A perspective of ~absolute ~nothingness

Wed, Dec 9, 2009  Permanent link

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Thoughts on the future of human evolution
Project: Polytopia

Here is the text and slide share of a lecture I gave at ECCO research group seminar at the free university of Brussels on Nov 4th 2009. Thoughts and comments are welcome.

Abstract

The Noetic perspective (from Greek: noetikos- mental; nous- mind) identifies the [human] mind as the nexus of the future evolution of humanity. At present, human evolution is a mental process rather than biological or technological process.

The Noetic model describes mind as a relation generating complex system arising as a product of biological evolution and manifesting certain defining characteristics such as systemic closure, self reference, plasticity, etc. This model aims to integrate a systemic view with the mental constructs of the subjective plane. According to the Noetic model, human identity is a dynamic constructive process that brings forth the human observer as the subject of its perceptive and mental states. This process is identified as mind. Images and narratives are the elements encompassing the experiential and mental aspects of the identity process as they appear to the human observer.

The idea of mind as the theater of evolutionary processes is further explored: Mind as a complex system can essentially be disassociated from the historical conditions of its emergence; therefore it is virtually unbound in its evolutionary potential. This has deep implications on the understanding of human nature and the human condition. Finally, the ideas of openness and freedom beyond utility are proposed as futuristic directives of consciously guided evolution of mind.

The full text can be found here: Thoughts on the future of human evolution.pdf

Thoughts On The Future Of Human EvolutionView more presentations from Weaver R. Weinbaum.

Sat, Dec 5, 2009  Permanent link

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Changing our minds
Project: Polytopia

The first decade of the 21st century is about to end in just a few weeks. Among many things, I find most impacting the explosion of knowledge in the field of brain sciences and human behavior in this decade. Though the great riddles of consciousness and the emergence of minds from brains are still open and far from any solution, many connections and bridges are already there in our understanding.

Quite a few important and perhaps critical observations regarding human nature and the state of affairs of humanity are emerging from this explosion of knowledge and I will try to (very) briefly summarize them here below:

1. Our brains and our minds are initially products of biological evolution. Human behavior to this day is largely shaped by its biological origins.

2. In the course of just a few millennia, the human evolved language and culture. Culture has become the actual ecology where humans exist and where humans evolve. Human evolution as of today is not shaped by biological forces anymore but rather by cultural and mental forces.

3. Cultural evolution is much faster than biological evolution. Yet, individually, our bodies and brains are still constrained by their biology. Moreover, our social behavior is still shaped, to a large extent, by imperatives that ensured human survival in pre-cultural and proto-cultural eras.

4. As a consequence, humanity exists today within a rapidly growing adaptive gap. We have managed to create a fast evolving complex culture and this culture is certainly reshaping us individually and collectively. But this co-evolution is seriously constrained by the biological substrata of our minds.

5. It seems that we are not intelligent enough to cope with growing complexity of our social organization. This is already apparent in the dysfunction of governance systems, economic systems and the general coordinated addressing of large (planetary) scale problems.

6. It seems that human social behavior that was optimized to the way humans existed thousands of years ago is dangerously unfit to the complex demands of modern civilization. More specifically, certain necessary aspects of our collective intelligence such as emotional intelligence, extended empathy, sophisticated ethical reasoning, the capacity to communicate and cooperate within complex situations, augmented theories about other minds and more, evolve very slowly if at all.

7. (From here are some good news…) The human brain is found to be extremely plastic and adaptable in a very broad spectrum of capacities. It seems plausible that our brains and our mental capacities can be radically augmented.

8. Our understanding of the human brain and human general biology already allows people to be made smarter, perhaps much smarter. Brain enhancers that effectively augment human general intelligence are already available and will become much more effective and more available in the coming decades.

9. Even moderate increase of intelligence in the overall human population may have radical beneficial impact on the well being of humanity at large (see for an impressive example the micro nutrient initiative and its possible effects).

10. More controversially, human individual and social behavior can be altered to better fit the complex fast changing cultural ecology we are all part of. Specifically, human traits such as peacefulness, cooperation, empathy and trust can be reinforced by changing the chemical balance of the brain. Traits such as aggression, territoriality and other sociopathic dispositions can similarly be attenuated.

