me, and I'm
contemplating more general stuff like "what are space and time" rather than more
AI-related issues. But one never knows, of course.
I don't know if contemplating mind or consciousness independantly of AI is
on-topic for an AI list or group.

In regards to Multism:

I feel the plurality of the universe (change in state) derives as a logical
consequence of monic uncertainty.

That is, if the universe is a single monic, then any wave pattern on it would be
moot merely by itself, since there would be no
other pattern relative for any difference to be known. I.e., whatever shape or
form the monic has, it is meaningless w/o some basis
of comparison. A static monic is essentially no different than nothingness.

So the monic needs some plurality in order to have any definition, but which
forms? Well, since there are no rules, an infinity of
possible monics fill the possibility space, and each monic represents the state
of reality at any given moment along the
simultaneity hyperplane.

From the view of sentient observers, monics will appear sorted according to the
temporal and spatial rules that work to form the
observers themselves. So we observe the possibility space as an everchanging
spatial plenum with lots of objects around us, with a
temporal flow strongly associated with increasing entropy. We find things called
"elements" with certain properties because "matter"
is formulated this way in order to create observers made of matter.

It is entirely possible that observers exist in completely different worlds that
use a radically different formulation basis, but
because our frame of reference is so different from theirs, we cannot see each
other and cannot even detect that the part of the
monic they reside on intersects ours. It's as if we were two words in a Scrabble
game, one spelt horizontally and the other
vertically, both sharing a common letter; but the horizontal words can only
detect and interact with other horizontal words,
blissfully unaware that vertical words
exist (and vice versa).

The difficulty with this model remains the sense of self -- why I am me and you
are you and why we perceive this particular reality
in this time instead of some other, and so on. My only idea so far is that there
is only one self, but it has a discontinuous
formulation, and the parts are unaware of the whole for some entirely logical
reason. Either that, or each observer is what
constitutes a reality/possible world, and due to the infinity, there is no
reason why there can't easily be six billion (and more)
such worlds that share enough in common that observers believe themselves to
interact with other observers.

In my reality, for example, there is a planet called Earth with a local
timeframe of year 2003, month December, day 21, etc. with an
Internet and Usenet, etc. etc. and tons of other features and related physical
laws, and because your reality is so similar, we can
each observe all the features that are in common. The parts we cannot observe
cause us confusion, and not surprisingly, since those
aspects tend to be what make us truly unique, i.e., our consciousness and sense
of self. Yours resides truly in your own reality and
mine in mine. Small wonder that any measurement will fail to locate these
apsects since they do not exist in the observer's reality
at all.

Ray

Greetings fellow philosophers,

Galeon web browser had  a very nice shortcut that allowed me to erase my reply
to Jochen's excellent post. Before rewriting my words of praise, I will try
to write a preliminary summary of a point of view which I call "The Dialogue
of Existence", just for simple mindless fun. This view seems to be related to
the heavy discussions of consciousness which Jochen referred to.

1. Existence has many senses.
2. In one sense, existence is meaningless in isolation.
3. In addition, existence is born out of interaction.
4. Complexity of interaction is essential in growth of developmental systems.
5. The dialogue of existence is a perpetual discourse between the self and the
universe.
6. Hence, the dialogue is a sufficient and necessary condition for existence
in this sense.
7. One sense of computation is its often overlooked message passing facet.
8. In this sense, the fleeting bits of processing unite to instantiate a
computation. [*]
9. This sense corresponds exactly to the dialogue of existence, for motion is
equivalent to computation from a digital philosophy viewpoint.
10. Hence, when there is computation, the dialogue of existence is present,
and we can argue convincingly that is what gives rise to the collective
existence of mind.
11. However, this line of thought is not identical to theories of
Wittgenstein/Quine/Davidson for some apparent reasons although there is much
similarity which I do not like myself.
12. The dialogue can be used to reason about non-computational existence and
this was exactly the kind of problem for which I developed this philosophical
device.
13. Consider a world of uncomputable bit strings. Now imagine a dialogue that
consists of two parties choosing bit strings from this domain according to a
rule of their own and uttering them in turns.
....

Did you find this a view too behaviorist or could there be any benefit to the
concept of this strange dialogue?

Don't avoid picking at me, :)

Regards,

[*] This is also true from a mathematical angle. Can you guess which theorem I
am referring to?

--
Eray Ozkural

Greetings [*],

In application of digital philosophy approach to philosophy of mind, I have
more or less been able to describe an extension of monism (and *not*
dualism!) which I call "multism". One of the strange consequences of this
approach is that it seems to put subjective experience back in the realm of
scientific inquiry and unlike the naive behaviorism of Quine/Skinner or the
machine functionalism of Putnam it allows us to deal with subjective states
in a lively fashion.

I will not attempt to summarize Multism here, instead I will indicate that it
is compatible with the basic philosophy of Ed Frenkin and directly deal with
a certain consequence.

If the underlying nature of the universe is a digital computer, then my
promotion line of multism which I didn't publicly announce before:
   "The mind is a universe of ideas"
carries a literal meaning beyond its metaphorical import in that the mind is
an actual universe with mass and energy. A better term would be "multiverse"
of course.

Note that multism is perfectly defendable against naive functionalism or the
obsolete doctrine of behaviorism without the above crackpottish claim about
it being an actual physical pocket universe of some sort. On the other hand,
viewing the mind as such has a number of philosophical benefits. For
instance, it allows us to analyze the "structure" of subjectivity as opposed
to the trajectory of a dynamical system a la Churchland. What is more, the
mind is *at* *least* a Turing-complete developmental system, much like the
CAs proposed by digital physics.

Under the physical interpretation of multism, the ontological commitments are
simplified considerably leading me to take this train of thought seriously.

I expect your orbital comments :)

Regards,

[*] reposted from comp.ai.philosophy and digitalphilosophy@yahoogroups.com
For learning more about Ed Frenkin's views: http://digitalphilosophy.org/

--
Eray Ozkural (exa)
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunction: malfunct.iuma.org
GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C

I liked your view on Pain. Your explanation of pain in short sounds
like: a necessary state of mind to make one change his/her
unpleasant situation to a pleasant one. Basically we can say under
this view that a baby or individual has a certain states where it
finds itself "comfortable", and whenever it reaches a state which
does not match with previous "comfortable" states, it experiences
pain.



