Terren,Obviously, as I indicated, I'm not suggesting that we can easily construct a total model of human cognition. But it ain't that hard to reconstruct reasonable and highly informative, if imperfect, models of how humans consciously think about problems. As I said, artists have been doing a reasonable job for centuries. Shakespeare, who really started the inner monologue, was arguably the first scientist of consciousness. The kind of standard argument you give below - the eye can't look at itself - is actually nonsense. Your conscious, inner thoughts are not that different from your public, recordable dialogue. (Any decent transcript of thought, BTW, will give a v. good indication of the emotions involved).
We're not v. far apart here - we agree about the many dimensions of cognition, most of which are probably NOT directly accessible to the conscious mind. I'm just insisting on the massive importance of studying conscious thought. It was, as Crick said, "ridiculous" for science not to study consciousness - (it had a lot of rubbish arguments for not doing that, then) - it is equally ridiculous and in fact scientifically obscene not to study conscious thought. The consequences both for humans generally and AGI are enormous.
Terren:> Mike,
This is going too far. We can reconstruct to a considerable extent how humans think about problems - their conscious thoughts.Why is it going too far? I agree with you that we can reconstruct thinking, to a point. I notice you didn't say "we can completely reconstruct how humans think about problems". Why not?We have two primary means for understanding thought, and both are deeply flawed:1. Introspection. Introspection allows us to analyze our mental life in a reflective way. This is possible because we are able to construct mental models of our mental models. There are three flaws with introspection. The first, least serious flaw is that we only have access to that which is present in our conscious awareness. We cannot introspect about unconscious processes, by definition.This is a less serious objection because it's possible in practice to become conscious of phenomena there were previously unconscious, by developing our meta-mental-models. The question here becomes, is there any reason in principle that we cannot become conscious of *all* mental processes?The second flaw is that, because introspection relies on the meta-models we need to make sense of our internal, mental life, the possibility is always present that our meta-models themselves are flawed. Worse, we have no way of knowing if they are wrong, because we often unconsciously, unwittingly deny evidence contrary to our conception of our own cognition, particularly when it runs counter to a positive account of our self-image.Harvard's "Project Implicit" experiment (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/) is a great way to demonstrate how we remain ignorant of deep, unconscious biases. Another example is how little we understand the contribution of emotion to our decision-making. Joseph Ledoux and others have shown fairly convincingly that emotion is a crucial part of human cognition, but most of us (particularly us men) deny the influence of emotion on our decision making.The final flaw is the most serious. It says there is a fundamental limit to what introspection has access to. This is the "an eye cannot see itself" objection. But I can see my eyes in the mirror, says the devil's advocate. Of course, a mirror lets us observe a reflected version of our eye, and this is what introspection is. But we cannot see inside our own eye, directly - it's a fundamental limitation of any observational apparatus. Likewise, we cannot see inside the very act of model-simulation that enables introspection. Introspection relies on meta-models, or "models about models", which are activated/simulated *after the fact*. We might observe ourselves in the act of introspection, but that is nothing but a meta-meta-model. Each introspectional act by necessity is one step (at least) removed from the direct, in-the-present flow of cognition. This means that we can never observe the cognitive machinery that enables the act of introspection itself.And if you don't believe that introspection relies on cognitive machinery (maybe you're a dualist, but then why are you on an AI list? :-), ask yourself why we can't introspect about ourselves before a certain point in our young lives. It relies on a sufficiently sophisticated toolset that requires a certain amount of development before it is even possible.2. Theory. Our theories of cognition are another path to understanding, and much of theory is directly or indirectly informed by introspection. When introspection fails (as in language acquisition), we rely completely on theory. The flaw with theory should be obvious. We have no direct way of testing theories of cognition, since we don't understand the connection between the mental and the physical. At best, we can use clever indirect means for generating evidence, and we usually have to accept the limits of reliability of subjective reports.Terren --- On Wed, 7/2/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Terren, This is going too far. We can reconstruct to a considerable extent how humans think about problems - their conscious thoughts. Artists have been doing this reasonably well for hundreds of years. Science has so far avoided this, just as it avoided studying first the mind, with behaviourism, then consciousness,. The main reason cognitive science and psychology have avoided stream-of-thought studies (apart from v. odd scientists like Jerome Singer) is that conscious thought about problems is v. different from the highly ordered, rational, thinking of programmed computers which cog. sci. uses as its basic paradigm. In fact, human thinking is fundamentally different - the conscious self has major difficulty concentrating on any problem for any length of time - controlling the mind for more than a relatively few seconds, (as religious and humanistic thinkers have been telling us for thousands of years). Computers of course have perfect concentration forever. But that's because computers haven't had to deal with the type of problems that we do - the problematic problems where you don't, basically, know the answer, or how to find the answer, before you start. For this kind of problem - which is actually what differentiates AGI from narrow AI - human thinking, creative as opposed to rational, stumbling, scatty, and freely associative, is actually IDEAL, for all its imperfections. Yes, even if we extend our model of intelligence to include creative as well as rational thinking, it will still be an impoverished model, which may not include embodied thinking and perhaps other dimensions. But hey, we'll get there bit by bit, (just not, as we both agree, all at once in one five-year leap). Terren:> My points about the pitfalls of theorizing about intelligence apply to any and all humans who would attempt it - meaning, it's not necessary to characterize AI folks in one way or another. There are any number of aspects of intelligence we could highlight that pose a challenge to orthodox models of intelligence, but the bigger point is that there are fundamental limits to the ability of an intelligence to observe itself, in exactly the same way that an eye cannot see itself. > > Consciousness and intelligence are present in every possible act of > contemplation, so it is impossible to gain a vantage point of intelligence > from outside of it. And that's exactly what we pretend to do when we > conceptualize it within an artificial construct. This is the principle > conceit of AI, that we can understand intelligence in an objective way, > and model it well enough to reproduce by design. > > Terren > > --- On Tue, 7/1/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Terren:It's to make the larger point that we may be so >> immersed in our own >> conceptualizations of intelligence - particularly because >> we live in our >> models and draw on our own experience and introspection to >> elaborate them - >> that we may have tunnel vision about the possibilities for >> better or >> different models. Or, we may take for granted huge swaths >> of what makes us >> so smart, because it's so familiar, or below the radar >> of our conscious >> awareness, that it doesn't even occur to us to reflect >> on it. >> >> No 2 is more relevant - AI-ers don't seem to introspect >> much. It's an irony >> that the way AI-ers think when creating a program bears v. >> little >> resemblance to the way programmed computers think. (Matt >> started to broach >> this when he talked a while back of computer programming as >> an art). But >> AI-ers seem to have no interest in the discrepancy - which >> again is ironic, >> because analysing it would surely help them with their >> programming as well >> as the small matter of understanding how general >> intelligence actually >> works. >> >> In fact - I just looked - there is a longstanding field on >> psychology of >> programming. But it seems to share the deficiency of >> psychology and >> cognitive science generally which is : no study of the >> stream-of-conscious-thought, especially conscious >> problemsolving. The only >> AI figure I know who did take some interest here was >> Herbert Simon who >> helped establish the use of verbal protocols. >> >> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------- >> agi >> Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now >> RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ >> Modify Your Subscription: >> http://www.listbox.com/member/?&; >> Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > agi > Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ > Modify Your Subscription: > http://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?&; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?&;Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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