Modality Independence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_speech
A striking feature of language is that it is modality-independent. Should an impaired child be prevented from hearing or producing sound, its innate capacity to master a language may equally find expression in signing […]
This feature is extraordinary. Animal communication systems routinely combine visible with audible properties and effects, but not one is modality independent. No vocally impaired whale, dolphin or songbird, for example, could express its song repertoire equally in visual display. “
This would be hard to explain if consciousness were due to information processing, as we would expect all communication to share a common logical basis. The fact that only human language is modality invariant suggests that communication, as an expression of consciousness is local to aesthetic textures rather than information-theoretic configurations.
Since only humans have evolved to create an abstraction layer that cuts across aesthetic modalities, it would appear that between aesthetic modality and information content, aesthetic modality is the more fundamental and natural phenomenon. Information is derived from conscious presentation, not the other way around.
m-zombie: A Challenge to Computationalism
Have a look at this quick video, or get the idea from this gif:
Since the VCR can get video feedback of itself, is there any computational reason why this doesn’t count as a degree of self awareness?
Turning the Systems Reply to the Chinese Room on its head, I submit that if we consider the Chinese room to be an intelligent *system*, then we must also consider the system of VCR+camera pointed at itself to be a viable AGI as well.
The correlation of corrupted video feed with the actual physical attacks on the system must be construed as awareness, especially since the video effects are unique and specifically correlated so as to present a complex vocabulary of responses. If functionalism rejects the evidence of this correlation as being experienced qualitatively, then it must posit the existence of an m-zombie (machine zombie), in which the system unintentionally mimics the responses expected from sentient computations from a sub-computational level.
Why Light is Sight (not photons)
A case against photons being necessary and sufficient to explain the experience of light:
There are many examples of scientific studies and first hand experience which implicate human visual perception as the result of neurological and phenomenological states, rather than a direct mapping of photons striking the retina of the eye.
1. What we see cannot be explained by the presence of photons alone.
From this paper, On the Neural Correlates of Visual Perception:
“Neurological findings suggest that the human striate cortex (V1) is an indispensable component of a neural substratum subserving static achromatic form perception in its own right and not simply as a central distributor of retinally derived information to extrastriate visual areas.
[…] elemental visual experiences of punctate white or colored lights called ‘phosphenes’ can be evoked in man by direct electrical stimulation of densely hemianopic striate cortex after severance of its connections to and from the LGN.”
The paper goes on to describe many neurological conditions arising from specific damage to the brain which reveal that the visual conditions which we take for granted, such as identification of shapes and motion, have their neural correlates in diverse areas of the brain. There is no video screen equivalent in the brain which which reconstructs an image from the outside world made of photons.
“Crick and Koch also proposed that explicit representations of visual features, coarse-coded neural representations that correlate with percepts or objects, are a necessary but not sufficient condition for visual experience. I find no reason to disagree with this premise.
[…]figure–ground segregation and object recognition cannot progress in a simple bottom-up serial fashion, but have to occur concurrently and interactively within recursive loops”
[…]In summary, the present model is based on the primacy of phenomenal experience (Humphrey, 1992; Nelkin, 1995; Raffman, 1995) and supports views that any possible explanation of phenomenal experience cannot be formulated solely in terms of its reportability (Chalmers, 1995).”
2. Stimulation of the visual cortex in the congenitally blind results in tactile rather than visual perception (Changes in visual cortex excitability in blind subjects as demonstrated by transcranial magnetic stimulation).
“…phosphenes could be induced in only 60% of subjects in Group 2 (blind subjects with a low degree of residual vision) and in only 20% of subjects in Group 3 (blind subjects without residual vision).
[…] Studies of the functional consequences of visual deprivation in humans have disclosed correlates of cross‐modal plasticity, with a role for the visual cortex in tactile processes (Uhlet al., 1991; Sadatoet al., 1996; Cohenet al., 1997; Büchelet al., 1998).”
