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                Subject: Turing/Godel "space"                  Date: 09/24/96

'Consciousness is LifeSpace with Indefinite Boundaries'

Responding to Pat Hayes of 9/19/96 ("PAUL DUGGAN/TURING TEST").

{I've taken the liberty of changing the 'subject' title. If Paul Duggan has left Oxford Computer Labs, there is no reason to detain him here. Apparently he is off "touring" somewhere.}

Hayes' paragraph by paragraph (transmission linear) replies were well crafted. Each highlighted a separate worthwhile "line" of thinking to be explored. But I must leave those for another time, since at the end of his scripting he opened the door that I've been knocking on for quite a while. The other topics are basically embellishments to this main one.

The only preface I need to make concerns Hayes' questioning of my irregular use of the term "Godel space". Though originally quite rigorous in their mathematical applications, Godel's incompleteness theorems have been applied in more extensive ways by others, not just myself. They have been turned into metaphysical paradigm and applied as the latest form of Cartesian Cut by Complexists/Hofstadter/AI/Santa Fe Institute/Chaitin, et al.

Their paradigm posits that information content at any one moment for a system is less than all-available-information, so any general system (a human for example, or even the sum total of all information resident in all humans *and* their extraneous information storage devices <such as computers and libraries>) will never "know" *everything* ... will always be incomplete ... and therefore potentially inaccurate because lurking on the far side of that knowledge limit might be a piece of information to "prove" the "internal information" as inaccurately organized. Indeed, there might even be a "limit" to what humanity can *ever* "know".

Just as they apply Godel to an area he never originally intended, I say that his theorems have an additional conceptual counterpart in "life-space" as defined by the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin (1938). Some boundary condition exists,
whether tangible or simply "relational", that denotes a function-region for a system, a "self".

This ties in with subjectivity/objectivity, as discussed by Velmans (JCS:v2,3;279) where the characteristics we are dealing with are a) point of view, and b) focus of attention. Each conscious sentient which co-exists in an extended environment is simultaneously observer and observed. Each sentience-centre is a distinct locus from which to model "all else"...including
other sentients. Life-space, Godel Limits, Godel Space, econiches, nations, Hilbert space, etc are variants of a basic relationship that deals with "information-space".

Relying on the foregoing premises, I take an extreme position: Any system which displays organized coherent behaviors can qualify to some degree of "sentience" (whether anthropomorphic or not). It is as reasonable to examine the constructive dynamics of another "person" *or* an "atom" and say that Schroedinger/Dirac "structures" are comparable to microtubule structures and axionic/dendritic structures and silicon chip hardware "structure". They all can be evaluated as "observer/observed" aka "experiencer/object of experience".

That's why Hayes' acknowledgement is so exciting to me:

>>>>(JR)"Buffered Time Response"...indicative of some other organization of linear components *with information storage capacity*,

>>>(PH)Yes, exactly what computers have. More information storage capacity than just about anything else in the known universe, in fact.

>>(JR)Or rather, than their proponents chose to consider. Every phase-state of electron shells can be considered distinct data-storage states. Here, I refer you to Rudolph Marcus' 1993 Nobel prize winning work in chemistry dealing with
substantial variability of electron transfer rates between molecules. There is more interactive information, and interaction potential, produced and encountered in "simple" bond construction and breaking than any computer can handle in real-time.

>(PH)That's an exciting idea if true. However, its not enough to just 'have' the information considered as bit-capacity: one also has to be able to store it and recall it later, and address it somehow, or its not worth much. But if we could use electron shells as RAM, (or even ROM), lets do it, by all means. We will still have a computer, and it will need to be programmed. It isn't going to suddenly wake up just because its made of the right hardware, no matter how fast or large it is.

"Exciting idea" is an understatement. It tells us quite explicitly that the information content of a "simple" atom is more extensive than previously considered. But as Hayes is concerned with what those "information states" mean for human application ... data storage and processing...and whether they are accessible or not for *our* purposes, I suggest that atoms already use those
information-states for *their* "purposes". Now, there is no homunculus involved, no Maxwell's Demon. I am not a mysterian. There is "behavior" derived from rules of construction. Period. "Primitive" consciousness, if you will. From which limited behaviors, "emergent" hierarchies (Scott,1996) arise.

As Hayes wrote (9/19/96) and was supported by van den Heuvel (9/20/96):

>(PH)"Programs routinely discover things which their programmers never knew and indeed couldn't have known."

With apologies ahead of time to Hayes, I'd like to rephrase it according to the Integrity Paradigm:

"Programs routinely (express data patterns) which their programmers (were not aware of as being already part of - or potential in - the system or relationships of available information)."

I would suggest to Hayes that this novelty of the unexpected extends to higher orders of complexity too, producing among other things, improved capacity to experience information in new ways: colors, feelings, emotions, ideations. ..."Experiences" inaccessible to lower-complexity systems. These are real functional "differences" based on pragmatic structural "differences", not a "pathetic litany" {Hayes}.

Conclusion: Consciousness is most likely "neither" this "nor" that, only. Rather, consciousness is a range of behaviors expressible through a range of organizational constructions.

AND, the "programming" can stem from innate rules of organization (quantum mechanics; entropy), as well as from external input which puts to use information phase-states available in micro-systems.

Thank you Pat for aiming high to shoot at a cloud. You broke the discussion deadlock and got the plurallogue going again. I think you'll find you have more in common with your seemingly conceptual "opponents" than previous "programs" afforded you. :-).

Consciousness is not something we can "infuse" into a system, it is behavior we "extract", based upon inner AI capacities to function in such-and-such ways, handling internal and external information.

INTEGRITY PARADIGM