Intentionality: Where Information Meets Complexity by Karl Coryat

Karl Coryat

Luke -- Interestingly enough, I first learned about Kolmogorov complexity from a comment on a past FQXi contest. I do agree with you about its evolutionary usefulness. The fact that DNA is not a blueprint for defining every single structure in an organism, but is a much more compressed data set, should be a clue.

I personally feel that the only things that can be characterizes as "mindful" are systems capable of processing information in some respect. So I'd say that a salt crystal is mindless, but a rod cell in an eye is mindful to some degree. Mathematical objects are abstract and may describe the processing of information, but since they themselves don't process information I'd have to say they're mindless.

Thanks for the comments! -KC

pjackson

Hi Karl,

Another high quality essay this year. I found it very interesting and thought provoking, particularly as we touch on some similar areas. I won't highlight too much of that here as it'll emerge when (if!) you read mine. certainkly we agea on bi-directionalty and 'layered' or 'subsystem' architecture.

In particular I invoke the avalanche or 'Cascade' interaction of fermions in a particular role in deriving a Classical mechanism reproducing QM's predictions (yes, shocking and improbable of course, but quite self apparent!). The 'squaring' of amplitudes through field interactions is actually (I found afterwards) already implicit in QCD! However when applied to (Cascade) photomultipliers and ('avalanch') photodiodes it cracks a tough problem! Yes I agree chaos theory, but it appears we can 'guesstimate' an overall output amplitude as QM's predictions.

On 'intentionality' where would you say we depart from AI, which seems to qualify well for most of your physical definition. Or do we?

Very well done for yours. It was a pleasure to read. I do look forward to your views and comments on mine and further discussion.

Very best of luck

Peter

Karl Coryat

Hi Peter -- Yes, AI. Its actions certainly qualify as intentional -- I might even call it "hyper-intentional" -- according to my definition. Consider a computer program that's collecting road-traffic data and directing drivers to more efficient routes. This is a phenomenally complex system, combining technology and biology (unlike anything I mentioned in my essay), with bidirectional causation all over the place. It hints where intentionality is going in the future, doesn't it? Where large numbers of people make difficult collective decisions with the aid of powerful algorithms. I like it!

I'm a little behind in the essay reading, but I'll certainly check out yours. Thanks for dropping in!

Karl

pjackson

Karl,

Thanks. I'm on a re-read & scoring round (& speed reading some I didn't pick out earlier!) as time is now running out fast. Your top score should get yours into the 5's. I need to discuss further or look into the 'Geiger-Müller tube and 'Townsend avalanche' as I invoke a similar cascade in the squaring of values in a photomultiplier, also as QED, producing the (shocking!!) Classic QM derivation I identify.

I hope you've caught up with reading and won't forget to score mine.

Best of luck in the run in.

Peter

Georgina Woodward

Hi Karl,

thanks for your reply. Quickly looking up intentionality I find definitions like; done with intention or purposeful, or deliberate. Looking up deliberate I get; done consciously and intentionally, unhurried and careful. These are definitions that exclude reflex actions and unconscious processes. So you are re-defining the word 'intentionality'.

Well written presentation. Best of luck to you too. Georgina

Georgina Woodward

Hi Karl,

..Also there is a difference between responses and intentions. There is a temporal aspect to intention, goals and aims that is different from responses happening Now. They are all related to an occurrence that might be caused to happen at a time beyond Now. FQXi's question "How are goals (versus accomplishments) linked to "arrows of time?" (and I think the question could equally be asked of intentions and plans), is asking about that temporal aspect and how we can think about it. There comes a stage of complexity and organisation where rather then merely responding it is possible to consider how an advantageous or desired outcome can be achieved prior to action. I think that is qualitatively different, not just processing more information. Kind regards.

Jesse Liu

Hi Karl,

This is a very interesting essay and I especially enjoyed your concrete, diverse and detailed examples from calculators to honeybee colonies. One of the subtleties surrounding this year's theme is indeed dealing with the semantics of intentionality, especially away from human intuition. So this clear discussion of a physical definition in terms of information uptake and complexity, with a threshold for measuring causal efficacy, is really insightful.

