scholarly journals The Nature of Information, Semantics, and Effectiveness for Artificial Intelligence and Cognition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Brown
Keyword(s):  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Symbolic Reasoning ◽  
Theoretical System ◽  
Nature Of Information ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Information Semantics ◽  
Embedding Methods ◽  
Semantic Processes

This manuscript puts forward claims to help address foundational gaps in understanding Cognition and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), including the nature of Emergence, Semantics, and Information. This includes criteria for assessing true understanding in AI models. How symbolic reasoning conceptualizes phenomena is described. Without a subsymbolic perceptual level to generate concepts, there is no symbol grounding. Grounding requires dynamics outside of its own symbolization. Grounding forms the set of symbols used at the conceptual level. It is claimed that this role explains Semantics. This approach naturally leads to established research on Conceptual Spaces and has implications for Semantic Vector Spaces learned via Neural Embedding methods. It also has implications for Information Theories. A claim is made that Semantic Processes form Shannon-like microstates and macrostates, while Effective Processes constrain Semantic Processes. Unlike existing Semantic Information Theories, Semantic Processes are pre-informational. The claims provide perspective on the Mind. It is natural to conflate percepts with the modified version necessarily created when conceptualizing through explication. The ‘Hard Problem of Consciousness’ is related to this Percept/Concept distinction. Concepts are always subject to Eliminative Materialism. The nonconceptual properties of Percepts cannot be eliminated. Intrinsic are Extrinsic Emergence are distinguished. It is common to assume extrinsic emergent properties are intrinsic to the systems evoking them. This presents a challenge for proving intrinsic emergence in AI. However, criteria are proposed for claiming a theoretical system intrinsically processes information and grounds symbols. By leveraging the functional properties of Grounding, the criteria can be considered for actual systems.

Zombies and Dolls

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcello Massimini ◽  
Giulio Tononi
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Turing Test ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter uses thought experiments and practical examples to introduce, in a very accessible way, the hard problem of consciousness. Soon, machines may behave like us to pass the Turing test and scientists may succeed in copying and simulating the inner workings of the brain. Will all this take us any closer to solving the mysteries of consciousness? The reader is taken to meet different kind of zombies, the philosophical, the digital, and the inner ones, to understand why many, scientists and philosophers alike, doubt that the mind–body problem will ever be solved.

Contemporary Echoes of the World Soul

2021 ◽  
pp. 320-342
Author(s):  
Valia Allori
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Quantum Theories ◽  
The World ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

Quantum mechanics is a groundbreaking theory: it not only is extraordinarily empirically adequate but also is claimed to having shattered the classical paradigm of understanding the observer-observed distinction as well as the part-whole relation. This, together with other quantum features, has been taken to suggest that quantum theory can help one understand the mind-body relation in a unique way, in particular to solve the hard problem of consciousness along the lines of panpsychism. In this chapter, after having briefly presented panpsychism, Valia Allori discusses the main features of quantum theories and the way in which the main quantum theories of consciousness use them to account for conscious experience.

Intentionality and Phenomenality: A Phenomenological Take on the Hard Problem

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 63-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Zahavi
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Process Information ◽  
Conscious Mind ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Ice Cube ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind

In his bookThe Conscious MindDavid Chalmers introduced a now-familiar distinction between the hard problem and the easy problems of consciousness. The easy problems are those concerned with the question of how the mind can process information, react to environmental stimuli, and exhibit such capacities as discrimination, categorization, and introspection (Chalmers 1996, 4; 1995, 200). All of these abilities are impressive, but they are, according to Chalmers, not metaphysically baffling, since they can all be tackled by means of the standard repertoire of cognitive science and explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. This task might still be difficult, but it is within reach. In contrast, the hard problem — also known astheproblem of consciousness (Chalmers 1995, 201) — is the problem of explaining why mental states have phenomenal or experiential qualities. Why is it like something to ‘taste coffee,’ to ‘touch an ice cube,’ to ‘look at a sunset,’ etc.? Why does it feel the way it does? Why does it feel like anything at all?

