Emergence and Consciousness Explorations Into the Philosophy of Mind Via the Philosophy of Computation
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Journal of Philosophy, Inc
Journal of Philosophy, Inc. The Harder Problem of Consciousness Author(s): Ned Block Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 99, No. 8 (Aug., 2002), pp. 391-425 Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3655621 Accessed: 04-08-2015 15:41 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Philosophy. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.122.149.154 on Tue, 04 Aug 2015 15:41:39 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY VOLUME XCIX, NO. 8, AUGUST 2002 THE HARDER PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS* H. Huxley' famously said: "How it is that anything so re- T. markable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the ap- pearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp" (ibid., p. 19). We do not see how to explain a state of consciousness in terms of its neurological basis. This is the hard problemof consciousness.2 My aim here is to present another problem of consciousness. -
Artificial Intelligence Is Stupid and Causal Reasoning Won't Fix It
Artificial Intelligence is stupid and causal reasoning wont fix it J. Mark Bishop1 1 TCIDA, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK Email: [email protected] Abstract Artificial Neural Networks have reached `Grandmaster' and even `super- human' performance' across a variety of games, from those involving perfect- information, such as Go [Silver et al., 2016]; to those involving imperfect- information, such as `Starcraft' [Vinyals et al., 2019]. Such technological developments from AI-labs have ushered concomitant applications across the world of business, where an `AI' brand-tag is fast becoming ubiquitous. A corollary of such widespread commercial deployment is that when AI gets things wrong - an autonomous vehicle crashes; a chatbot exhibits `racist' behaviour; automated credit-scoring processes `discriminate' on gender etc. - there are often significant financial, legal and brand consequences, and the incident becomes major news. As Judea Pearl sees it, the underlying reason for such mistakes is that \... all the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting". The key, Pearl suggests [Pearl and Mackenzie, 2018], is to replace `reasoning by association' with `causal reasoning' - the ability to infer causes from observed phenomena. It is a point that was echoed by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis in a recent piece for the New York Times: \we need to stop building computer systems that merely get better and better at detecting statistical patterns in data sets { often using an approach known as \Deep Learning" { and start building computer systems that from the moment of arXiv:2008.07371v1 [cs.CY] 20 Jul 2020 their assembly innately grasp three basic concepts: time, space and causal- ity"[Marcus and Davis, 2019]. -
The Thought Experiments Are Rigged: Mechanistic Understanding Inhibits Mentalistic Understanding
Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Philosophy Theses Department of Philosophy Summer 8-13-2013 The Thought Experiments are Rigged: Mechanistic Understanding Inhibits Mentalistic Understanding Toni S. Adleberg Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/philosophy_theses Recommended Citation Adleberg, Toni S., "The Thought Experiments are Rigged: Mechanistic Understanding Inhibits Mentalistic Understanding." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2013. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/philosophy_theses/141 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Philosophy at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS ARE RIGGED: MECHANISTIC UNDERSTANDING INHIBITS MENTALISTIC UNDERSTANDING by TONI ADLEBERG Under the Direction of Eddy Nahmias ABSTRACT Many well-known arguments in the philosophy of mind use thought experiments to elicit intuitions about consciousness. Often, these thought experiments include mechanistic explana- tions of a systems’ behavior. I argue that when we understand a system as a mechanism, we are not likely to understand it as an agent. According to Arico, Fiala, Goldberg, and Nichols’ (2011) AGENCY Model, understanding a system as an agent is necessary for generating the intuition that it is conscious. Thus, if we are presented with a mechanistic description of a system, we will be very unlikely to understand that system as conscious. Many of the thought experiments in the philosophy of mind describe systems mechanistically. I argue that my account of consciousness attributions is preferable to the “Simplicity Intuition” account proposed by David Barnett (2008) because it is more explanatory and more consistent with our intuitions. -
Introduction to Philosophy Fall 2019—Test 3 1. According to Descartes, … A. What I Really Am Is a Body, but I Also Possess