I was wondering how intentionality might relate to (maybe physical?) definitions of 'intelligence'? Intuitively at least, they seem correlated - systems you identified with high information complexity and their corresponding actions e.g. human turning on TV, could be said to be intelligent. And I wonder how much of intelligence one can have without intention and vice versa. I could repeatedly turn on many TVs in different rooms with great intention, but in an almost mechanical way that may not be deemed intelligent. Computer programs can outsmart humans though they were in some sense programmed to have such an intention on very specific tasks.

Thanks again for the interesting read.

Best,

Jesse

Karl Coryat

Hi Jesse -- Thanks for the comments. I think I'd have a harder time coming up with a physical definition of intelligence, but I agree there's a connection. Intelligence is something like the total complexity and extent of information processing -- the degree to which information from a number of inputs is processed and compared, the complexity and number of memory faculties that go into this process, and the complexity of the output responses, not to mention the number of these processes that can occur simultaneously, at different levels of scale, the flexibility in assimilating and processing information, and so on. It's a great question, but again, it seems harder. That's not too surprising, given that we wouldn't say a honeybee or a mosquito exhibits much intelligence at all, where as their intentionality is easier to see; intelligence is a "higher" phenomenon and seen to any significant extent only in vertebrates (maybe some molluscs) and AI. Best of luck! -KC

James Hoover

Karl,

Heavy on intention and intentionality but not so much on the role of mindless mathematical laws (but I could have missed the details). Considering the law opinion of Congress, you risk chuckles from your audience by comparing mosquitos and Congress and giving Congress more information density -- blood suckers, both. Your generally mention the intervention of emotional images in the election but the "intentional state" of anger seemed to direct an intention, seemingly irrational, of putting Trump in office.

All in all, it is an instructive essay, which the mandated length of the essay makes multifaceted discussion impossible.

Hope you get the time to provide your thoughts on my essay.

Jim Hoover

Don Limuti

Hi Karl,

You say:

1. Did the United States of America "intend" to elect Donald Trump in 2016?

2. If you throw a ball, and your dog runs toward the ball, it's difficult to argue that the dog's action does not include some kind of "intention", on some level, to reach and acquire the ball.

This is interesting, particularly if you replace the word "intend" (intention) with the word "choose" (choosing).

1. Did the United States of America "intend" to elect Donald Trump in 2016? .....I say no.

1. Did the United States of America "choose" to elect Donald Trump in 2016?.....I say yes.

2. If you throw a ball, and your dog runs toward the ball, it's difficult to argue that the dog's action does not include some kind of "intention", on some level, to reach and acquire the ball......I say yes.

2. If you throw a ball, and your dog runs toward the ball, it's difficult to argue that the dog's action does not include some kind of "choosing", on some level, to reach and acquire the ball......I say no for my dog. Your dog may be a different story :)

Am I being nitpicky with language or philosophy? Perhaps, but I can't help but find your thesis that math or logic can imbue intention or choice .....unsatisfying.

Thanks for a thought provoking essay,

Don Limuti

Karl Coryat

Hi Don! Good to see you here again. Nitpicky is usually a good thing.

The topic was intentionality, and I took that to mean something substantially different from choice. Take a heroin addict, for example. I'd say their free will to choose whether or not to inject is pretty much subjugated by their addiction (similar in ways to your dog example). I'd find it hard to argue, though, that sticking a needle into their arm is not an intentional act. I feel like intentional is necessarily the opposite of accidental, without much gray area in between, while choice is more shaded - you may disagree. I tried to provide a physical definition of intentionality that is measurable in principle while still being intuitive in most cases. I'm sure it's imperfect.

I used Donald Trump almost for shock effect -- from the open sentence we want to say, "Of course the U.S. didn't intend to elect him." But then I tried to argue that if we are to be intellectually honest and consistent about intentionality, and if we reject the urge to draw arbitrary boundaries between intentional systems based only on where their epidermis ends, then we are forced to conclude that his election was a system-intentional act. It's really supposed to be a laugh at what the absurdity of it all means.

Thanks for reading my essay and best of luck.