Originally posted on 12/19, reposting through web interface
***
At the time of birth the only comfortable state is uterus. And under
the view above there should be great deal of pain when this state
dramatically changes. But one thing which I wonder is: if this pain
is indeed necessary. Or is there a "Darwinian explanation" for this
pain -as you might have said? Eventually such a pain seems to me
unnecessary or even harmful (I assume that a new born infant has
faculties enough to resist or fight against pain). So why would god,
or natural selection keep it?



Another thing is Happiness. How does an individual extend his/her
pleasant states set? Why don't we experience every state change as
pain? Even a very for a very new state (e.g. first kiss, first smile
etc.), how come we not experience pain but pleasure?



Cheers,
***

> Another thing is Happiness. How does an individual extend his/her
> pleasant states set? Why don't we experience every state change as
> pain? Even a very for a very new state (e.g. first kiss, first smile
> etc.), how come we not experience pain but pleasure?


Kisses, huh? Let me ask this:

One gets kissed:

- By a hottie
- By an ugly person
- By someone unseen in total darkness, whose beauty you can only guess at
- By a hottie whom you know doesn't like you at all
- By a hottie who does like you

Wherefore pain and pleasure then? Not solely in the mere physical act, but
combined with the knowledge of who is performing it, and
yet we think that it is the physical act that we feel, and makes us happy or
pained.

Ray

--- In ai-philosophy@yahoogroups.com, "Atacan" <atacanc@m...> wrote:
>  I liked your view on Pain. Your explanation of pain in short
sounds
> like: a necessary state of mind to make one change his/her
> unpleasant situation to a pleasant one. Basically we can say under

> this view that a baby or individual has a certain states where it
> finds itself "comfortable", and whenever it reaches a state which
> does not match with previous "comfortable" states, it experiences
> pain.

In summary, discrete has reduced pain to "not pleasure" and "action
to move out of not pleasing state". Hence, the theory is not a
theory of subjective state we call pain, but rather a theory of
consequences of pain state...

on the other hand, it seems that pain is not reducible to (formulae
of) pleasure....

[snip]

> Another thing is Happiness. How does an individual extend his/her
> pleasant states set? Why don't we experience every state change as

> pain? Even a very for a very new state (e.g. first kiss, first
smile
> etc.), how come we not experience pain but pleasure?

Exactly. What makes pain unpleasant? That is the core problem any
theory of pain must address.

Let me raise two questions:

1. Does pain consist of pain behavior?
2. Does pain consist of a pain signal as fired by specialized pain
receptors?

We can start by asking and answering these questions in order to
eliminate behaviorism and a reflex-based explanation from our
discourse.

Regards,

--
Eray Ozkural

I was looking in my doc/articles directory and I saw this post which I wrote
on comp.ai and comp.ai.philosophy a long time ago after I reviewed Minsky's
talk at game developers conference.

Here is a link for that review on comp.ai:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&frame=right&th=d6407\
62f2ddd5a2e&seekm=9f76tf%
24mj5%241%40mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU#link1

And the link for original "Subjective Experience" post on comp.ai
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=comp.ai.*&safe=off&selm\
=9h6ldp%
2444d%241%40mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU&rnum=1

I was thinking of how best to assess Jochem's and Ozge's views on subjective
experience. This post summarizes my post on subjective experience

[I have seen that my review of Prof. Minsky's talk about the current state of
AI has spawned quite a big discussion. Especially the part about
consciousness, as usual, proved to be remarkably controversial. I feel
obliged to explicate my views on the matter in more detail.]

Every discipline in cognitive sciences has offered a different approach to the
study of high level psychological phenomena such as consciousness. However a
consensus seems almost impossible. In the philosophy of mind, where we seek
to establish principled thinking about the mind/body problem, computational
aspects of thinking, the problem of representation and such, philosophers
have engaged into arguments which have lasted for decades on even the most
basic questions. Some have tried to outright deny that a computer can attain
consciousness, i.e. Searle. And probably some may have claimed that
consciousness does not exist at all.

My feeling about this matter is that if we abandon the scientific "practice"
for seeking an answer we will certainly fail to find one.

I have seen that many have walked into the shadowy realm of syntax vs.
semantics discussions, in which the true adversary to AI will grant computers
every aspect of syntax but will say that they do not necessarily attain
semantics. In response, the proponent shall remark that computers can have as
much semantics as a person if correctly programmed. That kind of discussion
without any frame of reference whatsoever is hardly of interest to the
practical minded scientist/philosopher for we would like to know the problem
we are thinking about. In the rest of this article, it will be accepted that
the Berkeley systems reply to Searle's argument is indeed true and that
Searle's argument is logically flawed: in that we cannot simply "assert" that
computation cannot contain consciousness. [If you would like to talk about
this topic please start another thread, renaming the subject]

Other premises of this discussion are that human brains are machines. And that
the mind depends on solely the physical. However, we also assume that we can
think about cognitive phenomena at a high level without reference to a purely
reductionist account, thus from the standing point of philosophy of mind. The
reasoning behind this position is that
   a) such an account may not be feasible to formulate
   b) we can safely ignore features that are too low level (such as the
intricate details of chemical bonds)
   c) we have reason to believe that most of cognition has a computational
nature.

That is, I do not view intelligence as a large scale quantum effect or caused
by the will of a powerful deity.

The crux of Minsky's argument was that the term consciousness acted as a
placeholder for several very difficult problems. It is such a big problem
that we avoid solving it by saying that it is not solvable, i.e. that it is
necessarily irreducible and a very important human trait: subjective
experience. It is certainly not in the agenda of the practical minded to
regard a cognitive phenomenon in a dogmatic manner with which one simply
asserts a superficial explanation that bears no scientific value.

