"My view is that that the subjective experience of consciousness reflects the brain activity associated not with the entire brain, but only that small portion that is projected into this self-conscious virtual reality construct." My guess is that the preceding statement represents an important insight. What is the evolutionary role of consciousness? It might be a mechanism for coordinating and triggering the various brain areas needed for decision-making and short-term learning -- good decision-making and short-term learning would be that which promotes survival and reproduction -- "good" would mean that which nature selects.

"The field of "artificial intelligence" is almost as old as computers themselves, but it has long fallen far short of its goals. The traditional method of artificial intelligence is to devise a list of rules about a particular topic, and program them into a conventional computer. But knowledge of a fixed set of rigid rules in not what we generally mean by intelligence." The preceding is another important insight, in my estimation. The "rule-based approach" to AI seems to me to be a fundamentally misguided "control freak" approach to AI. Heuristic algorithms and logic programming might work for about 5% of AI problems, but deep learning and robotics-based open-ended feeding of deep learning might be needed for 95% of AI problems. The problem would be that if the human brain becomes obsolete, human beings might find out that Darwinian evolution is brutal, wasteful, relentless, and inevitable. See how people treat mice and rats in laboratories and ask yourself if you want the human brain to become obsolete.

    Alan,

    Fascinating! We are diametrically opposed on the issue of consciousness and intention. I am rating you highly, as you express the reductionist abstraction from the irreducible in elegant and classic fashion. But your explanations are unable to explain your own creativity, which is wonderfully ironic.

    Please allow me to quote one aspect of consciousness that is inexplicable in your terms, from my paper at http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/453:

    "Consciousness can be NEGATIVE. By "negative" I don't mean its common

    association with being quarrelsome or pessimistic, although they do involve

    negativity. To be negative is to negate what is - to say "no", or "not", to refuse, to

    decide that something shouldn't exist, or to imagine that something which doesn't

    exist should. And there is no likeness of negativity in the objects of science."

    "A chemical interaction is understood to be the product of what-is. Molecule A

    reacts with molecule B in a definite way, unless something external and

    accidental interferes. Genetic mutations, as understood in biology, are accidental

    modifications; they don't occur because an existing gene is not good enough, or

    because some alteration might be better. Whether a mutation is an improvement

    to an organism is irrelevant to its occurrence. But our abilities to critique, to

    imagine, to wish for what is-not express conscious, deliberate negations that

    elude the scientific world of cause-and-effect -- just as they elude the world of

    supposed randomness and unpredictability proposed by quantum theory."

    "It's easy to say an insight like Einstein's theory of relativity -- a radical negation of

    established beliefs -- was caused by the performance of his most excellent

    network of neurons, and at a higher level, by various psychological, sociological,

    and historical factors. But a negative insight can only be reduced to a series of

    positive reactions by a determined refusal to negate implausibility. A theory is

    what it is, its inconsistencies are what they are, and for someone to say that a

    theory is not complete or not perfect or even wrong is to go beyond the

    convention, to refuse what is given, to negate and conceive something else in its

    place, which is to do something that is not just un-caused, but un-causable."

    I welcome your reaction to this, and to my essay "Quantum spontaneity and the development of consciousness."

      Dear Mr. Fisher,

      I am afraid that I cannot understand your sentence about infinite surface, infinite dimension, and infinite light, even after reviewing your essay.

      Alan Kadin

      Dear Dr. Klingman,

      Thank you for reading my essay, and for your comments. I agree that classical AI was overhyped decades ago, but recent AI approaches based on "deep learning" are finally starting to achieve breakthroughs. Further, I anticipate that current research programs in brain science and brain-inspired computing will converge in identifying a computational architecture to account for both biological and artificial consciousness, in the foreseeable future.

      Alan Kadin

      Dear Mr. Gupta,

      Thank you for reading my essay, and I will take a look at your essay on the Dynamic Universe Model.

      Alan Kadin

      Dear Peter,

      I'm glad you enjoyed my essay, and I hope more people will read it.

