Emergence, Mind, and Consciousness: A Bio-Inspired Design for a Conscious Agent

by Gary A. Lucas

Overview

In Emergence, Mind, and Consciousness, author Gary A. Lucas does something that many consider impossible: he bridges the gap between a bottom-up description of brain mechanisms and the top-down emergence of mental processes. The result is a comprehensive yet readily understandable explanation of how consciousness emerges.

Lucas, however, strives to do more. He seeks to design an artificial agent with all the essential properties of the human mind— consciousness, declarative memory, a sense of self, reasoning skills, language, and social identity. His account is mechanistic, and yet, as the bio-inspired networks are linked to emergent mental properties, we come to understand that we can truly construct a conscious agent. We have a model for how to build one.

If you’re interested in the emergent properties of mind, consciousness, cognition, self-awareness, social belongingness, or the possibility of constructing a robotic agent with such properties, then this is essential reading. It is conscious mind explained on a level that even a robot will understand it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781462041367
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/06/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

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Emergence, Mind, and Consciousness

A Bio-Inspired Design for a Conscious Agent

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By Gary A. Lucas

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Gary A. Lucas
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-4138-1

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Chapter One

The Organization Effect

According to astrophysicists, the current instantiation of the universe began about 13.7 billion years ago with an explosive expansion, known affectionately as the Big Bang. Since that moment, energy-matter states have been expanding and interacting. New kinds of aggregate organizations with emergent properties continue to take form. Particles, elements, galaxies, stars, planets, and living organisms have all emerged in branching chains of this process. Yet the closer these phenomena get to consciousness, the more uncomfortable we seem to be with the concept of emergence. We know that mind and consciousness have emerged within living systems, and yet they sometimes seem magical and unscientific. Are the emergent properties of mind connected with the properties of matter? Should we characterize them as something real? What is necessary to create a conscious agent? As we attempt to answer these questions, our strategy will be to follow Einstein's maxim to keep our answers as simple as possible, but without oversimplifying them. Our starting place will be the concept of emergence, the idea that organizations with novel interactive properties routinely come into existence. Emergence is not some strange exotic effect. It is the normal process by which nature evolves. We are agents with emergent properties. If we are going to understand ourselves, we must become more comfortable with this idea.

The Organization Effect There is really only one science, and the various "special sciences" are just particular cases of it. This is a magnificent ideal; it is certainly much more nearly true than anyone could possibly have suspected at first sight; and investigations pursued under its guidance have certainly enabled us to discover many connexions within the external world which would otherwise have escaped our notice. But it has no trace of self-evidence; it cannot be the whole truth about the external world, since it cannot deal with the existence or the appearance of "secondary qualities" until it is supplemented by laws of the emergent type.... If we take the mechanistic ideal too seriously, we shall be in danger of ignoring or perverting awkward facts of this kind. This sort of over-simplification has certainly happened in the past in biology and physiology under the guidance of the mechanistic ideal; and it of course reaches its wildest absurdities in the attempts which have been made from time to time to treat mental phenomena mechanistically. – Charles Dunbar Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature, 1925

Experience shows that simpler stuff can sometimes come together to form something with largely different properties. For example, the element sodium is a soft, silvery metal that reacts violently with water. It will ignite spontaneously in moist air or oxygen and produces severe burns on contact with the skin. It is commonly stored under nitrogen or kerosene cover to prevent it from coming in contact with the air, and it must be handled carefully when removed from cover to avoid injury. Potentially even more dangerous is the element chlorine because, as a gas, it's harder to control. When used as a weapon, this pungent, yellowish green gas causes acute respiratory damage to anyone who inhales it, and even brief exposures can be fatal. Yet the chemical combination of sodium metal with chlorine gas produces a substance with fundamentally different properties from those of its components. Sodium chloride is a solid white crystalline compound which is routinely stored in our homes in containers with porous tops. We even sprinkle it on our food. It's commonly known as table salt.

The topic which philosopher Charles Broad introduces in the quote above is often referred to as emergence, the observation that component parts sometimes interact to form combinations with novel properties. The term "emergence" was actually introduced by the philosopher George Lewes over fifty years earlier, when he attempted to distinguish between small, combinatorial chemical changes and large, discontinuous changes.

Although each effect is the resultant of its components, we cannot always trace the steps of the process, so as to see in the product the mode of operation of each factor. In the latter case, I propose to call the effect emergent. It arises out of the combined agencies, but in a form that does not display the agents in action.