11. A bit further in the future, interventions at the genetic level can increase the general level of intelligence and shape the social behavior of new born children with the effect that whole populations will achieve better fitness and well being in our fast evolving circumstances.

In the light of these observations a very profound question becomes clear: Should we take the reins of our future evolution? Should we engage in a coordinated, large scale, project of augmenting our brains (and eventually our biology) and by that to radically change our minds and our very human nature? What are the values and the ethical precepts that can guide us in addressing such question?

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it is clear that there is a need for a change. It is also becoming clear that we are rapidly gaining the effective means to introduce it. Nevertheless, this is a very complex issue. The brief background I tried to bring here is only the tip of an iceberg. There are, I know, many views that will question the validity of part or all of the observations above, or the way that they are presented. My point however is to say enough to start a discussion here.

Lately I have watched an hour long lecture titled “Genetically enhance humanity or face extinction” given by Oxford professor of philosophy and bioethics Julian Suvalescu. Though he presents the issue of human enhancement in a much bolder fashion, the arguments he presents are interesting and certainly provocative. I recommend watching it if only for one reason: to gain a very real sense of how dangerous this idea is and how unavoidable is the need for every forward thinking individual to seriously think about, it discuss it and consolidate an informed view.

Genetically Enhance Humanity or Face Extinction Part 1

Genetically Enhance Humanity or Face Extinction Part 2


I would appreciate your thoughts and comments and hope this introduction will start an ongoing (and much needed, I believe) exchange on the subject in the SC.

Sat, Nov 21, 2009  Permanent link

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Antonio Damasio: This Time With Feeling

A fascinating talk about emotions and feelings by Antonio Damasio, one of the most renowned neuroscientists of our time.

Fri, Aug 21, 2009  Permanent link

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Contemplating Singularity
Project: Polytopia

Recently I came across a very interesting article by Timothy Lenoir, bringing a fresh perspective on the concept Singularity and posthumanist future.

In the introductory note Lenoir writes:

Most researchers agree that there is no reason in principle why we will not eventually develop conscious machines that rival or surpass human intelligence. If we are crossing to a new era of the posthuman, how have we gotten here? And how should we understand the process?

Cultural theorists have addressed the topic of the posthuman singularity and how, if at all, humanity will cross that divide. Most scholars have focused on the rhetorical and discursive practices, the metaphors and narratives, the intermediation of scientific texts, science fiction, electronic texts, film, and other elements of the discursive field enabling the posthuman imaginary. While recognizing that posthumans, cyborgs and other tropes are technological objects as well as discursive formations, the focus has been directed less toward analyzing the material systems and processes of the technologies and more toward the narratives and ideological discourses that empower them. We speak about machines and discourses “co-constituting” one another, but in practice, we tend to favor discursive formations as preceding and to a certain extent breathing life into our machines. The most far-reaching and sustained analysis of the problems has been offered by N. Katherine Hayles in her two recent books, How We Became Posthuman and My Mother Was a Computer. Hayles considers it possible that machines and humans may someday interpenetrate. But she rejects as highly problematic, and in any case not yet proven, that the universe is fundamentally digital, the notion that a Universal Computer generates reality, a claim that is important to the positions staked out by proponents of the posthuman singularity such as Morowitz, Kurzweil, Wolfram and Moravec. For the time being, Hayles argues, human consciousness and perception are essentially analog, and indeed, she argues, currently even the world of digital computation is sandwiched between analog inputs and outputs for human interpreters. How we will become posthuman, Hayles argues, will be through interoperational feedback loops between our current mixed analog-digital reality and widening areas of digital processing. Metaphors, narratives and other interpretive linguistic modes we use for human sense-making of the world around us do the work of conditioning us to behave as if we and the world were digital.

