The computational theory of mind

[Touchstone]

Andy_T81:

It’s as simple as this: Symbols require somebody to link the symbol with the thing symbolized, otherwise it is not a symbol, just meaningless matter. Therefore symbols, by their very definition, require somebody who “really adopts intentions”. This is a problem for the proponent of CTM who wants to call thoughts symbols. You are somehow projecting this onto my position, yet never have I promoted the idea that thoughts are composed of symbols. I’m arguing against that position, remember?

Right, but you can’t have it both ways. If thoughts are composed of symbols, the homunculus problem is dismissed, because all meaning and semantics are necessarily algorithmic and reducible to automata. If you think that thought cannot be symbolic “all the way down”, you are positing the homunculus. Pick one.

As to the bootstrapping of symbols, I don’t think that’s a problem for machines any more than humans. Humans arrive at birth “designed” (by nature impersonally, or God) to manipulate symbols, to associate referents with mental symbols that provide the grist of meaning and semantics. And they do so as a matter of their nature – they are “goal-seeking” programs, and the symbolic construction process coalesces around these goal-states – acquiring food, comfort, emotional connection/satisfaction, control over local objects, navigation, etc.

This is not a problem for a machine, to be “born” with a goal-seeking design. In fact this is how programs that learn and adapt do get designed – they are equipped with generic facilities for symbolic construction based on incoming information, and they are given goal-states that that the program is biased toward. This is the bootstrapping of semantic contexts for a machine. The evolutionary algorithms I’ve worked on for network anomaly detection had goals it was “born” with. But as it went, it made up its contextualized semantics on its own, based on the (name removed by moderator)ut from the environment it was sampling. The same code learned and adapted in different ways to different network environments, even as it pursued the same goal-states.

As it turns out, the more successful instances and runs were the ones where we provided the minimal “starting semantics”, and made it learn as much “from scratch” as possible. The goals remain the same, but where you have a) goal-states, b) adaptive networks that can learn through model refinement through constant feedback loops and c) algorithms that cull and refining learning toward the goal-states in a), you have “automatic meaning construction”. It’s software, and thus overtly designed as far as it’s starting point, but the machine in those applications learns, adapts, and “self-considers” as it reviews what it has learned and is learning and how that tracks against its goal-states. The human mind is a formidably exotic machine, on any understanding of CTM, and the cost and complexity of even first order approximations of the human brain in computing hardware is staggering.

But the practical pieces that are already out there are not just practically useful, but instructive as working mechanisms that perform key functions we’ve long intuited to be the magic powers of our inner, supernatural homunculus.

-TS

 

[AndyT_81]

Thanks for the detailed reply Touchstone, I will chew on it and get back to you as soon as I can

 

[AndyT_81]

Touchstone,

Would you mind clarify something for me?

1. The “M” is “considered” by virtue of dereferencing the visual symbol “M”. We move from visual to conceptual semantic in this step.

What exactly is entailed in this step, this “dereferencing”? Also, what do you mean by “considered”? (in both the human and mechanical cases)

Thanks

 

[lemondiesel]

1. From 2., the physical arrangements of matter which are said to be symbols don’t inherently point beyond themselves to the thing being symbolized (according to materialism). For instance, the word “cat” written on a page is, without a mind to interpret, just squiggles of ink on a page.

Words mean that the mind would need the certain language to interpret. If it was a picture, anything with a mind that has seen a cat, would look at that cat and make a recognition.

1. If thoughts are physical arrangements of matter, they do no inherently point to anything, or represent anything.

So are these arrangements and an interpreter inevitable? I could say “uh” and “uh” equals “oh”, but those would only mean something if they had an image to coincide with.

1. Only an intentional mind can interpret physical arrangements as symbols

Well languages represent things as symbols, so this mind must have a language.

1. 1. presupposes an intentional mind to interpret the physical states of the brain and assign “symbols”, but (under materialism) this leads to a regress of internal “minds” - see Homunculus Arguement.

Well, it is because our explanation of reality is only reasonable if it best describes the phenomenon. As time changes, these symbols change. If that what you mean by regression of internal mind.

1. Therefore 1. is false, some thoughts are not physical symbols in the brain.

Some thoughts are created by senses, but then they are ‘filed away’ with the image that associate with these thoughts. Therefore, they are symbolic.

 

[lemondiesel]

1. Therefore a physical symbol in the brain symbolises itself.

It exists as an imagine in the interpreters brain, therefore symbolizing itself.

1. What causes a physical symbol in the brain to symbolise itself?

When it comes as an imagine in the brain. We can sense through touch what hot is. Only when sight obtains imagines that are hot, we will see a physical symbol.

1. How does it symbolise itself?

In the form of a imagine.

1. What is the **significance **of a symbol symbolising itself?

Non conscious matter created consciousness.

Edit:Have you ever heard Daniel Dennet? What I get from his explanations is that natural selection works via algorithms and as those algorithms compound in evolving brains; they create consciousness by constantly finding what “works”.

 

[Touchstone]

Touchstone,

Would you mind clarify something for me?