“In a PET study we demonstrate that congenitally blind subjects show task- specific activation of extrastriate visual areas and parietal association areas during Braille reading, compared with auditory word processing. In contrast, blind subjects who lost their sight after puberty show additional activation in the primary visual cortex with the same tasks. Studies in blind-raised monkeys show that crossmodal responses in extrastriate areas can be elicited by somatosensory stimulation. This is consistent with the crossmodal extrastriate activations elicited by tactile processing in our congenitally blind subjects. ” – Different activation patterns in the visual cortex of late and congenitally blind subjects.
3. Visual experiences can be produced internally, and outside of the primary visual cortex.
“A phosphene is a phenomenon characterized by the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye.”
“this phenomenon of “seeing” without seeing in the traditional sense leads one to believe the ability to receive light is not entirely necessary. In addition, this is not a foreign concept, as when most people close the eyes, they are able to visualize images.” – Dreams: Seeing without seeing
“The results by Knauff and colleagues, also with fMRI, do not support the hypothesis that primary visual cortex is involved in visual mental imagery, but rather that a network of spatial subsystems and higher visual areas appears to be involved (Knauff, Kassubek, Mulack, & Greenlee, 2000). The results support the hypothesis that visual imagery is a function of the visual association cortex.” – Visual imagery without visual perception (Bértolo 2005).
4. Congenitally blind people can interpret experience graphically.
[…]In conclusion, the congenitally blind are not only able to describe what may be the visual content of their dreams verbally, but they can provide, through drawing, a graphical representation of such content, and a significant negative correlation between the Visual Content of the dreams and the alpha power was found in both groups.” (Bértolo 2005).
5. Color mappings are not entirely caused either by electromagnetic frequency or stimulation of the retina’s cone cells.
a. Some colors are not part of the visible spectrum
Pink and purple are combinations of red with blue or violet. Brown and beige are low intensity orange, olive is low dim green, grays and black are dark whites. – source
“This means that colours only really exist within the brain – light is indeed traveling from objects to our eyes, and each object may well be transmitting/reflecting a different set of wavelengths of light; but what essentially defines a ‘colour’ as opposed to a ‘wavelength’ is created within the brain. ” – Magenta Ain’t A Colour.
b. Color perception can change independently of the retina.
“…the number of color-sensitive cones in the human retina differs dramatically among people—by up to 40 times—yet people appear to perceive colors the same way. The findings, on the cover of this week’s journal Neuroscience, strongly suggest that our perception of color is controlled much more by our brains than by our eyes.
[… That points to some kind of normalization or auto-calibration mechanism—some kind of circuit in the brain that balances the colors for you no matter what the hardware is.” – Color Perception Is Not in the Eye of the Beholder: It’s in the Brain
6. Blindsight shows that optical information can be communicated subconsciously without a conscious experience of seeing.
A rare, but much studied condition, blindsight, along with synesthesia and anosognosia reveal that the pairing of visual qualities of experience with optical conditions is not automatic. The functions of information processing, physics, and the qualities conscious experience can all be teased out separately.
Blindsight – the ability to respond appropriately to visual inputs while lacking the feeling of having seen them – might be something which only occurs in cases of brain damage, but seems much more likely to be a significant phenomenon of intact brain function as well. Indeed, it seems likely that blindsight (and similar phenomena in other spheres) is an important ingredient of of a variety of activities where one wants to move quickly and appropriately, without “thinking about it”. – Seeing What You Don’t See
7. Photon interaction begins and ends with the isomerization of rhodopsin.
Optical processing a vast chain of mechanical reactions on multiple levels of description of the nervous system; molecular, cellular, organ, and somatic. From the indications of neurology alone, what our visual cortex would ‘see’ should really be nothing more than interruptions in the flows of glutamate from rod cells, not an array of photons. There is something called ‘dark current‘ which refers to “the depolarizing current, carried by Na+ ions, that flows into a photoreceptor cell when unstimulated” and suggests that our access to optical conditions is triggered by a silencing of ‘off’ signals rather than an instantiation of ‘on’. It might be supposed that photons are not what we see, but rather they are a measure of the initial molecular triggers which stop us from not seeing.