I propose to circumvent the issue of an apocalyptic end of the human and our replacement by a new form of Robo Sapiens by drawing upon the work of anthropologists, philosophers, language theorists, and more recently cognitive scientists shaping the results of their researches into a new argument for the co-evolution of humans and technics, specifically the technics of language and the material media of inscription practices. The general thrust of this line of thinking may best be captured in Andy Clark’s phrase, “We have always been cyborgs.” From the first “human singularity” to our present incarnation, human being has been shaped through a complicated co-evolutionary entanglement with language, technics and communicational media.

In the article, Lenoir argues that in some very relevant and real sense, the Singularity has already taken place a few millennia in our past when the human brain evolved the capacity for abstract symbolic representation. This capacity has enabled culture, complex social organizations, technology, and open ended concept formation (evolution of knowledge). Though he is not explicit about it, this argument leads to the proposition that what we witness as acceleration towards a future Singularity and transition into a posthuman era is only a consequence of this capacity.

Following Lenoir's line of thought, to achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) we need to find a way to endow our computing machines with an autonomous capacity for abstract symbolic representation. In autonomous I mean that this capacity will become independent from human symbolic interpretation. As formidable as our computing systems are becoming, they possess very rudimentary capacity for autonomous symbolic representation. This is why we need to design and program them instead of letting them to learn and evolve autonomously. Most successful AI systems existing today are based on domain specific symbolic representation that allows such systems to learn within a specific and narrow domain of knowledge. Once we manage to endow machines with general abstract (domain independent) symbolic representation, machines will become intelligent and possibly sentient (capable of at least some level of self representation and self reflectivity). Such machines will be capable to evolve independently and probably much faster than their biological ancestors/creators. This seems a very plausible scenario though far from being trivial, as we still do not understand how exactly such capacity evolved in the first place. This is still one of evolution's most kept secrets.

Indeed it seems that autonomous abstract symbolic representation is a necessary capacity of a general intelligence, biological or artificial. It is not clear however if it is a sufficient capacity. It is entirely not clear if such capacity is sufficient, for example, to achieve sentience or even consciousness. I will try to address these riddles in my following posts on a new model of mind.

It is interesting to note that from this perspective, the concept of Singularity as associated with the emergence of Artificial Intelligent machines with capacities that exceed the human, is a developmental phase transition rather than an evolutionary transition in the sense that the fundamental enabling capacity discussed above has been achieved by biological systems quite long ago. What we may witness in the future Singularity is if so only the full blown fruition of what basically made us distinctively human at the dawn of history.

Read the rest of the interesting article here: Contemplating Singularity

Mon, Aug 10, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: posthumanism, Artificial Intelligence
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Mind – The need for a new model (part 4)
Project: Polytopia

All the ways about here belong to me! The Red Queen in ‘Through the Looking Glass’ by Lewis Carroll

Detours

Back, here, at square one… In the course of thousands of years of human thought, almost everything that could have been said about the mind, had already been said and in more than one way. With the guidance of the red queen (she wished me to mention her other famous quote...) which hides in its utter simplicity a quite profound reflection on the power of narratives, I found that it will be impossible to even start to sketch a framework for a new model without making some far reaching detours which might seem, at first, sidetracking the subject. We need to find some ways that do not belong...

Let us start with the question about the kind of relations that can be described between mind and embodiment. How does the mind arise? Or, a different way to ask this question: what are the processes and interactions by which mind takes form as sensations ideas, emotions, memories etc, or, mind is being made into form as sense impressions, experiences, insights etc. A somewhat simplified version of this same question (is it is the same question?) might be the well known mind-body problem: how do phenomenal states i.e. experiential states and mental states in general arise from the neural activity of our organic brains? Making the brain and the nervous system the context of asking the question, is indeed a great simplification compared to a wider, more abstract, and less presuming context. Yet, it is an unwarranted one considering that it is the thinking organ itself which is under investigation here.

It seems fair to assume that minds are necessarily embodied. This, however, does not automatically come to mean that minds are physically embodied. Embodiment and physicality are not synonymous. Physical embodiment is only one option and not necessarily the most aesthetic one as I will try to show further ahead. The issue of embodiment is in fact very abstract and it strongly resonates with another deep question regarding the nature of reality. Hence our first detour, which we will soon see is only the first in a sequence.