The more significant part of Minsky's claim has been largely ignored. In that
he has claimed to have a theory that explains what those hard problems are
and how they could be solved.

I agree with Minsky in that a rigorous treatment of consciousness truly leads
to many well defined difficult problems. For instance, it has often been said
that "awareness" is one part of the puzzle. How can a system be 'aware' of
its state and the environment? In what way is "attention" realized?
Nevertheless, a very aware system (say, a military combat computer) cannot be
said to be conscious. That is, it is not a sufficient condition for
consciousness. This kind of philosophical analysis, I believe, is most
beneficial for researchers in other disciplines within cognitive sciences:
divide and conquer.

On the other hand, even making systems that have realized these aspects of
high level mammal cognition may not be satisfactory for "implementing"
consciousness. For we must reckon that there might be a design that makes an
intelligent system conscious at many levels. [Or for some other valid reason]
In other words, the problem might be bigger than we think or it might be more
fundamental than we assume it to be.

Take for instance the idea of tracking down evolutionary process: if we build
simple minds and then add new layers bringing new features then we should
eventually reach a human-level. Surely, especially in understanding the less
developed regions of mammal brains, that is a reasonable course for
experiment. On the other hand, we cannot guarantee that following a simple
methodology will result in success: we can have robots that walk but that
cannot think. Perhaps it's the last layer that is so hard to reproduce, or we
have inaccurately modeled a long phase of evolution. In that perspective, it
might be more than difficult to backtrace the log of evolution of
intelligence on earth. It is an experiment too vast to replicate.

As a digression, I offer the the following thought which I entertain
occasionally. In the design of abstract machines, we have come a long way.
Imagine what the early programmers would think of today's advanced languages
such as Haskell. They used to program in machine code (not assembly), and
they would perhaps not be able to think how the design of a functional-OO
program would look like. Likewise, perhaps we are not able to see the design
behind the architecture of human mind. Perhaps it is the necessary outcome of
a very advanced design that we have not come to appreciate yet.

I would like to present a warm thought experiment in this respect: the poor
bug. When we are watching a documentary of the jungle, we observe bugs
swarming with life. Each one of them is a unique individual, with a different
prospect of life and an optimal behavior function that will lead to their
goals.

This thought experiment, as you have predicted, is one in simulacra. Now, let
the same (harmless) little bug live in a controlled environment such as a
glass box. When we observe the bug, we are also observing the "psychology" of
the bug which is far inferior then ours. Yet, there is solid evidence that it
has some intelligence. Some bugs, as you may find proof in literature, have
shown behavior that require learning. And the truth is that none of our
robots is as good as a real insect. We almost have the technology to do
fantastic things to a bug. Let us assume that we can "scan" the bug and a
simulation of the bug so so accurate can be produced that when placed in a
virtual construct of the controlled environment it demonstrates us the same
cognitive capacity. We would be tempted to ask whether this is the same
individual as the scanned one. Physically, it is not. Nevertheless, we could
say that the new entity is the continuation of the original bug and should
thus be considered that it is the same individual "teleported" to a different
"place".

My argument is focused on "subjective experience", therefore it doesn't
require a human. We can surely accept that "to be a bug" has an extensive
subjective experience. The experience of a member of a species, it is true,
is very valuable. Nevertheless, we do not question value.

Our simulation physically contains the mind of the replica of the poor bug.
Something strange has happened. We have transferred a mind to a computer, but
we do not know how to design and build one. What we did was scanning: perhaps
dissecting the poor bug with precise devices and then encoding the state of
each cellular machinery in cells. Yet, we have not reverse engineered the
design. We do not _understand_ how a machine with similar capabilities could
be built. Nevertheless, we can look at the simulation monitors and using some
excellent programs measure every aspect of the bug with sufficient precision.
What have we achieved?[*]

Since we are now inside the frame of a thought experiment let us take it
further. Imagine that after the poor bug was crushed, one of the lab
assistants named Tenno, who happened to be a practicing Zen monk at the same
time, came to study the poor bug. Having a perfect control of his mind, he
read the binary code that represented the bug and re-formed the bug in his
mind. He closed his eyes, and during his meditation, he gave freedom to the
poor bug in his mind. He watched in the eye of his mind how it walked and ate
and how it went into a little hole in the ground to avoid the rain. He
understood the poor bug. He knew what it saw and how it saw and the crude
feeling of being a poor bug running for life underneath a leaf. His professor
entered the lab and finding him sitting in the lotus position asked him
whether he backed up the simulation. He made no reply, because until he
opened his eyes he was the bug.

When he opened his eyes, he said "being a bug is more exhilarating than the
code". The professor said "to know the bug is more important than to be the
bug".

The persuasive component of this thought experiment is that we can diminish
the difference between subjective experience and objective experience to a
point where there is no more anything to distinguish. There is only
operation.

This is of course only a long way of saying "Minds are simply what brains
do" (Minsky, SOM)

The moral of the story is that the fact that we do not currently understand
how a mind works does not necessarily mean that it cannot ever be understood.

Moving out of the frame of the experiment, the remaining question is then why
"consciousness" is one of the most powerful suitcase words. It is, because it
does refer to our most precious capabilities. Therefore, saying that those
precious capabilities do not exist is a fallacy. Nevertheless, consciousness
as we know it does not exist, for saying that it is 'being capable of
subjective experience' is a very weak definition. Then, one would be forced
to enquire what makes your subjective experience different than a bug's, and
with no one to offer an admissible answer that involves "the holiness of
subjective experience", the ancient definition of consciousness would be
blown to oblivion.

I would be delighted to see insightful comments to this humble post.

Regards,

[*] This thought experiment had initially purposed to support the thought that
activating an intelligent entity without understanding how its mind works
doesn't amount to much. It had perhaps arisen from my anti-neural-network
attitude. That the agenda of AI _must_ include _understanding_ how the mind
works.

__
Eray Ozkural, a.k.a. exa
CS Dept., Bilkent Univ.
  There is no perfect circle. -- me

Hello guys,

I was thinking of what ozge had told me in person. Can we make a great
argument that shows, without flaw, the circularity in behaviorist's
arguments?