      I look forward to reading your essay and watching the accompanying video.

      Alan

      Dear Mr. Brown,

      Thank you for your careful reading of my essay. I think I have identified some of the important questions, but I don't have all the answers. The conscious mind seems to filter the enormous amount of data present in senses and memories, selecting out only the data that is most relevant for careful integration into a simplified model. Too much data can be overwhelming or even crippling. Our new always-on internet-based society is showing that all too clearly.

      Alan Kadin

      Dear Prof. Arnold,

      I realize that my essay may be a bit provocative, but I believe it is presents a clear argument for the materialist viewpoint, and provides a basis for further discussion. The FQXi essay contest offers a unique opportunity for people with disparate viewpoints to have such discussions.

      Thank you for reading my essay. I look forward to reading your essay and the article that you identified.

      Alan Kadin

      Dear Alan M. Kadin

      I invite you and every physicist to read my work "TIME ORIGIN,DEFINITION AND EMPIRICAL MEANING FOR PHYSICISTS, Héctor Daniel Gianni ,I'm not a physicist.

      How people interested in "Time" could feel about related things to the subject.

      1) Intellectuals interested in Time issues usually have a nice and creative wander for the unknown.

      2) They usually enjoy this wander of their searches around it.

      3) For millenniums this wander has been shared by a lot of creative people around the world.

      4) What if suddenly, something considered quasi impossible to be found or discovered such as "Time" definition and experimental meaning confronts them?

      5) Their reaction would be like, something unbelievable,... a kind of disappointment, probably interpreted as a loss of wander.....

      6) ....worst than that, if we say that what was found or discovered wasn't a viable theory, but a proved fact.

      7) Then it would become offensive to be part of the millenary problem solution, instead of being a reason for happiness and satisfaction.

      8) The reader approach to the news would be paradoxically adverse.

      9) Instead, I think it should be a nice welcome to discovery, to be received with opened arms and considered to be read with full attention.

      11)Time "existence" is exclusive as a "measuring system", its physical existence can't be proved by science, as the "time system" is. Experimentally "time" is "movement", we can prove that, showing that with clocks we measure "constant and uniform" movement and not "the so called Time".

      12)The original "time manuscript" has 23 pages, my manuscript in this contest has only 9 pages.

      I share this brief with people interested in "time" and with physicists who have been in sore need of this issue for the last 50 or 60 years.

      Héctor

        Wonderful essay. Loved the suggestion towards the end of the essay on using dreams as a measure of consciousness. I agree that Turing test is not good enough, principally because it requires reference to humans. My own suggestion on separating intelligent systems is the result of the model I have built in my essay. It is premised on the Constitutional nation state being the next level of emergence after the level of the individual.

        I agree with you that most animals could have some form of consciousness, but I would argue that even if that were so, they would not be classified as being intelligent. You appear to be hopeful that AI systems will appear in the next few decades. I am not sure where I stand with regard to intrinsic AI systems, but I am negative on extrinsic AI systems. The difference between the two is that the former will be self-contained (like an individual) while the latter will be more like a government.

        Regards. Willy

          Dear Hector,

          I agree that time is a primary parameter in physics, biology, and psychology. I will read your essay more carefully.

          My own view, mentioned in my essay in the End Notes, is that on the microscopic level, time is defined by quantum waves. The characteristic time for an electron is h/mc^2 = 8e-21 s, the period of a quantum oscillation.

          Alan Kadin

          Dear Willy,

          Thank you for your comments. I will read your essay.

          With regard to AI, my preference would be for a small local "digital assistant" under one's control, rather than a mysterious oracle in the cloud.

          Alan Kadin

          Hi Alan, you have said a great many sensible things. I thought it a well written, very accessible essay.

          A few quibbles...