Karl

Willy K

Hi Coryat

Great to come across a submission which treats intentionality via a definition which can be applied across multiple domains. In particular, I liked the comparison you drew between people and the honeybee hive, wherein you suggest that the bees as a collective have a more complex intentionality than individual human beings. Of course, the definition can also be used to understand far more complex events like democratic elections.

This reminds me of my essay where ant colonies and human social systems are both seen as differing examples of extrinsic intelligences. Intentionality in my essay would merely be the act of arranging for stability at the level of the core elements of those systems (as opposed to attaining stability at the overall level of those systems). In other words, intentionality might be directly mapped to homeostasis of the systems.

Had a nice read. Cheers!

Willy

Dizhechko Semyonovich

Dear Karl Coryat! I am pleased to introduce you to New Cartesian Physic!

I appreciate your essay. You spent a lot of effort to write it. If you believed in the principle of identity of space and matter of Descartes, then your essay would be even better. There is not movable a geometric space, and is movable physical space. These are different concepts.

I wish to see your criticism on the New Cartesian Physic, the founder of which I call myself.

The concept of moving space-matter helped me: The uncertainty principle Heisenberg to make the principle of definiteness of points of space-matter; Open the law of the constancy of the flow of forces through a closed surface is the sphere of space-matter; Open the law of universal attraction of Lorentz; Give the formula for the pressure of the Universe; To give a definition of gravitational mass as the flow vector of the centrifugal acceleration across the surface of the corpuscles, etc.

New Cartesian Physic has great potential in understanding the world. To show this potential in essay I risked give «The way of The materialist explanation of the paranormal and the supernatural" - Is the name of my essay.

Visit my essay and you will find something in it about New Cartesian Physic. Note my statement that our brain creates an image of the outside world no inside, and in external space.

Do not let New Cartesian Physic get away into obscurity! I am waiting your post.

Sincerely,

Dizhechko Boris

Ines Samengo

Hi Karl, I was really impressed by the clarity of your ideas, and your writing abilities.

I must say I like the two conditions (1) and (2) that you have set in order to define intentionality. When I start to apply these ideas, however, I don't find them easy to implement. I always have the problem that it is not clear to me what exactly should be taken as the agent (which variables define it?), what exactly are its internal representations, and what exactly is the environment. Also, the division of a system in subsystems, and the information flow between subsystems seems to be rather arbitrary.

You state that "Unfortunately, it is presently beyond our grasp to quantify advanced complexity as seen in biological systems, and also to exactly quantify the environmental information available to these systems." And then there is a footnote "Especially where environmental information is constrained or enhanced by contextual considerations, the choice of which to consider is somewhat subjective."

Are these difficulties more or less related to the ones that I find? Or are you referring to the huge number of variables that need to be kept track of, in biological systems? I ask this also in view to your response to Georgina, where you claim (and I agree!) that one same action may or may not be intentional, depending on which system is taken as the agent: spinal cord or cerebral cortex.

The subjectivity involved in the definition of variables, systems and subsystems (and even thresholds, in your approach) has led me to wonder whether instead of aspiring to model all these phenomena objectively, we should not also take into account the observer in the picture. Observers also have goals (to understand what is going on, to establish causal links, to predict the future by arrogating intentionality, etc.), and those goals may serve to decide which are the interesting systems, and which are the relevant variables. Does this resonate in any way with the difficulties you see in the present state of matters? Or am I pushing my essay forcefully into yours?

best! inés.

Karl Coryat

Thanks Inés! You're absolutely right about the number of variables and the arbitrary nature of delineating subsystems, describing environmental information, and so on. I feel like this essay topic might be several decades too early -- we just don't have the intellectual and instrumental tools to do it justice. It's a bit like asking Kepler-era astronomers to discuss the dynamics of three or four mutually orbiting bodies.

You're on to something in the last paragraph of your comment. In assessing intentionality, it almost looks like we have a higher-order kind of bidirectional causation: In order to fairly determine the subsystems and informational contexts, etc., going into an intentional action, it necessarily requires complex systems to employ their own intentionality to do these things! And, being observers in a frog's-eye view of things, such interaction can have causative effects on the system(s) being described. Still, as complex as it is, intentionality seems to be a ripe candidate for discussion, compared to something even harder, such as desire. Perhaps there are phenomena even more physically accessible, which might help us work our way toward understanding something as complex as intentionality, and eventually, intelligence and such.