It does look like much of what Quine and Skinner said on the subject is
entirely circular.

Maybe it's an old philosophical tradition that they used to hide the naivete
of their claims. First, they make many assumptions hidden in a language long
enough to look locally meaningful, however cryptic in the main assumption.
Then, they write a long gibberish based on the assumptions. Finally, they
decrypt the assumption.

Does this style of argument sound familiar to you?

Thanks,

--
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@...>
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunction: http://mp3.com/ariza
GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C

Even if behaviorism was true, people probably wouldn't accept it purely on
emotional grounds, because if love could be reduced that
way, life wouldn't be worth living.

For the same reason, pure randomness has to exist because if it didn't, then
there would be no way of being truly impartial when
faced with a Sophie's Choice. People would be driven insane not being able to
let fate decide in extreme circumstances.

If science ever proves total causality, it can easily be as much a disaster as
it would be a triumph of reason.

Ray





----- Original Message -----
From: "Eray Ozkural" <erayo@...>
To: <ai-philosophy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 11:00 AM
Subject: [ai-philosophy] Circularity of Behaviorism


> Hello guys,
>
> I was thinking of what ozge had told me in person. Can we make a great
> argument that shows, without flaw, the circularity in behaviorist's
> arguments?
>
> It does look like much of what Quine and Skinner said on the subject is
> entirely circular.
>
> Maybe it's an old philosophical tradition that they used to hide the naivete
> of their claims. First, they make many assumptions hidden in a language long
> enough to look locally meaningful, however cryptic in the main assumption.
> Then, they write a long gibberish based on the assumptions. Finally, they
> decrypt the assumption.
>
> Does this style of argument sound familiar to you?
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@...>
> Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
> www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunction: http://mp3.com/ariza
> GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
> To visit your group on the web, go to:
>  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ai-philosophy/
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
>  ai-philosophy-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
>  http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>

Suppose someone, secure in the magnificence of his own expertise,
comes up with the theory that anyone who disagrees with him must be
stupid.  Furthermore, suppose that he assumes that everyone who
participates in these discussion groups is stupid until proven
otherwise.  Then, he could use his "whoever-argues-with-me-is-
stupid" theory as a means to confirm the stupidity of the people who
discuss something with him.  When someone does disagree with him,
then, in his mind, the predictive element of the theory jumps up and
confirms his assignment of the prejudice to that person.  That
person is arguing with me, therefore, he must be stupid - just as I
thought!

Obviously, you can find logical errors in this argument, but even a
valid logical predictive theory can be misapplied.  Since a true
implication can lead to a false conclusion if the premise is false,
this means that a predicted event can appear to verify a false
conclusion even when it is used within a valid inference.  You could
say that if the premises are true then the predictive element of a
valid theory would constitute a valid test, but that argument is
premised on the assumption that you would be able to absolutely
detect the truth of all premises beforehand.  If you could arrange
knowledge so that only valid arguments were used then the predictive
powers of your theory could be reasonable, but the belief that
learning can take place just by using a prediction to confirm or
test a theory does not seem too reasonable.  Without an adequate
means to verify a theory, the attempt to constrict theories so that
they only use valid arguments is not a reasonable approach to the
problems of implementing true learning.

If you don't want to use the predictive test as an absolute
validation, but only as a measure of the utility of an action, you
can not call the action understanding.  For example, the belief
that "I am an expert and anyone who argues with me is a fool" can be
used as an utility that allows the prejudiced person a means of
saving face.  As long as he doesn't need any kind of confirmation
from the people he argues with, as long as he does not explore
thoughts that lead to alternatives that he hasn't already accepted
and as long as he ignores or is careless about the contradictions
that arise in his own thinking he might be able to derive a great
deal of satisfaction from the use of his theory.  But even though
the theory might be useful to him, it still would not constitute
an "understanding" of the situation as he imagines it to be.  His
theory is not actually detecting stupidity.

I realize that there are a variety of approaches to a problem like
this that can be considered.  But there is no way you can find an
absolute confirmation for most thoughts or theories.  The only way
you learn is by exploring and interacting with the subject matter
from different perspectives using various "tools" appropriate to
that study.  I do not believe that prediction can be used as a
consistently reliable instrument to validify theories or to detect
understanding.  Predictive techniques are useful in most situations
where measurements and their implications are extremely reliable.
But understanding is an active dynamic which must include the active
exploration of new ideas and situations.  Sure, there are moments
when we can rely on some kind of static knowledge to judge a
situation.  But in general, knowledge, understanding and learning
are so interdepedent that they cannot exist nor be adequately
comprehended with simplistic dichomatic principles.  We can
certainly study or talk about understanding with techniques of
simplification (we must use the techniques of simplifcation), but
that doesn't mean that we can casually ignore the inexorable
interdependence understanding shares with learning.

Prediction may be the product of most theorization.  But prediction
cannot be uncritically relied on as a validating principle.  Because
of the logic of reasoning from false presumptions there are no
simple validating principles that can be used to bootstrap
knowledge.  The same problem occurs with the attempt to use
probability, logic, fuzzy logic, other decision processes, semantic
primitives, theoretical primitives, conjectural reasoning, and other
simplistic instrumental methods in AI.  We must instead rely on the
weight of the evidence, and that evidence can only be acquired
through an active exploration of the theory, its complex relations
with other theories and the use of relevant empirical tests that are
created with reasoning.

I believe that anytime we use reason, or for that matter, anytime we
react in any way, we are learning.  The only way we can test the
reliance of a theory, or of a complex reaction that acts in some
ways that are similar to reasoning, is through the examination of
the network of ideas that can be found to be relevant to the theory
and by the discovery of its relationships to other theories that are
considered reliable.  Some of these related theories must provide
some means of obtaining empirical evidence for the theory.

