Tag: philosophy of mind

AI before AI: Prehistory of Artificial Minds

Posted on by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad

by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad

Source: The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine. New York: Walker. via Wikipedia

Artificial intelligence is generally conceptualized as a new technology which goes back only decades. In the popular imagination, at best we stretch it back to the Dartmouth Conference in 1956 or perhaps the birth of the Artificial Neurons a decade prior. Yet the impulse to imagine, build, and even worry over artificial minds has a long history. Long before they could build one, civilizations across the world built automata, thought about machines that could mimicked intelligence, and thought about the philosophical consequences of artificial thought. One can even think of AI as an old technology. That does not mean that we deny its current novelty but rather we recognize its deep roots in global history. One of the earliest speculations on machines that act like people. In Homer’s Iliad, the god Hephaestus fashions golden attendants who walk, speak, and assist him at his forge. Heron of Alexandria, working in the first century CE, designed elaborate automata that were far ahead of their time: self-moving theaters, coin-operated dispensers, and hydraulic birds.

Aristotle even speculated that if tools could work by themselves, masters would have no need of slaves. In the medieval Islamic world, the Musa brothers’ Book of Ingenious Devices (9th century) described the first programmable machines. Two centuries later, al-Jazari built water clocks, mechanical musicians, and even a programmed automaton boat, where pegs on a rotating drum controlled the rhythm of drummers and flautists.  In ancient China we observe one of the oldest legends of mechanical beings, the Liezi (3rd century BCE) recounts how the artificer Yan Shi presented a King with a humanoid automaton capable of singing and moving.  Later, in the 11th century, Su Song built an enormous astronomical clock tower with mechanical figurines that chimed the hours. In Japan, karakuri ningyo, intricate mechanical dolls of the 17th–19th centuries, were able to perform tea-serving, archery, and stage dramas. In short, the phenomenon of precursors of AI are observed globally. Read more »

Friday, May 2, 2025

The Estuary Of Being II: Life Comes To Mind

Posted on by Jochen Szangolies

by Jochen Szangolies

A Dyson swarm, a hypothetical habitat for a mature civilization making optimal use of its star’s energy. Image credit: By Archibald Tuttle, CC BY-SA 4.0, via wikimedia commons

The previous essay in this series argued that, given certain assumptions regarding typicality, almost every sentient being should find themself part of a ‘galactic metropolis’, a mature civilization that either has extended across the galaxy, or filled whatever maximal habitat is attainable to capacity. That this is not our experience suggests a need for explanation. One possibility is impending doom: very nearly every civilization destroys itself before reaching maturity. Another is given by the simulation argument: almost every sentient being is, in fact, part of an ‘ancestor simulation’ studying the conditions before civilizational maturity. Both succeed in making our experience typical, but neither seems a terribly attractive option.

Hence, I want to suggest a different way out: that we stand only at the very start of the evolution of mind in the universe, and that the future may host fewer individual minds, not through extinction, but rather, through coalescence and conglomeration—like unicellular life forms merging into multicellular entities, the future of mind may be one of streams of sentience uniting into an ocean of mind.

If this is right, the typical individual experience may be of just this transitory period, but this does not entail a looming doom—rather, just as the transition from uni- to multicellular life, may mean an unprecedented explosion in the richness and complexity of mind on Earth.

It is clear that this would solve the conundrum of our implausibly young civilization: the arguments above hinge ultimately on a faulty generalization to the effect that because human existence up to this point was one of individual minds locked away in the dark of individual bony brain-boxes, that would always be the case. But perhaps, a mature civilization is one in which every agent partakes of a single, holistic mind, or few shifting coalitions of minds exist, or the notion of individuality is eroded to the point of obscurity.

As it stands, this surely seems a fantastical suggestion. While it may receive some credence thanks to explaining the puzzle of our existence during this age of civilizational infancy, that alone seems hardly enough to justify belief in such a far-fetched scenario. Moreover, to many, the prospect might seem scarcely more attrative than that of living in a simulation—or even, that of near-term doom: don’t we loose what’s most important about ourselves, if we loose our individuality? After all, who wants to be the Borg?

Yet I will argue that there are good reasons to take this scenario seriously beyond its solution of the likelihood problem. Read more »

Monday, January 10, 2022

Mind And Tense: Zombies In The Here And Now

Posted on by Jochen Szangolies

by Jochen Szangolies

Figure 1: A philosophical zombie is a being physically/behaviorally identical to a human, but lacking any ‘inner’ experience.

Zombies have become a mainstay of philosophy as much as of pulp fiction—a confluence that it would be fallacious to assume implies some further connection between the two, naturally. Zombies are beings that act in many ways like living humans—they move around, they interact with the world, and they, to generally horrific effect, consume resources for sustenance—not ending up as which is the typical goal of the protagonists of various kinds of zombie media. Yet, they lack the crucial quality of actually being alive, instead generally being considered merely ‘undead’.

Zombies are thus creatures of lack, creatures that have been robbed of some quality we otherwise think essential. Consider, for instance, the notion of the soulless zombie: a being which, despite acting and reacting just like any other human being—in fact, we might stipulate, in a way exactly paralleling your actions and reactions—lacks a ‘soul’ of any kind. If this is imaginable, then, the argument goes, there’s nothing that you’d actually need a soul for—and hence, we can strike it from the list of essential qualities without any resulting deficit.