8. Photons with frequencies in the infra-red range are felt as heat rather than seen.
A rather obvious example, but one which reveals that photons themselves need not be seen to be detected. Ultraviolet and infrared radiation are referred to as ‘light’, but they are no more or less ‘illuminating’ than radio waves or gamma rays. Generally when we refer to light and lighting we are specifying a capacity to illuminate our visual perception, not thermal conditions. The use of light to refer to invisible phenomena is not entirely untrue, as it can be stepped down into a visible range using photographic equipment, however, unless the target of such a process is ultimately a visual experience, it is hard to justify the connection to the term, and the word ‘light’ should be considered somewhat figurative. If we refer to brain activity associated with conscious experience to be ‘neural correlates’, then we should likewise refer to physical activity associated with perceptual experience to be ‘electrodynamic correlates’ of light rather than light itself.
9. If light is sight and not photons, what is sight?
Philosophers would call it qualia, neuroscientists might call it ‘sense data’, phenomenal visual experience, or ‘static achromatic form perception’. In short, seeing light is irreducibly experiential. All light is only that which is seen, and photons do not necessarily have any visible qualities.
Semiotics: What are the implications of the Saussurian sign (signifier/signified) for a theory of meaning?
In my theory of meaning, Saussurian concepts of signifier and signified are a good start, but I propose a fundamental change. In his answer, Keith Allpress offers:
here is where I think we stand:
Shannon removed content from meaning but using bits.
Saussure claimed that language creates meaning.
and points out the limitations of post-modern/relativistic/deconstructionist approaches. I would say that the computationalist approach is similarly limited, in that there is no compelling reason that ‘it from bit’ should apply to all aspects of meaning. I think that what is missing from these two approaches is the same thing, only seen from opposite sides. To understand more about that thing, we can begin by asking:
“What cares about the difference?”
I think where Saussure and modern semiotics in general went too far is in presuming representation without presentation. The error of the computationalist view is even more subtle, as it presumes presentation as an emergent property, thereby taking it outside of the realm of science, but without admitting it. To me, this is a very seductive but misguided approach which leads directly to the Emperor’s emergent clothes.
Taking the term ‘signifier’, we can crack the kernel of truth that semiotics-as-cosmology is based on. Just as it is not incorrect to call someone who is driving a car a ‘driver’, neither is driver a complete description of the role of human beings in the world. What is missing? What *cares* that something is missing? What fills the gap is what I call aesthetic participation, or sensory-motive presence. In my view, before ‘information’ (a difference that makes a difference per Bateson) or sign, there must be the raw sensitivity to detect and interpret such ‘differences’ or ‘signs’ and to *care* about those differences. What we have done, by reifing pattern as objectively real things which are recognized, or de-realizing things as subjectively constructed patterns is to void the existence of sense and sense-making itself.
Not to get too cheeky, but what I propose is that beneath Bateson’s adage is a deeper context from which information and signs emerge: an aesthetic phenomenon which likes its own likeness by making its own differences. I call this primordial pansensitivity, or ‘sense’ and the particular quality of appreciation that it cares about I call ‘significance’. Significance cannot be automated, it must be earned directly through intimate acquaintance. It may sound like I am talking about human intimacy here, but I mean nothing of the sort. By acquaintance (stealing that word from Chalmers), I mean sensory-motive encounters on a fundamental level: before humans, before biology, and before even matter. The universe has to make sense before anything can make sense of it.
The aesthetic agenda is purely hedonistic. It is to develop ever richer textures and modalities of appreciation. While the universe is replete with repeating patterns, it never seems to repeat its particular, proprietary holons. A whirlpool, hurricane, and galaxy all share the same unmistakable topology, but nobody would mistake one for the other. Not just the scale but everything that constitutes their appearance and role in the universe is different. In calling the universe signs or bits we are losing the appreciation and proprietary character. The unique and worthwhile becomes generic and inevitable. It ultimately is to make meaning meaningless.