          You wrote in regard to evolution; "There is no underlying goal or intent, apart from survival." A. Kardin 2017. I think that not even survival is a prior goal but survival is the outcome of a functional structure able to avoid its elimination. Tommaso Bolognesi has written in his essay about the linguistic use of 'goal' when it is actually an external viewpoint post occurrence of outcome.

          You wrote: "The primary feature that distinguishes biological systems from physical systems is exponential reproduction, based on the digital code of DNA." A. Kardin 2017. I don't know why you have called it digital. It is a chemical code and the structure of those chemicals are necessary for the function of protein building and mRNa building. The letters of the base pairs are not just like numbers but associated with material structure. I can't readily see a definition of digital that would fit.

          Re. your: "In particular, only a guided design can produce a radical redesign in a single step. In contrast, the unguided design of natural selection can only make minor modifications per generation, each of which must be adaptive." A. Kardin 2017. Not all genes are equal in the effect they have on structure or function. Also some are control genes that have effects on many other genes. So a small change can have a large effect. Also there can be epigenetic effects altering gene expression of many genes. Not all selection is adaptive. A characteristic can be harmful but so long as the carrier is able to survive and reproduce rather than not it can be passed on in the gene pool.

          Kind regards Georgina

            Dear Georgina,

            Thank you for your careful reading of my essay, and for your comments.

            I agree with you that my explanation of evolution and adaptation were a bit simplified, but I was trying to emphasize the power of adaptation to a physics audience that has mostly overlooked it. Adaptation is mathematical, but the mathematics are not the closed-form differential equations that physicists are used to.

            My other key point is that almost everything we think we know about the human mind from our subjective perceptions is illusory. That is why progress in understanding consciousness and intelligence have been so difficult. Even our attempts at emulating intelligence using computers have been misdirected. But ongoing research in cognitive science, brain science, and computer science may lead to a dramatic change in the not-too-distant future. I might even be around to witness it (and I'm 64).

            Best Wishes,

            Alan Kadin

            This felt more like a long setup than an essay; it's all accurate, but there's so much further to go! The idea that our conscious perception of our aims is mainly a post-facto rationalization isn't that controversial, and I'd be more interested in *why* this property exists. What is it about conscious, simplified models of the world that allows for better decision-making in complex environments? Why, if both the world and our minds are mostly chaotic and difficult to perceive, is it adaptive for organisms to set up conscious aims at all? This implies a certain level of order above the chaotic interactions of particles that only emerges at particular scale, and allows for reasonable interpretations of the terms "aims and intentions" beyond the idea of "conscious goals."

            To be fair, after reading through the other essays, there are apparently plenty of people in the world who still believe in Cartesian dualism to the point of mysticism, but the scientific community is pretty well over it. I just thought this essay focused to much on interpreting the topic as "spiritual" vs. materialist consciousness, which isn't the only way to approach it, and spent a lot of time reiterating a solid but very old set of arguments.

              Dear Mr. Tolkin,

              Thank you reading my essay, and for your comments.

              You assert that the illusion of consciousness is widely accepted, but unfortunately, that is not the case, even among scientists. The essay was written primarily for those who are open-minded but still unclear.

              My other key point is that evolutionary adaptation is a powerful general paradigm, and is indeed mathematical, even if the mathematics are not the closed-form differential equations that physicists are used to.

              As to why consciousness is adaptive, that is probably the easier question. In a world of predators and competition, rapid decisions and actions are adaptive; hesitation is not. Simple models also lend themselves to social cooperation, which is adaptive, in contrast to solitary introspection. We believe ourselves to be rational free agents, but that is another illusion. These illusions are themselves adaptive, which is why they are so persistent.

              Finally, only by seeing through the illusions will we be able to emulate natural intelligence and design truly intelligent machines.

              I will read your essay. Good Luck in the competition.

              Alan Kadin

              8 days later

              Dear Kadin,

              In this essay, a feel good factor exists throught out, and also generates a sense that we saw an over all picture. As I felt, in all the discussions of mind, and consciousness, an agency forms a basis as a given feature, with an ability to identify itself, and model the environment around. So, I decided to take a few points regarding this.