Introduction to Philosophy Fall 2019—Test 3 1. According to Descartes, … a. what I really am is a body, but I also possess a mind. b. minds and bodies can’t causally interact with one another, but God fools us into believing they do. c. cats and dogs have immortal souls, just like us. d. conscious states always have physical causes, but never have physical effects. e. what I really am is a mind, but I also possess a body. 2. Which of the following would Descartes agree with? a. We can conceive of existing without a body. b. We can conceive of existing without a mind. c. We can conceive of existing without either a mind or a body. d. We can’t conceive of mental substance. e. We can’t conceive of material substance. 3. Substance dualism is the view that … a. there are two kinds of minds. b. there are two kinds of “basic stuff” in the world. c. there are two kinds of physical particles. d. there are two kinds of people in the world—those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those that don’t. e. material substance comes in two forms, matter and energy. 4. We call a property “accidental” (as opposed to “essential”) when ... a. it is the result of a car crash. b. it follows from a thing’s very nature. c. it is a property a thing can’t lose (without ceasing to exist). d. it is a property a thing can lose (without ceasing to exist). -
Emergence in Psychology: Lessons from the History of Non-Reductionist Science
Paper Human Development 2002;45:2-28 Human Development Emergence in Psychology: Lessons from the History of Non-Reductionist Science R. Keith Sawyer Washington University, St.louis, Mo., USA KeyWords Cognitive science. Emergence. History. Reductionism. Socioculturalism Abstract Theories of emergence have had a longstanding influence on psychological thought. Emergentism rejects both reductionism and holism; emergentists are scientific materialists, and yet argue that reductionist explanation may not always be scientifically feasible. I begin by summarizing the history of emergence in psy- chology and sociology, from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century. I then demonstrate several parallels between this history and contemporary psy- chology, focusing on two recent psychological movements: socioculturalism and connectionist cognitive science. Placed in historical context, both sociocultural ism and connectionism are seen to be revivals of 19th and early 20th century emergen- tism. I then draw on this history to identify several unresolved issues facing socio- culturalists and connectionists, and to suggest several promising paths for future theory. Copyright @ 2002 S. Karger AG, Base! 1. Introduction Emergentism is a form of materialism which holds that some complex natural phe- nomena cannot be studied using reductionist methods. My first goal in this paper is to identify the historical roots of two emergentist paradigms in contemporary psychology: sociocultural psychology and cognitive science. My second goal is to draw on this histo- ry to explore several unresolved issues facing these contemporary paradigms. Sociocul- tural psychologists are sociological emergentists; they hold that group behavior is consti- KARG E R <92002 S. Karger AG, Basel R. Keith Sawyer, Washington University .OOI8-716X/02/0451-0()()2$18.50/0 Department of Education, Campus Box 1183 Fax+41613061234 St. -
Emergentism As an Option in the Philosophy of Religion: Between Materialist Atheism and Pantheism
SURI 7 (2) 2019: 1-22 Emergentism as an Option in the Philosophy of Religion: Between Materialist Atheism and Pantheism James Franklin University of New South Wales Abstract: Among worldviews, in addition to the options of materialist atheism, pantheism and personal theism, there exists a fourth, “local emergentism”. It holds that there are no gods, nor does the universe overall have divine aspects or any purpose. But locally, in our region of space and time, the properties of matter have given rise to entities which are completely different from matter in kind and to a degree god-like: consciousnesses with rational powers and intrinsic worth. The emergentist option is compared with the standard alternatives and the arguments for and against it are laid out. It is argued that, among options in the philosophy of religion, it involves the minimal reworking of the manifest image of common sense. Hence it deserves a place at the table in arguments as to the overall nature of the universe. Keywords: Emergence; pantheism; personal theism; naturalism; consciousness 1. INTRODUCTION The main options among world views are normally classifiable as either materialist atheism, pantheism (widely understood) or personal theism. According to materialist atheism, there exists nothing except the material universe as we ordinarily conceive it, and its properties are fully described by science (present or future). According to personal theism, there exists a separate entity (or entities) of a much higher form than those found in the 2019 Philosophical Association of the Philippines 2 Emergentism as an Option in the Philosophy of Religion material universe, a god or gods. -
Preston, John, & Bishop, Mark