Names (representations) can be related to each other in ways that nature (presentations) cannot be. The equal sign is itself a name for one of these relations. In nature nothing can be absolutely equal to anything else. All of nature is unrepeatably unique in a literal sense, but will seem to be made of repetition and variation from any particular perspective within it. In this way, the postmodernists are right. We have only the presence of our own ability to feel that can be known absolutely as it is. Everything else that exists for us, within our individually customized experience has some degree of approximation/representation.
What makes this even more complicated and confusing is that there are different levels of sense-making whcih can contradict each other. We would like to think of signs as simply a case of dictionary definitions were signs literally signifiy what we expect they should signify. Even the identity principle of A = A is subject to a deeper degree of expectation about what A and = mean in different contexts. We can look at a surreal painting and say ‘that is a painting of something impossible’, but it is only our expectation that the paint shapes refer to something other than themselves which is being misled. What surrealism signifies is not ‘real’, but neither is it nothing.
Where the computationalists are right is in seeing the uniformity of arithmetic principles across all phenomena which can be measured. Reducing all transactions to bits obviously has been tremendously transformative in this century. By banishing the aesthetic qualities (qualia) to an emergent never-never land, however, we have been seduced by the representation of measure (quanta). Simulation-type theories now abound, in which the entire history of human experience (including the development of science, but shh…) is marginalized as a confabulation/illusion/model and the only true reality one which can never been contacted in any way except through theoretical abstraction. We either live in an unreal world, or the world which we now think is real is not the one that we actually live in. We are being asked to believe that meaning is meaningless and that the only alternative to solipsism is a kind of ‘nilipsism’* in which even our ennui is yet another meaningless function of the program.
To turn the page on this era of de-presentation**, I suggest that we look at the roots of semiotics more deeply, and recognize that signs themselves depend upon a deeper context of sensation and sense-making which goes beyond even physics or human experience.
*a word I made up to describe the philosophy that the self (ipse) must be reduced to a non-entity.
**another neologism that I use to refer to what Raymond Tallis calls the ‘Disappearance of Appearance’…the overlooking of the phenomenon of aesthetic presence itself.
Nested Pansensitivity Interpretation
Here is an early sketch of the basic concepts of the sense-based physics in Multisense Realism (MSR). The aspects of MSR that deal with elemental conditions now fall under the heading “Nested Pansensitivity Interpretation (NPI)”. This is intended to pre-figure quantum theory, and is also referred to as quorum mechanics or post-particle physics. It is a general systems concept, so that it can apply to events on any scale, not just microphysical. The simple gifs are intended only as a metaphor – not as literal physical particles or functions. The rising bar of sense could refer to light, sound, emotion, a story unfolding, etc. It’s about the meta-ontology through which metaphysical expectations such as cycles and events arise.
In the top gif, the relation of sense, motive, effort, and effect is shown. Sense, being the primordial resource, is represented by this oscillation of light and dark, but it should be noted that this refers to the appreciation of feeling or sensing, not a literal mechanism which oscillates. Primordial pansensitivity must pre-figure time, cycles, identification of light and dark, etc. All of those tropes of sense (symmetry, opposites, etc) are types of significance (as shown in the second gif).
In the top gif, the center circle is nested within a concentric ellipse to denote one of what I suspect are the most primitive types of significance – the distinction between interiority and exteriority. As sense builds to a peak, it can become focused as a motive. We have countless motives within and at the fringes of our awareness as human beings, but what is being shown here is a conjecture about the nature of any part of the universe, even in the complete absence of human beings, biological life, and physical matter. I use the Omega symbol (Ω) for Motive because a) it’s cool, and b) it references exteriority and teleology obliquely, being that it is the last letter of the Greek alphabet. Motive is the part of sense which is targeted for action. The symbol itself obliquely references exteriority as well, appearing as a breached circle or as a white bulb emerging. Using the minus Aleph symbol (-ℵ) has been my convention because of it’s connection to ‘before the first’, and ‘before the expectation of infinite cardinality’. Counting requires logic, which requires multiple nested cycles of sense, motive, effort, effect, and significance to be abstracted.