Fred Tomaselli, Untitled, 2002

Why do we need to address the nature of reality? When we try to better understand embodiment, we have relate to a certain ontological background. We use words and linguistic gestures to form descriptions that represent certain states of affairs. But as I wrote in a previous post, the manner by which we relate to mind cannot possibly be separated from the manner of minding the nature of reality at large. We must attend to what is the case (after L. Wittgenstein), we must somehow ground our conceptions (ground=embodiment). Moreover, without subscribing to at least a provisional belief about the nature of reality we cannot even start to figure (figure=embodiment) what embodies what: is the mind embodied in a wider reality which is basically independent of it? Or is it the other way around: it is the mind that embodies reality. This is difficult and even confusing because mind and embodiment do not seem anymore as distinct as one usually might think about them.

To make things just a bit simpler but not really, let us briefly explore such provisional beliefs. Here are two options: the first option is a belief that forms have an independent existence, and the content present in our minds (or as our minds) is basically impressions, or representations, or shadows of those forms. In this option a mind is a kind of a screen or a mirror (or even a clay-like malleable stuff) on which forms are being rendered.

It is interesting to note that both idealism and materialism that seem to be so widely removed from each other in the virtual atlas of human thought, are merely particular flavors of this option. The difference between materialism and idealism is in the particular kind of substance intrinsic to reality. While materialism is the belief that the substance intrinsic to reality is physical, i.e. matter, energy, space and time, etc, idealism is the belief that the substance intrinsic to reality is rooted in the realm of (platonic) abstract concepts. In a particular and very popular version of this same belief, it is the mind of a god, or its presence, or its emanation which is the substance intrinsic to reality that by divine intent is shaped into all forms. In all the different versions of this belief, however, there exists a kind of primal substance intrinsic to reality that embodies (yes, same concept again) all forms.

The second option is that forms do not have an independent existence (in Mahayana Buddhist tradition this option is referred as conditioned arisal or conditioned origination). One might already have asked even earlier: independent of what? Plainly speaking, it is independent (or not) from the subject of experience, the observer, me, or the mind that experiences, perceives, relates, represents, describes etc [another detour invites itself here: is it justified at all to describe ‘mind’ and ‘me’ as distinct, and if so how do we describe a mind(s) which is ‘other’? We will get to it ahead]. This option boils down to the belief that the intrinsic nature of reality arises as relations and necessarily depends on the mind. In other words which I find clearer: reality (all forms) arises in the course of minding, or reflecting, the dynamic relation of a universal mind with itself. Or, in other words that might make this idea more accessible: there is no observer independent reality. No forms exist independently and there is no substance intrinsic to them. Forms are (merely?) relations, empty, dreamlike. They arise as the undulations of an undifferentiated nothingness, not unlike the Taoist concept of the Tao. Out of Tao forms and order arise, pulled out, so to speak, as minding, the on going process that brings forth an insubstantial instance of a dream-reality, our dynamic remembered present, the universe we know to be real.


Andrew Carnie, Things Happen (part of), 2005

These options (understandably there is much more to them than said here), are in fact highly accomplished and sophisticated thought systems, or more precisely, species of thought systems which, figuratively speaking, embody major branches in the evolutionary tree of human thought.
In as much as they are different, there is one thing fundamentally common to both species: it is an underlying concept of truth. The primacy of the concept of truth deserves of course a detour in itself. We might get to it further along our investigation. Meanwhile, I would propose to provisionally relate to truth as a kind of an overarching selective principle. Unlike the relatively simple and ad-hoc way it is used in qualifying facts and logical reasoning, truth, when applied to fundamental beliefs in one’s worldview, carries an emotional value and therefore is intimately involved in the shaping of motives and initiation of action. Again, without digging too deep into the issue, truth is a belief’s instrument to effectively assert its own distinctiveness. While we usually imagine truth as embodied by this or that belief, like a flag on the top of a castle (castle topples, flag is taken… Protect! Protect!), truth is actually a kind of funny stuff found between beliefs and drives them apart to become distinct from each other. It is a repulsive kind of force (like dark energy), localizing and excluding. This kind of truth is nothing but a carefully refined brand of good old Neolithic territorialism brought to the heights of abstract thought.