Preston, John, & Bishop, Mark (2002), Views into the Chinese Room: New Essays on Searle and Artificial Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press), xvi + 410 pp., ISBN 0-19-825057-6. Reviewed by: William J. Rapaport Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Department of Philosophy, and Center for Cognitive Science, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-2000; [email protected], http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/ rapaport ∼ This anthology’s 20 new articles and bibliography attest to continued interest in Searle’s (1980) Chinese Room Argument. Preston’s excellent “Introduction” ties the history and nature of cognitive science, computation, AI, and the CRA to relevant chapters. Searle (“Twenty-One Years in the Chinese Room”) says, “purely . syntactical processes of the implemented computer program could not by themselves . guarantee . semantic content . essential to human cognition” (51). “Semantic content” appears to be mind-external entities “attached” (53) to the program’s symbols. But the program’s implementation must accept these entities as input (suitably transduced), so the program in execution, accepting and processing this input, would provide the required content. The transduced input would then be internal representatives of the external content and would be related to the symbols of the formal, syntactic program in ways that play the same roles as the “attachment” relationships between the external contents and the symbols (Rapaport 2000). The “semantic content” could then just be those mind-internal -
Emergence, Function, and Realization
To appear in Routledge Handbook of Emergence. Please cite the published version. EMERGENCE, FUNCTION, AND REALIZATION Umut Baysan “Realization” and “emergence” are two concepts that are sometimes used to describe same or similar phenomena in philosophy of mind and the special sciences, where such phenomena involve the synchronic dependence of some higher-level states of affairs on the lower-level ones. According to a popular line of thought, higher-level properties that are invoked in the special sciences are realized by, and/or emergent from, lower-level, broadly physical, properties. So, these two concepts are taken to refer to relations between properties from different levels where the lower-level ones somehow “bring about” the higher-level ones. However, for those who specialise in inter-level relations, there are important differences between these two concepts – especially if emergence is understood as strong emergence. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight these differences. Realizing a Function Realization, as an inter-level relation, is often thought to be tightly related to the notion of a function, and this is arguably due to the fact that the notion of realization was imported into the contemporary philosophy of mind literature with a defence of functionalism alongside the refutation of the view that mental properties (e.g. being in pain) are identical with physical properties (e.g. having C-fibre stimulation). It was suggested by Putnam (1967) that mental properties are multiply realizable by different physical properties in different organisms – such that it is possible for two organisms to instantiate the same mental property without having any physical properties in common – therefore, a given mental property cannot be identified with any particular physical property. -
Digital Culture: Pragmatic and Philosophical Challenges
DIOGENES Diogenes 211: 23–39 ISSN 0392-1921 Digital Culture: Pragmatic and Philosophical Challenges Marcelo Dascal Over the coming decades, the so-called telematic technologies are destined to grow more and more encompassing in scale and the repercussions they will have on our professional and personal lives will become ever more accentuated. The transforma- tions resulting from the digitization of data have already profoundly modified a great many of the activities of human life and exercise significant influence on the way we design, draw up, store and send documents, as well as on the means used for locating information in libraries, databases and on the net. These changes are transforming the nature of international communication and are modifying the way in which we carry out research, engage in study, keep our accounts, plan our travel, do our shopping, look after our health, organize our leisure time, undertake wars and so on. The time is not far off when miniaturized digital systems will be installed everywhere – in our homes and offices, in the car, in our pockets or even embedded within the bodies of each one of us. They will help us to keep control over every aspect of our lives and will efficiently and effectively carry out multiple tasks which today we have to devote precious time to. As a consequence, our ways of acting and thinking will be transformed. These new winds of change, which are blowing strongly, are giving birth to a new culture to which the name ‘digital culture’ has been given.1 It is timely that a study should be made of the different aspects and consequences of this culture, but that this study should not be just undertaken from the point of view of the simple user who quickly embraces the latest successful inno- vation, in reaction essentially to market forces. -
Ronald Endicott, “Multiple Realizability” (Final Draft) Forthcoming in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2Nd Edition, Macmillan Press, 2005