              In Fig.2B, a small modification may be needed. The question of being adaptive is not as discrete and clear as shown, since it seems to be suggesting only one path of evolution, where as we observe existence of millions of species indicating that variations evolve too. Continuation of variations suggests that a single non-adaptive modification might not be sufficient to stop a species, which can take different routes to evolve further since the adaptation specification itself might change. Similarly, single better adaptation is no guarantee for the continuation. Adaptation is a continued test till certain designs are not able to continue. So may be continuity should be tested. It is a minor point, yet decided to bring forth.

              "Kahneman identified two distinct systems at work in the human mind: System 1 and System 2. System 1 ('fast thinking') is the unconscious mind that does things automatically without us having to think about them".

              Can we refer to a processing of information classified as unconscious as mind? Should not we take 'mind' to be always associated with consciousness, for otherwise, all information processing in any domain by any agent will have to be called 'unconscious mind'? This also brings forth the question of how does processing of information happen in the brain, that is how does the semantics emerge in the brain activities before they can be called conscious? This is precisely I have tried to deal with in my essay, which may go hand in hand with this essay.

              "Kahneman uses the analogy with a Chairman of the Board of a corporation, who thinks that he runs the entire operation." How true !

              "It seems that the human mind is preprogrammed to identify agency, ...", while this statement appears to be correct, but how does it identify agency? How does even the basis (model building technology of information processing) of identifying agency even arise?

              "This is shown in Fig. 5T, which shows consciousness as a 'virtual reality' (VR) construct created from filtered input data, and representing a simplified dynamic model of the reality presented to an individual." How does a notion or meaning (semantics of information) of virtual reality come into existence in the first place? Do we agree then that 'information' has an existence without and before any existence of the interpreter?

              "The problem is that there are several illusions implicit in our thinking..." So, it seems illusions are a reality; if so, then it needs an explanation how does an illusion become a perceivable reality.

              Rajiv

              Dear Dr. Singh:

              Thank you for your careful reading of my essay, and for your extensive comments.

              With respect to Fig. 2B, you are correct that this represents many systems evolving in parallel, so that many directions of evolution are possible.

              The question of how a conscious mind recognizes self and agency is indeed an important one. Minds are designed to recognize the continuity of objects even if they move or change, and further to identify correlations as causal. For example, if object A moves next to resting object B, which suddenly moves, then object A is an agent that caused (non-agent) object B to move. Neural networks are good at matching patterns like this.

              With respect to how a virtual reality construction representing consciousness first evolves, that too is an important question. But consider the need of an animal to partition a visual field into objects of various categories: food, threats, mates, competitors. Some of these identifications may be instinctive, but others may be learned. The ability to make dynamic identifications based on past experiences would be highly adaptive. A dynamic model with active embedded links can start out simple, and become more complex with evolution.

              With respect to my comments in the conclusion about illusions, my key point is that our subjective perceptions are NOT the same as the external reality. Instead, they represent a simplified construction, like a dream or a virtual reality, which dynamically tracks external reality and enables rapid adaptive responses. Only by looking past the illusions can we make genuine progress on understanding consciousness.

              Alan Kadin

              It is interesting that ours are the only two essays that bring in the concept of Corporation Boards into this contest. I rate your essay highly. I also note that you have written (earlier) about avoiding the paradox of quantum entanglement and measurement. I missed this when I first read your essay. You might want to check out Racicot's essay since it too attempts to resolve the same paradox.

              Regards, Willy

              Dear Alan,

              bravo -- clear analysis, well-reasoned and nicely told! Your essay is among the most comprehensive ones, I think you touch upon about every aspect that is relevant to tackle the question. Myself, I focused on why our models of the macroscopic world, which "identify agency, both in ourselves in others" (as you put it) are not at variance with goal-free microscopic laws. Your approach is somewhat broader. I also like your comments about animal consciousness and the possible relevance of dreaming.

              Good luck, Stefan