Quora Question on Entropy
Help me understand this. If entropy is about signal transmission, and is measured by “how much information is missing,” it implies a transmitter and receiver – in other words, a relationship. Entropy is an appealing notion because at first glance the receiver of the information cannot suddenly know more than what is transmitted. But the amount of information the receiver can receive seems to be highly relative and transformable.This is if I understand correctly that entropy is not a measurement of a system’s physical properties, but of how much information is missing when that system is observed. For sure, a system will emit is information, and there will be a less than 100% reception of that signal for any system observing it. That number cannot be 101%…. But there are two sides to a relationship, and a system’s entropy is not related to some total “information” it “contains”… So there are simple workarounds to that 100% threshold.
For example, if I look at a blade of grass that I hold in my hand, I can only receive so much information about it, and I cannot get more information than what it is transmitting to me… Unless I then look at it under a microscope and now the information loss (entropy) has decreased. If entropy were a law of the universe, my act of changing my receptor would be “impossible.”
It seems to me that labeling entropy as an unbreakable law is a naive notion, and instead I see it as a useful property of observation. Does entropy deserve the status of “law of the universe”?
The subject of entropy is, appropriately highly entropic. There are a lot of different ways that the word is used, some more figuratively than others. Thermodynamic entropy is not the same as information entropy, in the sense that if we make an MPEG compressed video of a glass of ice melting into room temperature water, the first half of the movie would take more resources to compress than the last half, given that the last half would feature only a glass of still water. As the thermodynamic entropy of the actual ice increases, the information entropy of the content of the video decreases. The sensitivity of the video camera is limited, so it can’t detect the microstates of the water molecules.
I think this speaks to the question of perception, and how our designation of what constitutes a ‘system’ is more arbitrary than it may seem. All of our instruments and all of our sensing and sense-making capabilities are potentially as limited as the video camera. Our attention is squeezed into an anthropocentric range, so that our window on ourselves and the universe does not allow us to discern ultimately what is ‘a law of the universe, or simply an assumption based on our perceptions’. Everything that we can understand about the universe is furnished to us only by our perceptions, intuitions, and understanding.
Our perception leads us to expect a universe of laws and realities beyond itself, but these too are either ultimately subjective conditions, or else subjectivity itself must include the possibility of transcending itself. The difference between what we presume to be our private perceptions and what we presume to be something more is…. entropy. There is no way to obtain 100% of the information about anything. Even given omniscient access to the entire history of the universe, the nature of the universe may be intrinsically open ended within any given inertial frame.
What I am suggesting is that just as entropy is the gap between what we experience and what we think could be experienced (‘objectively’), what we consider information may only appear to be finite because of the gap between our native perceptual frame of reference and the target frame of reference. Rather than being a true description of what a phenomenon is, ‘information’ may be as fictional in its amputation of subjective qualities as perception is in its failure to pick up on physical properties. The definition of entropy itself can be thought of as gradually reversing or flipping in proportion to the distance (literal and figurative) between two perceptual frames. Take these words for example. If you read English, then your absorption of their meaning is rather loose and general. You get the idea of what I am saying, and even sort of ‘hear’ an inner narrator voice that stands in for me. It’s all rather fuzzy, but it works really well. Entropy is actually what allows you to get the gist of what I am saying or even what I am not saying (reading between the lines).
By comparison, someone who cannot read English at all may have a much clearer view of what these characters ‘actually’ look like (without as much fuzzy interpretive conditioning). In the same way, some people find it easier to draw realistically if they are copying an image upside down. Entropy and significance, subjectivity and objectivity are not functional properties, they are aesthetic ranges. The universe as a whole can, in the same way, be considered primarily an aesthetic phenomenon as a whole, in which any part can reduce another to a functional stereotype using variations on the theme of distance or insensitivity.