A counterpoint to this particular argument is the floating man thought experiment of Ibn Sina (often Latinised as Avicenna), the eleventh century Persian polymath and physician. Ibn Sina imagines being created ‘at a stroke’, fully formed, in a state of free fall, and in darkness. Lacking any external sensory impression, one would still be certain of one’s own existence. But if there is nothing physical one could be conscious off absent such sensory data, then that sensation of being aware of one’s own self must be a sensation of something non-physical—the soul, or Nafs in the Quran. To Ibn Sina, then, the soulless zombie would merely show that the world is not exhausted by the physical, by our behaviors and reactions to external stimuli. Read more »

Monday, December 13, 2021

Mind The Matter: Consciousness As Self-Representational Access

Posted on by Jochen Szangolies

by Jochen Szangolies

Figure 1: Von Neumann’s replicator-design in its original cellular automaton guise. The tape stretches to the right, and the second-generation replicator is finishing up construction of the third.

There are two main problems that bedevil any purported theory of the mind. The first is the Problem of Intentionality: the question of how mental states can come to be about, or refer to, things in the world. The second is the Problem of Phenomenal Experience: the question of how come there is ‘something it is like’ to be in a certain mental state, how mental content is something that appears to us in a certain way (this is also often referred to as simply the ‘Hard Problem’).

These problems are often assumed to be separate issues. However, in a recent article published in the journal Erkenntnis (pre-print version), I propose that one can make progress on the Problem of Intentionality, but at the expense of leaving the Hard Problem unsolvable—indeed, making the task of ‘solving’ it a kind of conceptual confusion: an attempt of capturing the non-structural, non-relational in terms of structure and relation.

In a nutshell, I propose that states of mind are intentional because, through what I call the von Neumann-process, their own properties are represented to themselves; to the extent that these properties then reflect those of objects in the world, the properties of those objects are available to them. Hence, a mental state becomes ‘about’ the world by being, first and foremost, about itself. Read more »

Monday, October 18, 2021

The Von Neumann Mind: Constructing Meaning

Posted on by Jochen Szangolies

by Jochen Szangolies

Figure 1: The homunculus fallacy: attempting to explain understanding in terms of representation begs the question of how that representation is itself understood, leading to infinite regress.

Turn your head to the left, and make a conscious inventory of what you’re seeing. In my case, I see a radiator upon which a tin can painted with an image of Santa Claus is perched; above that, a window, whose white frame delimits a slate gray sky and the very topmost potion of the roof of the neighboring building, brownish tiles punctuated by gray smokestacks and sheet-metal covered dormers lined by rain gutters.

Now turn your head to the right: the printer sitting on the smaller projection of my ‘L’-shaped, black desk; behind it, a brass floor lamp with an off-white lampshade; a black rocking chair; and then, black and white bookshelves in need of tidying up.

If you followed along so far, the above did two things: first, it made you execute certain movements; second, it gave you an impression of the room where I’m writing this. You probably find nothing extraordinary in this—yet, it raises a profound question: how can words, mere marks on paper (or ordered dots of light on a screen), have the power to make you do things (like turning your head), or transport ideas (like how the sky outside my window looks as I’m writing this)? Read more »

Monday, April 29, 2019

Do Octopuses Have Souls? (On the Nature of Animal Consciousness)

Posted on by Leanne Ogasawara

by Leanne Ogasawara

Anyone who has ever found themselves caught in a staring contest with an octopus –those soulful cat-eyes returning your gaze through the thick glass of an aquarium tank– can attest to the uncanny power these creatures exert over our human imagination.

They certainly look alien. With three hearts pumping blue, copper-infused blood, their tentacles (“each with a mind of its own”) are covered in suckers that can feel AND taste. Because their beaks are the only hard parts of their bodies, a large octopus can squeeze through a hole not much bigger than one of their eyeballs. They are like the Great Houdinis of the deep! Without a hard shell like other mollusks, octopuses have evolved clever ways for keeping a step ahead of predators: Not only can they change colors to camouflage themselves, blending into almost any watery environment, but they can also send out ink bombs. After lobbing one to confuse an enemy, an octopus can jet propel away from danger at surprising speeds in a funnel of water.

Is it any wonder that there have been people who believe they might have originated in space? From the Scandinavian myth of the Kraken and Jules Vernes’ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, to Japanese sea monsters and the sexual predators found in erotic shunga prints, again and again–in so many cultures around the world– these creatures show up in stories and art as monsters and space aliens. And who could forget the fear instilled in the losing soccer teams by Paul the Clairvoyant World Cup Octopus? The Argentines got so angry at him that they threatened to kill him and cook him in a paella, if he kept foretelling their bad luck!

My own personal octopus “horror” is the not-as-rare-as–you-would-think sight of Japanese TV personalities (and a few of my friends) traveling in Korea and eating live octopuses–desperate tentacles clawing their way out of the people’s mouths! Read more »

Monday, April 1, 2019

Translating Descartes

Posted on by Leanne Ogasawara

by Leanne Ogasawara

1. The philosopher and the translator

It was probably the most interesting translation job I ever had. Hired directly by the philosopher himself, my task was to translate into English a series of talks and papers he would be delivering in the US and Europe in the coming year. Philosophy being what I studied as an undergraduate, I had high hopes for the job. But my Japanese philosopher quickly became frustrated with me.

Leanne-san, is it possible for you to forget Descartes while you translate my papers? He wrote superciliously in a style of Japanese designed to be condescending beyond belief.

Well, this took me by surprise! Was it possible that I was guilty of an unconscious Cartesianism? Surely, he must be joking; for had I not studied at the feet of the great Heidegger scholar, Hubert Dreyfus, who had made it his mission to demolish Descartes in front of our very eyes –before turning to Heidegger? In all my philosophy classes, in fact, Descartes (always referred to as “the father of modern philosophy”) came up again and again–mainly in the form of other philosophers’ reactions to some aspect of his work.

So much so, that sometimes I think my understanding of Descartes is itself a rejection of Descartes.

And so, I informed my philosopher that not only had I forgotten Descartes long ago, but that I had no plans to ever remember him again.

He was not convinced and pressed his point. Read more »