The axiomatic system of constructing a theory of intelligence has
not been adequate to explain intelligence.  Alternatives that
offered obscure methods of combining information like the
connectionist theory have not proven to be adequate to produce
intelligence either because they were not able to efficiently use
symbolic information.  And the connectionists made no real effort to
explain the conceptual instruments of intelligence.  Somewhat like
the behaviorists of psychology, many connectionists tended to treat
the concept of "ideas" with some disdain and dismissal.

Strangely, not one of the major paradigms of artificial intelligence
has been able to adequately explain explanation.  We feel
comfortable with simplification, correlation, expectation,
definition, logic, associative networks, conjecture, numerical
methods and weak validation procedures.   But we also need to use
the full spectrum of reasoning, explanation, behavior and
communication in our theories of intelligence as well.  We need to
figure out how a computer program can make models of ideas.  But
most of all I believe we need to explore the exploration of ideas
and to explain explanation.

Jim Bromer

--- In ai-philosophy@yahoogroups.com, Eray Ozkural <erayo@c...>
wrote:
> Hello guys,
>
> I was thinking of what ozge had told me in person. Can we make a
great
> argument that shows, without flaw, the circularity in
behaviorist's
> arguments?
>
> It does look like much of what Quine and Skinner said on the
subject is
> entirely circular.
>
> Maybe it's an old philosophical tradition that they used to hide
the naivete
> of their claims. First, they make many assumptions hidden in a
language long
> enough to look locally meaningful, however cryptic in the main
assumption.
> Then, they write a long gibberish based on the assumptions.
Finally, they
> decrypt the assumption.
>
> Does this style of argument sound familiar to you?
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@c...>

I don't agree.  Although Skinner was out of it, the initial
motivation for behaviorism was an attempt to associate scientific
theories with observable behavior.  The issue of observation in
empirical science is an important one.  However, the failing of the
behaviorists was that they became obsessive with the
superficialities of behavior and hypocritical when they used ideas
like generalization and association! They practiced a group denial
as they refused to deal with the philosophical aspects of their
theories and it is not surprising that they became so rigid and even
absurd.  I believe that ideological rigidity is characteristic of
prolonged group denial.

I am a fan of Quine, but his use of "behaviorism" is not typical
behaviorism.  He never conducted research into behavior, he just
labled a form of learning as being behavioral because it could be
correlated with observable behavior.  If someone points to a balloon
and says "balloon" it is an observable behavior and Quine said that
is the method by which we learn certain words.  Then he goes on to
say that we learn other words by metaphor.  Although Quine was
referring to observable behavior, he was not writing a book on
behavioral psychology, he was writing philosophy.

Jim Bromer

On Saturday 17 January 2004 22:06, Ray Gardener wrote:
> Even if behaviorism was true, people probably wouldn't accept it purely on
> emotional grounds, because if love could be reduced that way, life wouldn't
> be worth living.
>

I think there is a plausible emotional ground other than admitting a system of
values based on emotions. That is simply the existence of emotional,
representational, intentional, etc. states. Emotions exist. Emotions can't be
reduced to external behavior. Behaviorism doesn't admit that. Therefore
behaviorism is wrong.

> For the same reason, pure randomness has to exist because if it didn't,
> then there would be no way of being truly impartial when faced with a
> Sophie's Choice. People would be driven insane not being able to let fate
> decide in extreme circumstances.
>

You mean randomness has to exist as a psychological explanation for free will
that could be acceptable by people? But then again randomness has to do with
*lack* of control. Why should we be willing to reduce control to lack of
control?

> If science ever proves total causality, it can easily be as much a disaster
> as it would be a triumph of reason.

I think the free will discussion is quite independent of determinism as shown
by Hume (IIRC).

Regards,

--
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@...>
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunction: http://mp3.com/ariza
GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C

On Saturday 17 January 2004 23:37, Jim Bromer wrote:
> I don't agree.  Although Skinner was out of it, the initial
> motivation for behaviorism was an attempt to associate scientific
> theories with observable behavior.  The issue of observation in
> empirical science is an important one.  However, the failing of the
> behaviorists was that they became obsessive with the
> superficialities of behavior and hypocritical when they used ideas
> like generalization and association! They practiced a group denial
> as they refused to deal with the philosophical aspects of their
> theories and it is not surprising that they became so rigid and even
> absurd.  I believe that ideological rigidity is characteristic of
> prolonged group denial.
>

I appreciate the motivation but it has quickly degenerated into an
"impenetrable" and in my opinion very counter-intellectual dogma as you have
explained.

> I am a fan of Quine, but his use of "behaviorism" is not typical
> behaviorism.  He never conducted research into behavior, he just
> labled a form of learning as being behavioral because it could be
> correlated with observable behavior.  If someone points to a balloon
> and says "balloon" it is an observable behavior and Quine said that
> is the method by which we learn certain words.  Then he goes on to
> say that we learn other words by metaphor.  Although Quine was
> referring to observable behavior, he was not writing a book on
> behavioral psychology, he was writing philosophy.

I would be a fan of Quine but I think he has explicitly supported Skinner's
behaviorism, although that may remain as somewhat obscure. His behavioral
analysis of language was psychological and philosophical behaviorism all
right, I believe.

The most obvious quote went something like "... an explanation at the lowest
level is possible..." in support of Skinner's programme, by which he had
referred to behavior. He did see Skinner's work as an application of his work
I think, but he did not support it fully because he probably didn't want to
be associated with possible failures of the approach. I guess history proved
that such caution was indeed warranted.

At this point, it will be profitable to ask what Quine's position on
philosophy of mind really was. I think
   1. He was a behaviorist
   2. He was a conventionalist
That is he didn't believe in the existence of abstract concepts, he thought
they were all conventions: "behavior out there". (2) I don't know if he
really believed in Anomalous Monism, it's hard to identify what Quine really
thought due to his confused writing! But from what I can make of it, he
shared the naive skepticism of mental states with other behaviorists. (1)

In a way, I think his approach to philosophy of mind was crippled from the
start because he took the angle of language as much as he would like to say
"there is no first philosophy". I take that as a bit of dishonesty since
every bit of his arguments dwell on language, language, and language. For
Quine, philosophy of language seems to be the first philosophy.
Unfortunately, natural language is a very complex entity that does not admit
a complete psychological analysis at that level (arm-chair philosophy). The
best you can come up with is some theory of semantics which uses logic to
represent truth functions of a small subset of linguistic expressions. To see
the shortcomings of analytical language philosophers one must turn to works
in computational linguistics where such approaches have been actually tried.
(Such as trying to construct meaning representation in FOL.) Therefore, much
as I dislike his insistence on other matters, Fodor/Chomsky combination
resulted in a much much more scientific inquiry into the matter than
Quine/Skinner combination whom seemed to favor NON-EXPLANATION over
EXPLANATION!