The face of Truth as captured recently by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)
a spacecraft which measures differences in the temperature of the Big Bang's remnant radiant heat - the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation - across the full sky.

Regaining our temporary theme after this swift detour towards the truth, let us turn back to our original detour. I hope that in the course of reading the last few paragraphs you gained at least a preliminary sense of what embodiment is (incarnation, realization, manifestation, expression, representation, actualization, symbol, model, quintessence, exemplification, example, exemplar, ideal, instance...). Embodiment is necessary for meaning. Without embodiment of any kind (very hard to imagine such state of affairs), nothing would make sense to us. The very expression ‘makes sense’ is about embodiment, about bringing something into a tangible form, understanding and experiencing something which is intangible in terms of other things which are tangible. The mind is continuously busy in embodying its intangible aspects into tangible ones. This is an ongoing dynamic and evolving process of our metaphor machine. It is a fundamental activity of our minds – a continuous process of embodying. Again, the relation mind-embodiment seem to gain even a deeper intimacy as if minding and embodiment are less and less distinct. As we look closer, it is difficult to see where one ends and the other begins.

In their landmark work “Metaphors we live by”. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson introduce a novel and expanded approach to the concept metaphor:

The most important claim we have made so far is that metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words. We shall argue on the contrary, human thought processes are largely metaphorical. This is what we mean when we say that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined.

The metaphorical machine that progressively makes the contents of our mental states tangible is anchored in a yet deeper level of processes which are not accessible to us. When we feel excited, or angry, or interested, when we see a flower, or bump into a (transparent) wall, when we suddenly remember a vivid dream that we had, or think a thought that just came up (up from where?), the underlying cognitive processes that produce all these are transparent (unseen) to us. This transparency is perhaps one of the most paradoxical aspects of minding. It makes a world appear to us as ultimately unmediated, while, simultaneously, our mental space seems to be enclosed within itself and entirely disassociated from any world whatsoever. It is as if we sit at a restaurant table and these experiences are served to us as elaborately prepared dishes. How the food is cooked and how the dishes are prepared is entirely out of sight. Being creatures of theories and explanations that we are, we vaguely (and somewhat reflexively) guess that these dishes come from somewhere, that there is a kitchen (entirely hidden from us), where the food is being prepared. But in this case, the kitchen is so hidden that it becomes a true mystery and we start to suspect whether it exists at all. Or, alternatively, we start to believe that there is only a kitchen and us, eating, is just an elaborate illusion.


Jericho Santander, Own World, Illustration made for Depthcore.com

For modern neuroscience the kitchen is the brain but the embarrassing riddle is still with us: The ingredients the kitchen works with and the dishes we are served are made of entirely different kinds of stuff. In the brain we have biochemical reactions and electrochemical signaling. In our minds we have voices, colors, words, shapes, emotions, choices, desires etc. We know that these are somehow connected, at least correlated, for every dish which is served, the kitchen is producing something quite distinct and for every preparation of the kitchen there is a dish being served. Yet, the kitchen and the eating hall, our minds and our brains, seem to inhabit entirely different realms. We seem to be creatures of multiple worlds… How could this be? This riddle does not seem to be a riddle of neuroscience. It does not seem to be a scientific riddle at all. It is a riddle that touches the very foundations of how our minds operate and how minds arise in the first place. It is a riddle sitting at the very core of our model; a place where all our stories originate from, yet itself still untold. It is so mysterious that we fail even to ask the proper questions about it or come up with really useful (digestible) metaphors.

When we realize that our metaphor machine fails us, we know that we have reached a reality limit and we are in need for a new narrative. Even this wouldn’t be good enough because what we really need is a new kind of narrative, a new kind of knowing, of telling our stories. We must return and re-examine the origin of forms and the very nature of reality. In search of a new model I will write next about abstract self organizing forms, meta-evolution and emergent universes and of course about minds being multiply embodied and yet at one.