I see that your essay is doing well, and I look forward to checking it out. Thanks again for the thoughtful comments. -KC

Satyavarapu Gupta

Dear Karl H Coryat ,

thank you for the nice reply. You mean intentionality is same as geodesic path... I did not understand...

Best

=snp.gupta

Rajiv Singh

Dear Karl,

Intention to understand the term 'intention' in the title of the contest may be understood when seen in conjunction with 'aims'. It seems subjective aspect of it could not be taken away.

From the following statements, it appears that the author ascribes 'intention [ality]' more with the action, rather than the thoughts, the subject sense. "after all, we invented the word specifically to describe some aspect of certain actions that we perform.", and, "but which also corresponds to our subjective human experience of what it means for an action to be intentional." In my view, intention is more generic a term to include subjective experience that may or may not translate into action. But then the author wished to generalize intentionality which is not particularly always an element of sentient subjective experience [feeling]. The only trouble is that by doing so, the author has also discarded those intentions that express or require no physical action, or prevent action. So, even if the action is taken in the subjective domain, but that does not change anything measurable.

"However, if the baseball then breaks a neighbor's window, we would call that action unintentional". I would think that the action to hit with a certain goal was intentional, consequence was not. I am making a distinction that intentional action should not be bound with actual consequence. Then one does have to tie intention with success; the degree of success or failure should not be a part of intention.

I also distinguish between 'informational complexity' and 'information'. Whenever we refer to complexity, we refer to a measure or quantity of information or of its processing, but information refers to the meaning or the relation that information describes. I do notice that essay writers attention is largely limited to the quantification of information rather that actual semantics (specification) of it. Therefore, if a subject has high uptake of information a quality of intention may not be ascribed in any way to it. There is a way to deal with semantics of information, how processing takes place at each physical interaction, which can be arranged in a manner that high level abstraction emerge.

Furthermore, a bacteria that responds to gradient of glucose concentration may not have intention to get to higher glucose concentration, but action is in that direction.

In this essay, the topic was discussed with high scientific fervor, and it was pleasant to read.

Rajiv

Karl Coryat

Hi Rajiv,

I agree with you that subjective aspects of intentionality are not necessarily separable from physical action, but I feel that the physical action is the measurable part of intentionality; and that in a very complex system such as a human, subjective aspects may emerge from the action. It is a bit like saying the velocity of a car is physically measurable, even though some people might naively describe velocity in terms of what it feels like when you put your hand out the window or see things rushing past. In such a case, I would not say that speedometer-type velocity is separable from the subjective aspects such the feel of wind, just that the *measurement* of physical velocity is separable or independent from these aspects.

You describe intentionality as "a term to include subjective experience that may or may not translate into action," but perhaps you missed a key claim in my essay: Whether or not intentionality results in externalized action in the world, there is always *some* action involved in intentionality, even if that's limited to a momentary change in the brain's electrochemistry without a motor response to externalize that action. According to my definition, such a subjective experience that does not translate into (external) action is still (internal) action, and is therefore measurable in principle.

If this were not the case, one must posit that the subjective experience of intentionality is non-correlated with brain chemistry, and perhaps relies on a magical or otherwise undiscovered mechanism. This may or may not be the case, but I tried to define a physical, in-principle-measurable description of intentionality that agrees with our current physiological understanding of the underlying basis of subjective experience, at least in systems sufficiently complex to have subjective experiences. For those that cannot, such as a bacterium moving along a gradient, I would still describe the action as intentional -- but only to a degree commensurate with the acting system's complexity (i.e. in this case, intentionality to a low degree). Thanks for reading! -KC

George Gantz

Karl -

I enjoyed your essay! I also agree that a precise definition of "intention" is critical in responding to the essay's theme, something which most authors have not attempted to do. My definition is similar to yours: "There is a critical difference between intentionality and agency. Intentions are behaviors that can be observed. Agency is a quality that must be inferred. Intentions may or may not be due to the actions of an autonomous, conscious agent."

I hope you have a chance to read my essay - The How and The Why of Emergence and Intention."

Cheers - George Gantz

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