In many ways, AI *is* the testing ground for philosophy of mind and so far
Quine's position has not found any bit of verification in our experiments! If
you look at c.a.p., David Longley, who is a flaming net.kook, and other
behaviorists  think that Brooks's subsumption architectures are in some way a
*proof* that behaviorism is correct. That idea is of course ultimately due to
ignorance of AI. Brooks already left that insistence on reflex-based agents a
long time ago, anyway.... And even if he didn't, there was no proof that
representation was unnecessary for intelligence. Of course it is necessary,
and of course representation is not what some arm-chair philosopher thinks it
is!

Since you are a fan of Quine, I think you can counter these points and make a
better explanation of Quine's philosophy of mind than I can. I do not qualify
as a critic of Quine as you are (as can be seen from directing the criticism
as "I think")

Regards,

--
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@...>
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunction: http://mp3.com/ariza
GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C

My point was to highlight the difference between truth and what people need to
believe in order to function. Even if truth has no
limit, belief does.

Say I could somehow perform an experiment that proved that the future actually
existed. For example, I could tell when so-and-so
would die (all other details would be unavailable).

Well, people would go nuts. Part of what makes life possible is our ignorance.

The average person would tell me, "Don't tell me. I don't want to know."

Ray



----- Original Message -----
From: "Eray Ozkural" <erayo@...>
To: <ai-philosophy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2004 8:56 AM
Subject: Re: [ai-philosophy] Circularity of Behaviorism


> On Saturday 17 January 2004 22:06, Ray Gardener wrote:
> > Even if behaviorism was true, people probably wouldn't accept it purely on
> > emotional grounds, because if love could be reduced that way, life wouldn't
> > be worth living.
> >
>
> I think there is a plausible emotional ground other than admitting a system of
> values based on emotions. That is simply the existence of emotional,
> representational, intentional, etc. states. Emotions exist. Emotions can't be
> reduced to external behavior. Behaviorism doesn't admit that. Therefore
> behaviorism is wrong.
>
> > For the same reason, pure randomness has to exist because if it didn't,
> > then there would be no way of being truly impartial when faced with a
> > Sophie's Choice. People would be driven insane not being able to let fate
> > decide in extreme circumstances.
> >
>
> You mean randomness has to exist as a psychological explanation for free will
> that could be acceptable by people? But then again randomness has to do with
> *lack* of control. Why should we be willing to reduce control to lack of
> control?
>
> > If science ever proves total causality, it can easily be as much a disaster
> > as it would be a triumph of reason.
>
> I think the free will discussion is quite independent of determinism as shown
> by Hume (IIRC).
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@...>
> Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
> www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunction: http://mp3.com/ariza
> GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
> To visit your group on the web, go to:
>  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ai-philosophy/
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
>  ai-philosophy-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
>  http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>

Hello Ray,

On Sunday 18 January 2004 20:27, Ray Gardener wrote:
> My point was to highlight the difference between truth and what people need
> to believe in order to function. Even if truth has no limit, belief does.
>
> Say I could somehow perform an experiment that proved that the future
> actually existed. For example, I could tell when so-and-so would die (all
> other details would be unavailable).
>
> Well, people would go nuts. Part of what makes life possible is our
> ignorance.
>
> The average person would tell me, "Don't tell me. I don't want to know."

I fully agree. The psychological consequences of scientific discoveries can be
devastating.

Regards,

--
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@...>
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunction: http://mp3.com/ariza
GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C

> I fully agree. The psychological consequences of scientific discoveries can be
> devastating.


Just to be clear: I'm not talking about the traditional psychological
difficulties people have had with new discoveries (like the
Church with Galileo). I'm saying that there may well exist a fundamental limit
to what can be believed, even by perfectly rational
people.

One can reach a point where one is forced to choose between being right and
being human (without any middle ground). I would not be
surprised if we find that this type of extreme information conveniently happens
to be impossible to determine scientifically.

On the other hand, if it can be determined, it could well explain the lack of
advanced alien neighbours -- they make discoveries
that cannot be reconciled with what they must believe in order to keep living.

I used to think religious theologists were searching for truth (even if it is
truth as revealed by the interpretation of religious
texts). What actually happens is more interesting: the tension between having
truth and searching for it is more desirable. Nobody
actually wants to find the truth, because then they would have to accept it. But
they don't want to stop searching either, because
they can't help wanting the truth. What they really want is a middle ground of
continual interpretation, which is exactly where they
are.

I think, in the end, the only truth people are happy with is the truth that
claims that anything is possible, because anything less
places limits upon people, and deep down, we don't like limits. People's desire
to be free is the most universal thing I've
observed.

Ray

Your suggestion that I argue Quine's views took me by surprise, and
when I read your academic challenge to explain Quine, my mind went
characteristically blank.  I could not remember anything of Quine's
philosophy for four days, (however, I did slip on some ice and I hit
my head on a plywood ramp so I am going to offer that as an excuse.)
(I had a slight headache in an area of my head that I did not hit, but
I seem to be ok now.)