To be continued…

Sat, Jul 25, 2009  Permanent link

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Mind – The need for a new model (part 3)
Project: Polytopia

Yet another augmented prologue

It took me a while to figure how to continue from here. There are many potential threads waiting to be unfolded and many ideas to weave. I thought however to dedicate another short post to reiterate what is it all about. The goal of writing about the mind, in itself being the subject of an intensive, quasi chaotic, process of iterative clarification, is not a philosophical investigation per se. It is not even a goal but rather a response to an inner call of sorts; an emerging yet not entirely formed imperative, private in nature and of intimate, unmediated, clarity.

Mind is a great puzzle but it also may become a key. We, the conscious reflecting animals that we are - we are born, we live and we die in our minds. The mind is certainly the nexus of our humanity, and still in an almost mystical way it encompasses much more than our humanity; as if it enwombs the vastness of our potential humanity and not only the humanity that is.

In this very sense, being quite removed (but not alien) from the noble endeavor to merely understand, mind is perhaps to be appreciated as a very potent metaphorical vehicle - a metaphor for an open-ended humanism. To know the mind becomes synonymous to knowledge that evolves, to image that transforms, to concept as a process of ever extracting its own context while bringing forth its transitory (persistent momentary) instances. You might sense the vacuum’s throbbing pulse underneath the words – a remote echo not entirely unfamiliar.


Birth of a Thought 2- Susan Aldworth (2007)

In modern philosophical discourse, post-humanism comes to explore what possibly might come after the human. But the human is but an image in its own mind and this mind is but an image within an image… There is no way to dodge this inevitable circularity so we have to look into it and surf it without falling into the vortex of infinite recurs. That is why I prefer open-ended humanism upon post humanism.

Open-ended humanism carries no implicit trace of temporality (it is not ‘post’ to something else). More importantly, open-ended humanism involves no covert act of (so called) semantic aggression in delimiting the concept ‘human’ in hope of conquering a new conceptual territory. Open-ended humanism can be considered as a conceptual sibling to Wildcat’s Polytopia. Both are conceived with the same understanding of non-aggressive open-endedness. Yet, I do not want to see any of them reach the status of fully developed mature concepts (an elaborate invention anyway). Why? Because both explore a novel kind of distinctiveness which is inherently a-territorial and incomplete.

Therefore I will not make open-ended humanism the subject of a discourse or investigation here; at least not explicitly. I would rather explore the unknown shores of a worthy metaphor, an archipelago of emergent meaning. In doing so, the ‘humanity’ in ‘open ended humanity’ will never take too deep roots in this or that image, this or that idea, this or that sentiment or emotional disposition; not even in what we might realize emotions, ideas and images to be at any given stage of our evolution. After all, realization in itself is an open ended process. Eventually, this h word (or h+ or h++) will fade out, leaving us, whatever we might become, open-ended _, incomplete, yet with absolutely no sense of loss.

We will become free from our humanity, which paradoxically is the deepest sense of fulfilling it.

To be continued...

Sat, Jul 18, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: Open-ended humanism
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Mind - The need for a new model (Part 2)
Project: Polytopia

"We do not really know what the human being truly is today, although our awareness and understanding should instruct us in this matter. How much less would we be able to guess what a human being is to become in future! However, the curiosity of the human soul grasps with great eagerness for this far distant subject and strives to put some light on such unilluminated knowledge."

Immanuel Kant: Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens


What is a model? Scratching the surface...

Models are a wonderful invention. In very simple terms whenever we describe something in terms of something else, we engage in creating a model or at least an element of a model. A simple example is the well known smiley standing for a smiling face, which, depending on context, stands for a particular state of mind, an expressed emotion, or a behavioral response etc. A model is generally a simplified approximate representation of a complex object, a phenomenon, a process and so on. At the basis of creating a model is an act of discrimination. We discriminate and extract those features and properties of the modeled entity which are significant and therefore need to be included in the model from those features and properties that can be discarded. A good model captures everything which is remarkable and interesting about the phenomenon being modeled and yet is significantly more simple and accessible. A good model is fit to replace the object or phenomenon being modeled within a designated context. A good model highlights that which is interesting and leaves everything else hidden.