What exactly is entailed in this step, this “dereferencing”? Also, what do you mean by “considered”? (in both the human and mechanical cases)

Thanks

First in computing, “dereferencing” is navigating from symbol to referent, or from “pointer” to “pointed to”, if you prefer. In computing languages we can specify variables that change at runtime, and while some variables store a “program value” directly, like *int pageNum = 8;, *but other variables store a different kind of value, the location in memory of another variable (this is indirection).

So, storing and manipulating values directly would look like this in C++:

int pageNum = 0;

Incrementing that value would be:

pageNum = pageNum + 1; // or more tersely, simply ‘pageNum++;’

pageNum as an integer scalar value has been changed from a previous value of 0 to a current value of 1.

With a pointer variable, something we can dereference, you have a different syntax:

Page *curPage = curBook = getCurrentPage();

Here, curPage doesn’t store an integer or a ‘logical variable’ for the program, but a pointer value, the ADDRESS of another variable. That means we can change the value of curPage to keep track of what the current page object is for our program in one place. It’s not a number value like pageNum, it’s a pointer to a complex (and possibly very large) object.

So, dereferencing, then is just accessing some information indirectly, THROUGH a pointer:

int numWords = curPage**->**countWords();

I’ve bolded the arrow there, as that’s the key – the curPage variable is used to locate the the page object we’re interested in, then once we see what curPage points to, we “jump to it”, by using the dereference operator, and once we have access to that page object we can perform operations on it, like ask it to calculate the number of words it contains, and return the result as an integer.

I’ve used C++ as an example because it’s a popular language for computing (especially in AI), but also because it has a very obvious syntax for dereferencing ("->").

Ok, so that’s an example from a computer language. It’s good to remember that C++ disappears at runtime, it just helps us write and compile machine code. Dereferencing when the program runs is just using some memory as a variable that serves as a symbol, a pointer to something else; when the program dereferences the pointer, it looks at the pointer (symbol) value, goes to that address in memory, and treats that location in memory as the referent, the thing the symbol points at.

I’ll post this for now, as the human version of dereferencing will almost certainly put over the wonderful character limit for our posts here. The rest to follow shortly…

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

So, the other piece is missing from last night and will stay missing, I’m afraid. I’ve become aware of actions toward others here administratively (banning and such) that have caused a change in course.

I’ve not gotten any grief from the mods, or any contact at all, myself, so this is not a complaint about any kind of dispute I’m in – I’m not in any that I know of.

I got my notes together to put some effort into an interesting thread like this, and realized my fair expectation is, based on things that have been happening to other critics here, that my work will likely be listed under the heading “banned” at some point not far off, without my doing anything different than I have been as a participant in the conversation.

So Andy_T81, apologies for leaving you hanging. As you can probably tell, this is an interesting subject for me, and I was looking forward to digging into this a bit. Perhaps in another venue, sometime. I’m convinced going further will have me just feeling like a chump for putting in the effort here any more, given the management, unfortunately.

This is their forum, they pay the bills – the single donation I made some time ago probably doesn’t cover the resource costs I’ve consumed here. I seek no remedy, either, just exercising good judgment in taking my efforts and thoughts elsewhere.

There are many good and thoughtful people here who bring a lot to learn to the table. In a time where Christians increasingly are falling into 'Sharron Angle" mode, and deciding they are only comfortable and strong enough to talk to those who share their own worldview, this is a nice island of “common ground” or a “common space” for serious talk about serious issues, a place for all sides to be challenged.

Best regards to all, and if we should meet in a more level-headed venue somewhere else sometime, I’d be glad to take up good, serious, intense conversation and debate with you.

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

It exists as an imagine in the interpreter’s brain, therefore symbolizing itself.

3. What causes a physical symbol in the brain to symbolise itself?

When it comes as an imagine in the brain. We can sense through touch what hot is. Only when sight obtains imagines that are hot, we will see a physical symbol.

What exactly is the image made of?

4. How does it symbolise itself?

In the form of a imagine.

But what is the **mechanism **by which it occurs?

5. What is the significance of a symbol symbolising itself?

Non conscious matter created consciousness.

What caused it to do this?

Have you ever heard Daniel Dennet? What I get from his explanations is that…algorithms create consciousness by constantly finding what “works”.

Algorithms do not occur fortuitously. They presuppose an urge to find a solution. What is the origin of that urge?

 

[lemondiesel]

What exactly is the image made of?

A visual interpretation?

But what is the **mechanism **by which it occurs?

?

What caused it to do this?

Inevitability

Algorithms do not occur fortuitously. They presuppose an urge to find a solution. What is the origin of that urge?

Survival. Existence.

 

[AndyT_81]

Touchstone, sorry to see you go. Even though we disagree, I am thankful for your opposition, as I find the best way to really delve into a topic is in attempting to defend it against objectors.

I will still reply to what you have written so far in the coming days.

 

[buffalo]

Is Consciousness Entirely Material?

 

[tonyrey]

A visual interpretation?

?

Inevitability

Survival. Existence.