I finally remembered one tidbit about Quine.  He was talking about
language and epistemology, so he was able to entertain thoughts about
systems of thinking without having to refer to the a theory of the
mind per se.  I believe that was a tactic that wasn't completely
justified, but on the other hand, if some one really starts
nit-picking about my theory of mind, I will sometimes dismiss it by
explaining that I am really interested in creating a model of thinking
for an innovative kind of artificial intelligence.  And it is true.
My theory of mind is really a system of conjectures about a feasible
AI mind.  At any rate the epistemologist really is trying to develop
theories about the best way to go about using your mind to further
understanding rather than explaining how minds work.  Since the social
aspects of science and other fields of understanding is important,
Quine's references to behavior observable to a group is very relevant
to the nature of scientific thought and theory.  It really is an
epistemological issue.  Quine says that after some words are learned
by referring to observable events or objects, much of language is then
developed through metaphoric references that rely on previously
learned words to provide a sense of what the new words mean.  I don't
actually agree with this because I believe that the failures of AI
suggest that more intricate theories are necessary to explain
learning.  For example, while I believe that we learn many of the
ideas and words through metaphor, I also believe that the imagination
can be used to create systems, these systems can leave us with some
questions and some theories about the general nature of reality.  I
believe that my version of this theory was actually derived from
Quine, but I differ from Quine because I believe that it is a
fundamental and innate mechanism of mind that is used in learning
whereas Quine was talking about epistemology.  And I have gone further
than Quine in my appreciation of the effectiveness of using
imaginative mechanisms as a metaphor for reality.

If you want to continue discussing Quine I can get some books from the
state university sometime.  It is a long drive, and while I really
enjoy the drive, I have too much to do this week.  I am planning to go
early next month.  An author named Gibson wrote a few great books on
Quine.  If you have read pieces of Quine and weren't able to tie them
together you might look at Gibson's books if you are interested.  The
reason I can't remember Quine's theories is that I incorporated them
into my own thinking.  (I am only in it for the AI).  If I saw an idea
that I thought I could use, I didn't care about the theory's pedigree.
If an idea started me thinking and my thoughts seemed worthwhile, I
kept notes.  But, my notes were on my thoughts, not necessarily the
author's.

Jim Bromer


--- In ai-philosophy@yahoogroups.com, Eray Ozkural <erayo@c...> wrote:
> On Saturday 17 January 2004 23:37, Jim Bromer wrote:
> > I don't agree.  Although Skinner was out of it, the initial
> > motivation for behaviorism was an attempt to associate scientific
> > theories with observable behavior.  The issue of observation in
> > empirical science is an important one.  However, the failing of
the
> > behaviorists was that they became obsessive with the
> > superficialities of behavior and hypocritical when they used ideas
> > like generalization and association! They practiced a group denial
> > as they refused to deal with the philosophical aspects of their
> > theories and it is not surprising that they became so rigid and
even
> > absurd.  I believe that ideological rigidity is characteristic of
> > prolonged group denial.
> >
>
> I appreciate the motivation but it has quickly degenerated into an
> "impenetrable" and in my opinion very counter-intellectual dogma as
you have
> explained.
>
> > I am a fan of Quine, but his use of "behaviorism" is not typical
> > behaviorism.  He never conducted research into behavior, he just
> > labled a form of learning as being behavioral because it could be
> > correlated with observable behavior.  If someone points to a
balloon
> > and says "balloon" it is an observable behavior and Quine said
that
> > is the method by which we learn certain words.  Then he goes on to
> > say that we learn other words by metaphor.  Although Quine was
> > referring to observable behavior, he was not writing a book on
> > behavioral psychology, he was writing philosophy.
>
> I would be a fan of Quine but I think he has explicitly supported
Skinner's
> behaviorism, although that may remain as somewhat obscure. His
behavioral
> analysis of language was psychological and philosophical behaviorism
all
> right, I believe.
>
> The most obvious quote went something like "... an explanation at
the lowest
> level is possible..." in support of Skinner's programme, by which he
had
> referred to behavior. He did see Skinner's work as an application of
his work
> I think, but he did not support it fully because he probably didn't
want to
> be associated with possible failures of the approach. I guess
history proved
> that such caution was indeed warranted.
>
> At this point, it will be profitable to ask what Quine's position
on
> philosophy of mind really was. I think
>   1. He was a behaviorist
>   2. He was a conventionalist
> That is he didn't believe in the existence of abstract concepts, he
thought
> they were all conventions: "behavior out there". (2) I don't know
if he
> really believed in Anomalous Monism, it's hard to identify what
Quine really
> thought due to his confused writing! But from what I can make of
it, he
> shared the naive skepticism of mental states with other
behaviorists. (1)
>
> In a way, I think his approach to philosophy of mind was crippled
from the
> start because he took the angle of language as much as he would like
to say
> "there is no first philosophy". I take that as a bit of dishonesty
since
> every bit of his arguments dwell on language, language, and
language. For
> Quine, philosophy of language seems to be the first philosophy.
> Unfortunately, natural language is a very complex entity that does
not admit
> a complete psychological analysis at that level (arm-chair
philosophy). The
> best you can come up with is some theory of semantics which uses
logic to
> represent truth functions of a small subset of linguistic
expressions. To see
> the shortcomings of analytical language philosophers one must turn
to works
> in computational linguistics where such approaches have been
actually tried.
> (Such as trying to construct meaning representation in FOL.)
Therefore, much
> as I dislike his insistence on other matters, Fodor/Chomsky
combination
> resulted in a much much more scientific inquiry into the matter
than
> Quine/Skinner combination whom seemed to favor NON-EXPLANATION over
> EXPLANATION!
>
> In many ways, AI *is* the testing ground for philosophy of mind and
so far
> Quine's position has not found any bit of verification in our
experiments! If
> you look at c.a.p., David Longley, who is a flaming net.kook, and
other
> behaviorists  think that Brooks's subsumption architectures are in
some way a
> *proof* that behaviorism is correct. That idea is of course
ultimately due to
> ignorance of AI. Brooks already left that insistence on reflex-based
agents a
> long time ago, anyway.... And even if he didn't, there was no proof
that
> representation was unnecessary for intelligence. Of course it is
necessary,
> and of course representation is not what some arm-chair philosopher
thinks it
> is!
>
> Since you are a fan of Quine, I think you can counter these points
and make a
> better explanation of Quine's philosophy of mind than I can. I do
not qualify
> as a critic of Quine as you are (as can be seen from directing the
criticism
> as "I think")
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@c...>
> Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project:
http://www.kde.org
> www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunction:
http://mp3.com/ariza
> GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16
874D 539C

Greetings,

Is not existence mostly a subjective concept? I suspect a good deal of
our metaphysics rests on defining existence in one convenient aspect
among many those which would be equally valid.

