Analysis 5: A Mind for Design

With the development of artificial intelligence and computing, age-old questions resurfaced, renewed. If these machines could be intelligent, what can we then conclude about the human brain? A materialist position, attributing all corners of the infinitely malleable and structurally complex human mind to basic, physical, cerebral processes, sends chills up many spines. Why would it? What does the development of computer science, bolstered by the rapid development of cognitive science in the late 20^th century, mean for our project?

A slight digression is in order. Much of the development of ideas for this site will progress in the following way: a new situation or structure is introduced, and it then acts as a filter for the different fundamental premises that each of us may have adopted with (and by) our gut intuitions. So, whether you are coming into the questions surrounding human purpose with religious baggage, or whether your gut says that we’re organic, soulless machines, you will (hopefully) be able to analyze the given topic through your lens, and see how your base-premises fare. The goal is that by passing pre-established, relative premises through these topics, views will become challenged and thus refined, whilst being exposed to otherwise forgotten, competing positions. With this in mind, we return to the filter at hand.

Gut-level problems many people have with A.I. concern whether or not a computer can be conscious. With this we step into worms spilled long ago, still writhing. What is consciousness? What is a soul? What is the relationship between consciousness and the soul, if any? The literature on this subject is robust, and growing, and the results could be more poignant than we may want to know, or accept. As cognitive science peers deeper into the lowest levels, the base structures of thought, it creates a symbiosis whereby developments in studies of the brain guide A.I. systems, while A.I. developments shed light on unanswered mind questions. Where will, and can, this lead?

If our brains are in fact computers, and consciousness and all those other “human” properties fall prey to our reductions, then the human purpose shifts, squirms, and adjusts. Our purposes, and perhaps even our Purpose(s) could be seen in a different way; base-level processes and systems; difficult to grasp, but by near-inconceivable complexity, not divine inaccessibility.

If the prospect of a computer with a soul seems preposterous, and the possibility of a conscious computer offensive (if not terrifying), then your likely ammunition resides in the (so far) failure of artificial intelligence to behave with indisputable consciousness. We have come a long way, but there’s much road left to travel. No language program consistently and thoroughly passes the Turing Test, whether you think its results indicate intelligence or not. If the belief is that computers will never get there, then this is one long waiting game; the fear of the proof is the price paid for eluding its burden. Somewhat ironically, it comes down to a matter of faith.

Regardless, the study of computers and artificial minds could very well prove useful in discovering more about our minds, by both notable similarities and differences. And knowing more about the human mind can only help answer how it builds, interacts with, and perhaps ultimately forms the human purpose.

The arrival of computers (to those watching) brought the adrenaline surge of a cutting-edge existence, catching whiffs of something big cooking not too far away. Perhaps the smell is alluring because it is familiar and thus reassuring, like fresh-baked bread. Maybe we are trekking a great distance to revisit and thus understand something most essentially nearby. Or maybe we’re building bigger and bigger ladders to try and reach the moon.

References / Further Reading:

Consciousness Explained, by Daniel Dennett

Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I., by George F. Gilder

The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, by David Chalmers

Fragments of Consciousness, David Chalmers’ blog

Comments

[ThrO192]

I'm not meaning this in a bad way, I really love what it is you write. I was just wondering how long you see this blog being able to go on. I mean, how long before you think you run out of things to write about? Is this something that you have considered?

[Simon Abramovitch]

I put up this site once some ideas I had started collectively making sense, started relating to one another, and started to find their way more and more into napkin scribbles and e-mails to myself. I by no means have the whole future of this site planned out, but I wouldn't say that I'm flying blind either. I have a general idea in my head of what the final picture feels like, and this blog is basically relaying how I got there, and developing the snippets of thought along the way. I've been raising a lot of questions, and am hoping to have answers. That being said, the blog will have an "end"; it can't really go on indefinitely without redundancy, but that end will not come soon.

[jlan]

On this subject in particular, I would say I also think it preposterous that humans have souls. I also don't think it right to use the term soul and conciousness interchangeably (not that I think you were). I think that nature is the ultimate creator of machines thus far and if we are to get any good we must at first immitate. Unfortunately we are not even at a level high enough yet to imitate nature on AI. For all we know, what people think of as god, is a human from another planet and we are his first experiments in biolgical robotics created in his own image. Since we tend to always imagine robots in a human-like form...