Well, there obviously IS a conscious, executive mind, separate from the unconscious mind, whatever the enormous difficulties cognitive sicentists had in first admitting its existence and now in identifying its correlates! And you still seem to be sharing some of those old difficulties in talking about it. Science generally still has some of those difficulties too. They shouldn't be there. Social organizations have chief executives and appear more or less incapable of functioning without them. The individual organization that is a human being appears to need an executive mind for much the same reasons - though those reasons need defining.
Note that Fodor acknowledges the embarrassing truth that sicence can currently offer no explanation of why the conscious mind exists - rational, deterministic computers and machines clearly do not have or need one, functioning perfectly as entirely unconscious affairs. One immediate reason, applicable to AGI - although it will take the next Cognitive Revolution to recognize this - is that the two minds, almost certainly, think very differently. The unconscious mind thinks more or less algorithmically, (at least most of the time), rapidly in set ways - like a rational computer - it has to. Its function is to get things done. The conscious mind thinks literally, freely. How long it will spend on any given decision, and what course of thought it will pursue in reaching that decision are definitely NOT set, but free. (How does Pei's NARS fit in here?) Should I buy the marshmallow or the creme caramel ice cream? Hmm that's a tough one. I want to get this right... And I could and will resolve that decision in a few more seconds OR at other times, I could still be here thinking about it several minutes later OR at other times I could wander off in mid-thought to another subject entirely. No computer currently thinks like this - thinks freely and "crazily" as opposed to rationally and deterministically. Anyone who produces one - that has a similar practicality to the animal/human executive mind - will literally usher in the next Cognitive Revolution. You guys are clearly moving that way - but still appear to have a somewhat confused philosophical understanding of why all this is really necessary. (One interesting, but tangential issue is that the unconscious mind does appear to have a certain freedom too - it's hard to see dreams, for example, as deterministic affairs, Well, your dreams maybe, but not mine, you understand...). ----- Original Message ----- From: Benjamin Goertzel To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2007 10:37 AM Subject: Re: [agi] The Advantages of a Conscious Mind Mike, The extent to which there is a rigid distinction between these two tiers in the human brain/mind is not entirely clear. The human brain seems to have some distinct memory subsystems associated with various sorts of "short term memory" or "working memory", but the notion of "executive processing" overall is IMO best thought of as a fuzzy set. Yes, there are some parts of the brain clearly shown (by fMRI and PET) to be involved with overall coordination, but the knowledge/memories associated by these brain regions is not necessarily the totality of what can occur in subjective conscious awareness. I think that the working memory and the autonomic nervous system are best viewed as two extremes, with a continuum of "conscious intensity levels" existing between them. For relatively recent thinking on the underpinnings of consciousnes in the human brain, check out the edited volume -- "Neural Correlates of Consciousness", by Thomas Metzinger His single-author book -- "Being No One" is also very good, though I disagree with his take on AI at the end of the book. (he argues it would be unethical to create AGI's because it would be unethical to experiment on their half-formed, probably buggy conscious minds.) In Novamente we do have an AttentionalFocus concept which is much like what you call the "conscious" tier. We have chosen the term "attentional focus" to avoid getting into arguments related to the nature of consciousness and the first person versus third person perspectives on mind. Each item in the attentional focus is associated with a distributed network of other items that are not necessarily in the attentional focus, which ties in with the fuzziness of the executive function as mentioned above. -- Ben G On 5/6/07, YKY (Yan King Yin) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 5/6/07, Mike Tintner < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > YKY: Consciousness is not central to AGI . > > The human mind consists of a two-tier structure. On top, you have this conscious, executive mind that takes most of the decisions about which way the system will go - basically does the steering. On bottom, you have the unconscious, subordinate mind that does nearly all the information processing, both briefing and executing the executive mind's decisions, putting the words in its mouth and forming the thoughts in its head, while continually pressuring the executive mind with conflicting emotions, and at the same time monitoring and controlling the immensely complex operations of the body. That sounds reasonable. You're talking about the executive / planner module. My focus is on the truth maintenance module, which operates somewhat passively, and would require high-level directives from the planner, including value-based bias. The executive should be able to control all other modules. I tried not to use the term "emotion" in AGI, but I guess most people like it as a metaphor. YKY ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.6.4/790 - Release Date: 05/05/2007 10:34 ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