What is Time?
How would you define it?
I propose a new way of describing time, which I find clearer and more explanatory than others.
Time is an abstraction which refers to a general property of experiences which are remembered or recorded as having occurred in a either an irreversible linear sequence, or a repeating sequence (cycle). In my view, time is inherently phenomenal (private, experiential) rather than physical (public, structural), not just because of time dilation under Relativity, but for the more axiomatic reason that time requires memory. Without memory, there can logically be only one eternal moment. It could be repeating forever or be following a pattern or have no pattern and nothing could tell the difference. Time…is experience, or a quality of experience through which private memory can map to public structure. I suggest that time can be understood as taking on three different modal scopes:
I. Micro-phenomenal: This is clock time. Physics. Looking at the development of time keeping, we can see that early devices exploited natural processes which were either continuous and invariant, such as the flow of water or sand into a container, or which cycled reliably, such as a shadow on a sundial. Mechanical clocks offered a marriage of the two, whereby an underlying linear or oscillating effect such as an unwinding spring’s tension or a pendulum’s swing would advance the teeth of a system of gears, one by one.
Each tick/tock is an precisely measured event which is, as much as possible, uniform and generic. As technology has improved, we have refined the clock to a pinnacle of pure abstraction. Both the indivisible and divisible power of nature has been abstracted electronically. A perpetual electrical current drives generic switches to compute a digitally coded readout. Satellite networks deliver synchronized atomic time. Each microsecond like the last, and even though global adjustments to clock or calendar can be made arbitrarily by central authorities, we feel that this kind of time is the ‘real time’.
II. Phenomenal Time: This is natural time. Idioms like ‘time flies when you’re having fun’ or ‘it was the longest night of my life’ reflect that our ordinary sense of time also dilates and contracts through emotional states. Significant events and experiences seem to stand out in our autobiographical memory as not only more timely, but more timeless as well. We claim them, intentionally or unintentionally, as our own. This kind of time is narrative. “I woke up, I ate breakfast, I went to the store”, etc.. There is a story which has a shape – beginnings, middles and ends. It is not just generic oscillation or monotonous duration or arrow of increasing entropy, but a proprietary sequence of participation. This is the kind of time that we might say ‘seems like’ it is real.
If you think of how a story works, the more of the story is told, the more the information entropy decreases. By the middle of the story, we know the characters, the setting, the plot, etc. The number of possible ways the story can continue is relatively limited (even if it is still potentially unlimited in an absolute sense). The significance, however, of the remaining bit of the story is increasingly augmented. If the story is good, you want to hear the end of it, even if you are pretty sure that you know how it will turn out.
After the story ends, it would seem that there is no entropy left. The story has been told in its entirety. In reality, however, the meta-story has just begun. The memory of it survives, creating new opportunities to be applied figuratively in one’s life, as well as sharing it socially and seeing it retold, dramatized, and celebrated in culture as myth.
III. Metaphenomenal Time: Carl Jung famously wrote about the Collective Unconscious, and synchronicity. Experiences which some consider delusional or paranormal. Meaningful coincidences, prophetic dreams, a symbolic language of recurring characters and sagas called archetypes. This is eternal time. Time wound around itself in such a way that some essential, iconic reduction of all that has happened or might happen is in some sense ‘always still here’ and in another sense ‘never really anywhere’.
This is not mystical babbling to me, it is literally the physical reality of what the universe is and what (or who) it does. We have no trouble thinking of eternity in the Platonic sense, as ideal geometric forms or mathematical relations, but because we ourselves are immersed in human phenomena we do not see ourselves as being composed of similarly eternal recurrences.
Because there is no hard line between I, II, and III, all time is actually nested within all three contexts. This can help explain how intuition could work to allow people to sometimes pick up on feelings from a larger scope of time. Events that have great significance especially could theoretically cast a shadow from the III range to the II, so that from the II perspective, it is precognitive.
Multisense Realism 
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