Ronald Endicott, “Multiple Realizability” (Final Draft) Forthcoming in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, MacMillan Press, 2005 Multiple realizability is a key issue in debates over the nature of mind and reduction in the sciences. The subject consists of two parts: “multiplicity” and “realizability.” “Multiplicity” designates a kind of variability in the mechanism and materials from which a particular type of thing can be made. “Realizability” designates a specific relation that exists when there is the stated variability. Realizability Apart from the broad folk notion of realization meaning that a thing is “made real,” philosophers apply several technical notions to paradigm cases such computational states realized by engineering states, minds realized by brains, and persons realized by their bodies. The technical notions fall into three broad traditions: “mathematical,” “logico- semantic,” and “metaphysical.” The mathematical tradition equates realization with a form of mapping between objects. Generally speaking, x mathematically realizes y because elements of y map onto elements of x. The notion is useful for many purposes, for example, when constructing a formal model of a particular domain. However, since mapping extends to models as well as reality, it fails to distinguish between “simulated” versus “genuine” realizations. Heavenly stars can be mapped onto grains of sand, but grains of sand do not realize heavenly stars in any genuine sense. Similarly, the mental states described by a cognitive program can be mapped onto unthinking groups of things, but unthinking groups of things do not realize mental states in any genuine sense (Block, 1978). Hence, to capture what is essential to genuine realization, William Lycan (1987) adds ideas about evolutionary function, while David Chalmers (1994) emphasizes facts about causal structure. -
1 Philosophy of Mind and Metaphysics Lecture XI: Mind As a Computer
Philosophy of Mind and Metaphysics Lecture XI: Mind as a Computer: Machine Functionalism Tim Black California State University, Northridge Spring 2004 I. MULTIPLE REALIZABILITY AND FUNCTIONALISM a. Mental states (and events and properties) are multiply realizable. That is, one and the same mental state can be realized in different ways in different physical systems. “Mental property M—say, being in pain—may be such that in humans C-fiber activation realizes it but in other species (think of octopuses and reptiles) the physiological mechanism that realizes pain may well be vastly different” (p. 74). Moreover, the multiple realizability of mental states creates a problem for the Psychoneural (Type) Identity Theory. For, if one and the same mental state can be realized in different ways in different creatures, then there is no one type of physical state with which any particular type of mental state is identical. Pain, for example, is not identical to C-fiber activation since pain is realized in other creatures by some other type of physical state. b. The multiple realizability of mental states pushes us away from the Psychoneural (Type) Identity Theory, and toward Functionalism. “According to functionalism, a mental kind is a functional kind, or a causal-functional kind, since the “function” involved is to fill a certain causal role. … Thus, the concept of pain is defined in terms of its function, and the function involved is to serve as a causal intermediary between typical pain inputs (tissue damage, trauma, etc.) and typical pain outputs (winces, groans, escape behavior, etc.). The functionalist will say that this is generally true of all mental kinds: Mental kinds are causal-functional kinds, and what all instances of a given mental kind have in common is the fact that they serve a certain causal role distinctive of that kind. -
The Non-Reductionist's Troubles with Supervenience
ROBERT M. FRANCESCOTTI THE NON-REDUCTIONIST'S TROUBLES WITH SUPERVENIENCE (Received in revised form 29 May 1996) Most physicalists today believe that mental properties can be neurologically realized in many different ways. If some brand of functionalism is correct, then an internal event realizes a mental property in virtue of playing the right functional role, and not because of its intrinsic physical features. This allows that events that differ in neural type might realize the same mental property, the only con- straint being that each of these event can play the functional role de®nitive of that mental property. The belief in multiple realizability is one of the main reasons for the popularity of non-reductive physicalism. If mental states are multiply realizable at the neural level, then they are also multiply realizable, and to a far greater degree, at more basic levels of physical structure ± e.g., the molecular, atomic, and subatomic levels. Of course, the properties of the physical sciences are also multiply realizable; the property of being a carbon atom, for instance, is multiply realizable with respect to subatomic features. However, the problem with mental properties is that they, unlike chemical properties, are thought to be multiply realizable with respect to the entire range of features mentioned by the physical sciences. That is, for any mental property M, and for any event of physical type P, it is possible that M is realized by an event of some physical type other than P. If so, and if this possibility is nomological as well as metaphysical, then mental properties are irreducible in the sense that (NR1) there are no nomologically true biconditionals connecting mental properties with physical properties (i.e., properties of the physical sciences).