Broad argues that the appearance of new properties in this manner effectively requires two types of natural laws: transordinal laws and intra-ordinal laws. Trans-ordinal laws explain the interactions which lead to the emergence of "higher-level" substances from "lower-level" ones. They explain, for example, the principles by which sodium and chlorine combine to form a new substance compound. Intra-ordinal laws, in contrast, describe the behavior and properties found within each individual substance. There are separate intra-ordinal laws that describe the behavior of sodium and chlorine, and yet other intra-ordinal laws that describe the behavior of the compound which they form. However, the intra-ordinal laws for table salt cannot be readily predicted from the intra-ordinal laws of its components. There is a qualitative shift in the behavioral properties of table salt. That's why we consider it a new substance, or more generally, a new kind of organization.

Not every new combination of parts displays largely different properties. Combining salt with water produces a mixture that is closely related to the properties of its parts. Indeed, if we look closely, we find that the mixture has a few novel properties. It conducts electrical current better, and it freezes at a slightly lower temperature. However, many of its properties are readily traceable to its component parts. Certain combinations, in contrast, interact more strongly. When they do so, many of their interactive properties are bound up forming the new organization. The resultant interactive properties are therefore largely different from those of the parts. This is what I call the organization effect. The organization effect implies that the properties of a new substance often cannot be predicted fully from the properties of its parts alone, because what combinations the parts may form, which will be stable, and what subset of properties are subsequently displayed depends on interactions which occur in the context of the new organization. For example, elemental oxygen commonly combines to form O₂ oxygen gas molecules. However, under higher-energy states it may also combine to form O₃ molecules, which are commonly known as ozone. Ozone and oxygen gases have the same parts, but they have different properties because their parts are organized in different ways.

Computer scientist John Holland has explored the nature of emergent properties in some detail. Holland is probably best known as the father of genetic algorithms, computational procedures that enable modular programs to evolve new traits for problem solving much as living organisms do. Holland's thinking on emergence is summarized in two extraordinary books. The first of these, Hidden Order, describes the underlying principles that allow genetic algorithms to discover new solutions. The second, entitled Emergence, describes the process more generally by showing how the interactions of component mechanisms, under certain constraints, can result in complex systems with new kinds of properties. Although Holland's approach to emergence is based on computer simulations and mathematical analysis, he reaches conclusions which are very similar to those of Charles Broad, and a comparison between the ideas of these two men should help us think about emergence better.

Holland refers to the intra-ordinal laws which summarize the physical and behavioral properties of lower-level substances as microlaws, and to the intra-ordinal laws which summarize the properties of an aggregate compound as macrolaws. He notes that the macrolaws are always "constrained" by the properties of the microlaws below them. That is, they depend on those properties for their operation, so they cannot violate them to any great extent and remain in existence. Thus, the two sets of property laws are connected across levels, and in principle, the macrolaws can be reduced to descriptions in terms of microlaws and the conditions under which the microlaw parts come together and interact. Holland's microlaws and macrolaws correspond to Broad's intra-ordinal laws at each level, and the conditions under which the aggregate takes form and remains stable are part of what Broad calls trans-ordinal laws, the laws which connect the two levels.

The primary difference between these two approaches is that Holland provides a more formal treatment and emphasizes that the glass holding our view of nature is half full – nature is connected. Macrolaws emerge from the interaction of particular combinations of microlaws under certain conditions. In contrast, Broad emphasizes that the glass is half empty – nature is discontinuous. New substances have largely different interactive properties. They require their own special laws to characterize their behavior. Although Broad and Holland take different perspectives, their different emphases seem superficial once Holland adds that the sheer complexity of the task makes it infeasible to derive most macrolaws – they are only derivable in principle – and once Broad adds that the existence of trans-ordinal laws connecting the various special sciences has proven to be "more nearly true than anyone could possibly have suspected at first sight'.

To put it another way, all the phenomena of nature may be interconnected, but the laws of each new substance organization are rarely obvious. The laws of each new organization must be discovered. The sheer complexity of the combinatorial possibilities makes predicting the behavior of new substances infeasible. Most of the derivations of macrolaws occur in after-the-fact attempts to reverse engineer the nature of the interactions that lead to a macrolaw phenomenon. We see the regularities and describe the properties of a new substance first, without knowing how it is derived. Later, we identify the trans-ordinal laws that explain how the regularities might be connected with other phenomena, a process that sometimes requires decades or even centuries of human endeavor. It is true that with practice experts can sometimes anticipate certain emergent effects based on their similarity to effects they have already learned to recognize. The fact that they can do this at all suggests that Holland's insight is correct – nature does seem to be connected. However, Broad's insight captures the fact that new organizations tend to display properties that are often discontinuous from those of their component parts.