Hardly an explanation!

 

[AndyT_81]

Touchstone,

Look at this carefully: “when we see an “M” written on a page, we take that “M” to represent something”. That “take” in there jumps to an inner frame, and smuggles in the homunculus, who is the “mini-brain” doing the “taking”. On CTM, and other mechanistic models, the association neurologically is the meaning. The connection between percept and symbolic handle is constitutive of meaning. There is no further “taking” to be done, no homunculus to posit, there.

Just to clarify, I have no aversion to dualism. There is clearly a “self-reflective” part of thinking, this is just a characteristic of consciousness. When I look at a word while reading, say “cat” I immediately take the word to be symbolic of the abstract form “cat”. However, on reflection, I can look at the word and see it as a bunch of squiggles and shapes on a page. So in other words, I see no issue with using the word “take” in the above sentence. To deny we have this reflective experience is to deny a key characteristic of consciousness. Why would we do such a thing? Just so we can try to justify our naturalism? If CTM can’t account for such experiences, then it is not a full theory of the mind.

In any case, I can re-phrase the sentence to exclude self-reflective words like “take”. As follows: “When I see “M” written on a page, “M” represents something in my experience”. Are we now going to say words like “I” and “my” shouldn’t be used because it posits an identity which isn’t easily accounted for via naturalism? I think that would be rather silly.

The simple answer is “no”. But that only works as an answer if we assume humans are the only possible possesors of mind. An “M” may have meaning to alien minds, or to mechanical/software/non-biological minds. If humans have all been exterminated by the machines, and there are no biological alien minds, it’s quite possible that English words would remain meaningful and semantically rich for the extant machine minds, if indeed machines can be minds.

I was using human beings as a proxy for intentional agents. The key question here is, can purely mechanical brains give rise to intentional thoughts, i.e. thoughts that point beyond themselves to an object? To be clear, in the argument I am promoting I am not trying to disprove symbolic (i.e. intentional) thoughts, rather I am doubting whether purely material brains can ever be said to produce such thoughts. If this is the case, mechanical/software/non-biological or purely biological brains will not be produce things like “meaning”, whereby to mean something is to have an intentional thought.

If the argument is correct, machines cannot be minds, at least not in the sense that we are minds.

I don’t see the difference. For a human:

1. Vision provides the (name removed by moderator)ut through the eyes that presents an information pattern.
2. The pattern is analyzed for familiar and identifiable features by the brain.
3. The analyzed pattern is matched against a store of prototypes in memory.
4. On a match the visual (name removed by moderator)ut is then associated with that associated with matched prototype (an “M” is identified, and the (name removed by moderator)ut is associated with whatever “M” connects to in the brain).
5. The “M” is “considered” by virtue of dereferencing the visual symbol “M”. We move from visual to conceptual semantic in this step.

Let me try to reply to these steps, and show how they cannot constitute meaning, by taking an example (which incorporates your clarification regarding dereferencing).

Let’s consider a world with 5 dimensions, 4 spatial and one temporal. Let’s consider a machine in such a world, which does the following:

1. Takes a three dimensional image of an object (similar to the two dimensional images we take with a camera).
2. Re-creates this three dimensional image physically, for instance, say a three dimensional image of an object in the 4D world is a ball shape, this machine will then create a ball out of some sort of matter.
3. It drops this re-creation on a conveyor belt, which takes the three dimensional object to a sorting tray (let’s assume the internal workings of this machine is in three dimensions, for conceptual ease!).
4. Only round shaped objects can fall through this sorting tray into a container below.
5. A detector detects when an object has fell into the container, and an arrow drops down and points at the container

Ok, so here we have a purely mechanical machine which gets an (name removed by moderator)ut (the three dimensional image, which in turn creates the three dimensional object), analyses the (name removed by moderator)ut for identifiable features/matches against stored prototypes (the sorting tray separates round objects from all the rest), on a match, it associates the (name removed by moderator)ut with the stored prototype (the stored prototype is the round hole, and the object is associated with other round objects in that they are all in the same container) and finally “dereferences” the form from the individual (i.e. it “points” towards the container of round objects).

 

[AndyT_81]

So what can now be said? Taken objectively, without any intentional agent to interpret what is going on here, all we have is a bunch of matter. The arrow, which points towards the container, is a lump of matter objectively, an arrow or a pointer doesn’t make any inherent sense without an intentional agent to have the intentional thought that the arrow is pointing at something. Similarly, a pointer in software is really only a material state of affairs in the RAM. Objectively speaking, it doesn’t represent anything. It only becomes a pointer when an intentional agent interprets the bit of memory as pointing to another bit of memory. Similarly, a container full of round objects is just a container full of matter without someone to link these objects to something else.

Only when an intentional observer looks at the (name removed by moderator)uts and outputs of the machine can anything said to be symbolic. The container of round objects can be said to symbolize some feature in the 4D world only if an intentional observer interprets the container as such. The same goes for thoughts, if they are composed of symbols the medium of which is neural states, see the initial argument.

More to follow soon…