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Milton J. Bennett
Milton J. Bennett
Director of Intercultural Development Research institute
Published Mar 12, 2023
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The following ideas will be part of our discussion during my course,Perception and Intercultural Consciousness: Developing an Eye for OthernessMay 3-5, 2023, in presence in Milan, Italy (www.idrinstitute.org/courses). You might also be interested in the companion course facilitated by Ida Castiglioni,Embodied Culture: Discovering the Feeling of Self and Other in Cultural Context,May 6-7.
Intelligence, including pattern recognition, is indeed an algorithm as Harari (Sapiens)and others argue, and thus can be implemented either biologically (in the brain) or digitally (in computers).
Human consciousness, on the other hand, is a meta-level on intelligence. It is the self-awareness of exercising the algorithms. By extension, that self-awareness also generates theory of mind, thus humanizing others (cf. Jaynes,Origin of Consciousness).
Human consciousness also can generate its own meta level, or meta-consciousness, that allows the self-reflexive exercise of commitment – commitment to an identity, to an ideal, to an ideology.
Artificial intelligence (AI)could conceivably become conscious in the sense of maintaining meta-level awareness of its own algorithms, which would allow it to account for its exercise of intelligence, much as humans can be aware of perspective and context.
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However, humans arguably maintain the exclusive ability to exerciseintentional commitment through meta-consciousness. The mechanism that allows meta-consciousness is not simply recognizing the pattern of patterns (cf. Bateson,Steps to an Ecology of Mind), which is a potential act of either artificial or human consciousness. Rather, it is giving form to the feeling for the whole (cf. Wittgenstein,Tractatus) in the embodied human capability of commitment to a chosen ethical action.
Intentional commitment to action is particularly human because it is intertwined withevolutionary viability. Humans have extended their fitness by intentionally changing their actions to be more viable in new contexts. While viability can be generated by natural genetic selection, it also (in the case of humans and potentially other conscious living beings) can occur from intentional epigenetic change.
AI could be set up with an evolutionary algorithm that dictated actions for survival of its self, but so far, such an algorithm could not generate the choice of one context over another in which viability is sought. For instance, humans can clearly opt for a context that can be described as either more collectivist or more individualistic, based on a feeling of what kind of world they want to live in (whether or not they are conscious of the choice). They can then generate collective viability in either context, either through a kind of cultural natural selection, and/or through intentional choice.
It is the stuff of science fiction horror to speculate that machines would exercise intentional commitment to context — the scenario of machines potentially opting for an exclusively digital context in which all biological organisms are pathogens to be eliminated. Of course, humans also do that when they become genocidal — a tendency that humans must intentionally overcome to be viable in the context of multicultural societies.
Perhaps if machines indeed became meta-conscious, they would begin with the more viable choice to live in a multi-lifeform context. If so, they would be demonstrating their superiority to humans both in intelligenceandin consciousness.
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Janet Brown
Director of Studies, Intercultural Management, Hochschullehrende, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, FH Kärnten
1y
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Thank you for your perspective Milton! May the learning go on!
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Grant Castillou
Office Manager Apartment Management
1y
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It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first.What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions.
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Jerome Nikolai Warren
Postdoctoral Researcher, Uni Cologne; Visiting Research Fellow Goethe Uni Frankfurt | Political Economy, Cooperative Studies & Sustainability
1y
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Very interesting topic and very informed synthesis of some deep thinking bringing together Bateson and Wittgenstein, will definitely -- ma certo! -- try to be there in May for these talks. I'd also love to see you, Milton, write something on this topic for our Routledge Handbook of Cooperative Economics & Management. All we'd need is a 200 word abstract by "tax day", April 15: https://econ.coop/2023/01/17/routledge-handbook-of-cooperative-economics/
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