Constructionism and Reductionism

Contraria sunt complementa.

There are two seemingly opposing ways of thinking about the organization of the world. One is a constructionist approach. The other is a reductionist one. Constructionism is the holistic position that emergent properties result from, and can only be fully explained within, the behavior of aggregate organizations. The organization effect follows from this viewpoint. Reductionism is a simplification strategy. It assumes that all the phenomena of nature are connected across levels, and it seeks to explain phenomena on higher levels by showing how they depend on the interaction of their component parts. Reductionism has proven to be a highly productive strategy in science, to the point that it is sometimes argued that everything can be explained by reductionist theories. Some even go so far as to conclude that reductionism is the more fundamental strategy for understanding the universe, and that constructionism is unnecessary, or even unscientific. This reductionist emphasis sometimes leads its proponents to conclude that complex phenomena are really nothing but the interaction of their component parts.

As we have already noted, the paradox of this nothing buttery argument is that it seems true in the sense that each emergent organization must necessarily depend on the interaction of its parts. Yet it remains false because each emergent phenomenon can never be fully explained by rules derived only from the parts alone. The argument that a table is nothing but wooden planks and fasteners has lost contact with the organizational properties that make a table a functional, higher-order organization. A table has properties that unorganized wood and fasteners do not. The argument that mental experiences are nothing but the interaction of neurons makes a similar error. A tangle of neurons is not a mind. It takes a special organization of neural functions to bring the properties of mind into existence.

What also seems to be lost in the emphasis on reductionism is the recognition that reductionism is the mirror image of constructionism. You cannot have one without the other. As the quote above suggests, reductionism and constructionism are contrarian complements. The value of reductionism is in its ability to connect emergent phenomena with underlying mechanisms. However, reductionist investigations would be of little value if there weren't emergent properties to be explained. To be useful, reductionist theories first need to be enlightened by the discontinuous behavior of higher-level organizations. It is only after interesting macrolaw phenomena have been identified that attempts can be made to trace them back to interactions on lower levels and explain something about how they operate. After such reductionist connections are discovered, it is sometimes then possible to impose changes on the lower-level components and thereby affect the behavior of the higher-level system.

This re-constructionist turn is what makes reductionism useful. Reductively informed re-construction is routinely used in attempts to re-engineer emergent phenomena. However, it is often difficult to discover low-level modifications that transfer back to higher-level systems in an expected manner. Medical researchers routinely try to reduce health-related problems to simpler biochemical interactions, which they often attempt to treat with medicinal compounds. This is the foundation for much of modern pharmaceutical research. However, finding a compound that can alleviate a particular medical condition is notoriously challenging. Large, aggregate systems behave in marvellously complex ways. What looks promising in the test tube may have far different effects within a living cell. What works in mice may not work in humans. Indeed, the same medicine that works in one person may not work for another, or it may have unexpected side effects.

Using reductionist links to re-engineer the behavior of aggregate systems has proven to be difficult because aggregate systems often involve interactions on multiple levels, none of which can be fully predicted from the behavior of their component parts. As Nobel laureate Phillip Anderson succinctly summarized the problem, more is different.

The main fallacy in this kind of thinking is that the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a "constructionist" one: The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less to those of society.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Emergence, Mind, and Consciousness by Gary A. Lucas Copyright © 2011 by Gary A. Lucas. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface....................xiii
Introduction As Simple as Possible....................XVII
Chapter 1 The Organization Effect....................3
Chapter 2 Tumbling Toward Cognition....................19
Chapter 3 Mediating Aboutness....................43
Chapter 4 A Lattice of Knowers....................61
Chapter 5 A Three Streams Architecture....................79
Chapter 6 The Planning Stream....................87
Chapter 7 The Perceptual Stream....................105
Chapter 8 The Interoceptive Stream....................135
Chapter 9 Thinking in Streams....................155
Chapter 10 Mapping Space and Bridging Time....................171
Chapter 11 It Binds, Therefore I Am....................193
Chapter 12 The Steering Committee....................217
Chapter 13 The Upward Spiral....................243
Chapter 14 Attention Managing....................267
Chapter 15 Reaching Up With Signs....................291
Chapter 16 An Incremental Storm....................317
Chapter 17 The Extended Self....................343
Chapter 18 A Cog in Cultural Minds....................363
Chapter 19 The Stuff of Consciousness....................389
Notes and References....................415
Index....................455