Bio-centric Views of the Origin of Consciousness: The Search for the Solution to the Hard Problem

2018 ◽  
pp. 78-122
Author(s):  
Arthur S. Reber
Keyword(s):  
Distinct Type ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Two strategies are used to review the many efforts to solve (or resolve or dissolve) the Hard Problem. One searches for the neurocorrelates of consciousness, the effort to answer the question: “How does the brain make the mind?” The other looks for the first appearance of true consciousness in phylogenesis. Both approaches are reviewed and found wanting. The reason is they all begin with human consciousness and use it as the basis for the explorations. This, it is argued, has lead to a “category error” where the H. sap. mind is treated as a distinct type and not as a token on the same existential continuum as other minds. It also reveals the existence of the “emergentist’s dilemma” or the difficulty of determining how consciousness could spring into existence when one cosmic moment before, it didn’t exist. The chapter ends by anticipating criticism of these arguments and of the CBC and providing prophylactic arguments.

scholarly journals The dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience: what does philosophy of mind say?

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elie Cheniaux ◽  
Carlos Eduardo de Sousa Lyra
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Brain States ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Objective: To briefly review how the main monist and dualist currents of philosophy of mind approach the mind-body problem and to describe their association with arguments for and against a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.Methods: The literature was reviewed for studies in the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.Results: Some currents are incompatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neurosciences: interactionism and psychophysical parallelism, because they do not account for current knowledge about the brain; epiphenomenalism, which claims that the mind is a mere byproduct of the brain; and analytical behaviorism, eliminative materialism, reductive materialism and functionalism, because they ignore subjective experiences. In contrast, emergentism claims that mental states are dependent on brain states, but have properties that go beyond the field of neurobiology.Conclusions: Only emergentism is compatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

Sensory cortex and the mind-brain problem

1978 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Puccetti ◽  
Robert W. Dykes
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Rule Out

AbstractOne of the implicit, and sometimes explicit, objectives of modern neuroscience is to find neural correlates of subjective experience so that different qualities of that experience might be explained in detail by reference to the physical structure and processes of the brain. It is generally assumed that such explanations will make unnecessary or rule out any reference to conscious mental agents. This is the classic mind-brain reductivist program. We have chosen to challenge the optimism underlying such an approach in the context of sensory neurophysiology and sensory experience. Specifically, we ask if it is possible to explain the subjective differences among seeing, hearing, and feeling something by inspecting the structure and function of primary visual, auditory, and somesthetic cortex.After reviewing the progress in localization of sensory functions over the past two centuries and examining some aspects of the structure and function of somesthetic, auditory, and visual cortex, we infer that one cannot explain the subjective differences between sensory modalities in terms of present day neuroscientific knowledge. Nor do present trends in research provide grounds for optimism.At this point we turn to three philosophical theories to see what promise they hold of explaining these differences. A brief discussion of each – identity theory, functionalism, and eliminative materialism – suggests that none adequately accounts for the facts of the situation, and we tentatively conclude that some form of dualism is still a tenable hypothesis.

scholarly journals .The superdeterministic destiny, and its mathematical models within the neural network

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyang Yu
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
World Line ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Elementary Particles ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Universe

The physical interactions among any number of elementary particles are governed by Schrodinger equation. The universe is a superdeterministic state machine which is formed by elementary particles. Mind’s “center stage”, which is a component of the mind, is imagined to exist as a real-time representation of all the elementary particles within the universe; the “center stage” only includes the physical objects perceived in the mind. A naïve cognitive researcher might incorrectly treat her mind’s “center stage” as the real world. It’s possible that the “center stage” doesn’t exist like “the ghost in the machine”. Otherwise, this “center stage” shouldn’t be able to impact the world line of any elementary particle. So, the human body is merely a fuzzy set of elementary particles, no matter the “center stage” really exist or not. The precondition of the “hard problem” of consciousness makes a mistake. Proving the precondition of the “hard problem”, is a “harder problem” of consciousness. The “harder problem” can’t be proved empirically. The conscious experience is actually the use of a mathematical model by a neural network within its low-level calculation. For example, when a neural network uses its 3D model of the reality, it feels like the subjective experience of being immersed within a topological structure.

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