And hence the question, which senses of existence can you conceive of?

I had thought of several such senses. I do not recall majority of
those, but to set an example I will try to enumerate some of them
which I seem to recall:

1. Existence as unity.
2. Existence as communication.
3. Existence as mental. (imaginability)
4. Existence as consistency. (That there is a logical model!)
5. Existence as provability! (admittedly a wrong point of view!)
6. Existence as change.
7. Existence as non-change.
8. Existence as function.
9. Existence as dream.
10. Existence does not come in isolation! (Existence as
*multiplicity*)
11. Existence as observability.
12. Existence as possibility!
13. Existence as non-existence.
14. Existence as randomness.
15. Existence as determinism.
16. Existence as cosmology (physics).
17. Existence as consciousness.
18. Existence as computation.
19. Existence as behavior.
20. Existence as existence.
21. Existence as history.
....

Do you have anything to add to this list?

Regards,

--
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@...>
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo
Malfunction: http://malfunct.iuma.com
GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C

For what's it worth, what I find difficult in the matter of existence is that we
could posit existence as consciousness, but if we
treat consciousness as a later-emerged state of being, then we have to consider
four situations:

a) Nothing existed prior to the first conscious being, but if so, then reality
actually began with that being's emergence, and all
prior history was created retroactively to be compatible with that being's sense
of understanding.

b) Existence does not depend on consciousness; the entire universe can have
things that exist, even though no conscious observation
of them occurs.

c) Consciousness is a fine-grained feature of all real things, but we cannot
tell because our own present consciousness is so
overwhelmingly present to us, and we cannot remember what it was like to exist
in simpler form (e.g., as sperm or egg or molecule).
We may return to such an experience upon death but again, confirmation of such
cannot be related to the living, who merely observe a
fellow member passing away.

d) There is a prime sentient consciousness that existed from the very beginning
whose creation is independant of normal causality or
derives immediately from the first moment as the satisfaction of some logical
rule. This is of course the religious solution.

Ray



----- Original Message -----
From: "Eray Ozkural" <erayo@...>
To: <ai-philosophy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 4:17 PM
Subject: [ai-philosophy] Many Senses of Existence


> Greetings,
>
> Is not existence mostly a subjective concept? I suspect a good deal of
> our metaphysics rests on defining existence in one convenient aspect
> among many those which would be equally valid.
>
> And hence the question, which senses of existence can you conceive of?
>
> I had thought of several such senses. I do not recall majority of
> those, but to set an example I will try to enumerate some of them
> which I seem to recall:
>
> 1. Existence as unity.
> 2. Existence as communication.
> 3. Existence as mental. (imaginability)
> 4. Existence as consistency. (That there is a logical model!)
> 5. Existence as provability! (admittedly a wrong point of view!)
> 6. Existence as change.
> 7. Existence as non-change.
> 8. Existence as function.
> 9. Existence as dream.
> 10. Existence does not come in isolation! (Existence as
> *multiplicity*)
> 11. Existence as observability.
> 12. Existence as possibility!
> 13. Existence as non-existence.
> 14. Existence as randomness.
> 15. Existence as determinism.
> 16. Existence as cosmology (physics).
> 17. Existence as consciousness.
> 18. Existence as computation.
> 19. Existence as behavior.
> 20. Existence as existence.
> 21. Existence as history.
> ....
>
> Do you have anything to add to this list?
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@...>
> Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
> www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo
> Malfunction: http://malfunct.iuma.com
> GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
> To visit your group on the web, go to:
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>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
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>
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>
>
>

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Sociological Analysis of Metaphysics
Date: Saturday 24 January 2004 12:34
From: posting-system@...
To: erayo@...

From: erayo@... (Eray Ozkural  exa)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Sociological Analysis of Metaphysics
NNTP-Posting-Host: 195.174.173.82
Message-ID: <fa69ae35.0401240234.6f1b5e34@...>

Hello there,

I tend to think philosophers of a society develop metaphysical
theories mainly for two reasons:
1. To justify their beliefs and values
2. To justify the beliefs and values of their society

[Please note the humor content]

Hence, there is quite a bit of relativism in metaphysical theories.
Before looking at whether a particular theory is true, we should look
at the circumstances in which it was conceived. Although we would
ordinarily suppose that a metaphysical theory is ultimately detached
from the society due to the extraordinary level of abstraction it
deals with, when we look at the traditions and history of a culture we
find remarkable correlation between the forthcoming metaphysical
theories, even the most abstract and obscure ones, and that society's
particular way of life.

Desire for consistency can be a powerful drive for those who
investigate metaphysics.

If we liken the society to a mind, a metaphysical theory is an
abstract self-model: a core component of its consciousness which
models its own operation. It can probably reach universal truth
outside the realm of its cognitive domain, however I do not trust that
a significant portion of our metaphysics reflects universality.

It doesn't seem too farfetched to claim that Anglo-Saxon philosophers,
German philosophers or Chinese philosophers strived to justify their
own cultures and not necessarily the others.

Can you imagine any examples for or against the point of view I
presented?

Regards,

--
Eray Ozkural

-------------------------------------------------------

--
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@...>
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara  KDE Project: http://www.kde.org
http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunction: http://malfunct.iuma.com
GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B  EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C

This question is (surprise?) addressed by researchers working on
brain-computer interfaces.

Last night I've seen such an interface in action (on TV, of course).

Here's an article on the interface:

http://www.fraunhofer.de/english/press/pi/pi2003/06/rn_t6.html

And here a story on the cocktail party effect:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/07/980703092505.htm

Interestingly the research on the cocktail party effect was motivated
by a question on love (reproduction :)

I hope the URLs will not be scrambled by Yahoo's posting process.

/Klaus