Conscious Machines: Memory, Melody, and Muscular Imagination

Susan StuartUniversity of Glasgow

North American Computing and Philosophy Conference26-28 July 2007

Loyola University, Chicago

S.Stuart@philosophy.arts.gla.ac.ukhttp://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/philosophy/Personnel/susan/

Main Points1. You need a body to think, and not just because it houses the brain2. Muscular activity and questioning as necessary producing informative visceral and emotional responses3. The development of an anticipatory muscular and cognitive response to experience enables the agent to form

(i) a depiction -the sensation of being ‘out-there’[Aleksander & Dunmall 2003]

(ii) muscular imagination: non-cognitive expectations about how their world will continue to be(iii) a posteriori environmental, interpersonal, social and cultural concepts

4. All of 3 (i) - (iii) are necessary for the formation of effective judgements.

SACs & WACsHolland [2003] distinguishes between weak and strong artificial consciousnessWACs suggestive of conscious inessentialism“[F]or any intelligent activity i, performed in any cognitive domain d, even if we do i with conscious accompaniments, i can in principle be done without these conscious accompaniments.” [Flanagan 1992, p.5]But a WAC, like disembodied intelligent action, is infeasible.

“There is a need to ... move from a reductionist, a temporal, disembodied, static, rationalist, emotion- and culture-free view, to fundamentally richer understandings that include the primacy of action, intention, emotion, culture, real-time constraints, real-world opportunities, and the peculiarities of living bodies.” [Freeman & Núñez, 1999, p.ix]

Consciousness & Thought

The enactive system “[t]hrough a network consisting of multiple levels of interconnected, sensorimotor subnetworks”, possesses a “structural coupling that brings forth a world”. [Varela, et al. 1991, p.206]

“... there are no eternally fixed representations of the external world in the “motor system” rather, it is under the guidance of both internal and external factors with important linkages to frontal, parietal, cerebellar, basal ganglionic, and cingulate gyrus areas that subserve cognitive and motivational activities. Indeed, the motor system including related structures, is a self-organizing dynamical system contexted among musculoskeletal, environmental ... and social forces. We do not simply inhabit our bodies; we literally use them to think with.” [Seitz 2000]

The outcome of all intellectual activity is some action.

The Essential Body

We are plenisentient; in our muscular movement we ask questions about our world. [Cotterill, 1998]

Muscular Engagement

Through a sensori-affective ‘felt’ dynamics we build up non-conscious intentional expectations. Muscular movement is not our only kind of enquiry, all our senses in their search of the world, establish an experiential history through prehension, and the syntheses of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition.

In spinal cord injury (SCI) and the absence of direct afferent input and efferent feedback from the somato-sensory motor cortex sensory the brain hallucinates input. (Cole 2005)

Memory and MelodyKinaesthetic Memory “[A]ny movement creates a distinctive kinetic dynamics in virtue of its spatio-temporal-energic qualities.”

Sheets-Johnstone (2006) Kinaesthetic Melodies “In the initial stages of formation of any movement [the] chain must consist of a series of isolated impulses; with the development of motor skills the individual impulses are synthesized ... into integral kinaesthetic structures or kinetic melodies”

Luria (1973) The Working Brain, p.176

Phantom vibrations & the feelSpace belt

Cell phones feelSpace belt

Peter König, University of Osnabrückwide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads - same weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judderoutside of the belt - a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's magnetic fieldwhichever buzzer was pointing north would judder

The Essential EmotionsEmotions - defined as spontaneous neural and chemical responses to changes in the agent's physiological state - play a central role in the agent's homeostatic functioning.“[T]he subjective process of feeling emotions is partly grounded in dynamic neural maps, which represent several aspects of the organism's continuously changing internal state.” [Damasio et al. 2003, p.1049] The body's pre-reflective, pre-cognitive affective activity which acts to underpin the agent's successful adaptive behaviour. Saliency tagging - prioritising of relevant criteria / dismissal of irrelevant criteria

Emotions and Bodily DamageVentro-medial frontal cortex - Phineas Gage & EVREndogenous intersubjectivity [Gallagher 2007] - the practical knowledge of oneself that guides one's actions from the inside out... but also the amygdala, the anterior cingulate cortex, the cerebellum, the brain stem, and the hypothalamusCerebellum - associative learning - its maldevelopment may affect social and cognitive development (extrapyramidal tracts) brainstem + (corticospinal tracts) motor cortex - indicate that cognition follows action

ConclusionConscious inessentialism is a false doctrine

WACs (philosophical zombies) are impossible

Effective affective decisions need a body with a subtle musculature and nervous system such that it can, through action and repetition, develop its muscular memory, individual muscular melodies, and its enactive muscular imagination.