It is very important to note that nothing in the features or properties of an object or phenomenon are in anyway instructive as to whether or not they should be incorporated into their models. The discriminations that underlie every model are the product of how the modeled object is perceived by the author of the model and the particular biases involved in the process of modeling. Beliefs, images, assumptions, expectations, past experiences and the vast repertoire of other already available models are all primary ingredients of every model. A model is always an emergence of generative interactions of an observer with the objects being modeled. Generative here means that these interactions bring forth, actually generate, the differentiations that embody the model. It is the interactions and not the seemingly separate existence of either the observer or object that give rise to the contents of a model.



What is truly fascinating about models is that generally and quite often we replace objects with their models and forget that we did just that. This so called forgetfulness is rooted in deeper cognitive processes of the brain. When we see a red rose or a charging tiger, we are not, we cannot be aware to the intricate neural processes involved in creating these complex visual experiences. If such processes would become part of our immediate perception, we would experience a fragmented, confused, incoherent nonsense. Luckily enough this is not the case. We do not experience a distance from the images we perceive, the voices we hear or other sensory modalities involved in our perception. The very fact of all these being mere representations totally escapes us. As far as perception is involved the map is the territory.

Likewise, at higher levels of our conscious lives, we create models and representations and soon after creating them, or even while creating them, the very fact of an elaborate authoring taking place simply disappears from our remembered present. It is rarely, if at all, that aspects of such process are hinted in the periphery of our so called unmediated experience of reality. As we create models recursively, that is models of models of models, the fact that models are constructions becomes even more obscure. We find that in the course of their emergence our models and representations become entirely transparent.

Transparency is perhaps the most essential and most evanescent property of our mental life. It is rooted in our cognitive paradigm but it pervades all aspects and all modalities of our mental activity (especially our linguistic activity). Transparency seems to be one of the most sophisticated tricks ever devised by evolution. Many generations of philosophers and thinkers invested their whole lives to decipher the riddle of being. What does it mean to be? How is it that the objects of our senses, our innermost dreams, the thoughts and sensations that arise in our minds, appear to be, just be: immanent, unmediated, non originated, irreducible? Even more mysterious is this riddle when it addresses the subject of such experiences, the so called ‘I’. It feels almost foolish to stand in front of this respectable assembly of giant minds of all ages and claim that the riddle of being may find its final peaceful resolution in realizing the full impact of transparency. The objects of experience appear to be, to have an inherent, independent existence, because of their transparency, because the process that brings them forth is hidden and ultimately inaccessible while it takes place.



Modeling is how our mind space emerges as a dynamic virtual – existential space. Virtual because every single bit of it is a constructed representation. Existential because the transparency of its fabric brings forth a seemingly immanent, unmediated, immersive reality. This inescapable virtual existence or existential virtuality is perhaps what the old eastern teachings related as Maya – the great dreaming of a reality.

A model of mind is unlike any other model because it must, at least in part, go beyond transparency, to try and access the authoring processes that underlie it. Mind is both highly abstract and unmediated. Unlike other models which are basically representations, a model of the mind is both generating and being generated by the mind. This apparent combination of circularity and transparency makes the mind the impenetrable riddle that it is. No feat of introspection or analytic reasoning can escape or circumvent this mystery. One must jump head first into it.

Because of this peculiarity, we can hardly relate to mind in a manner which is free and unbiased by the model we already use. A model of mind therefore is an emergent entity, a mirror whose very properties co-emerge with the image being reflected. This wouldn’t be much of a trouble if not for the fact that our model of mind profoundly influences pretty much everything. From our most basic perception of immediate reality to the deepest understandings of existence, and the mystery of being human in particular, all derive from, and partake in our model of mind. Authoring a model of mind is our only way to know ourselves and everything else. Whether we create such a model explicitly or implicitly, everything that can possibly take place, takes place and is reflected in the context of our mind model and is (transparently) mediated by it.

Remarkably this is something so fundamental that it is impossible to write even such preliminary statements without already projecting at least a few aspects of the model I have in mind (literally so). Take for example the subject-verb-object structure of a sentence such as “we author a model”. This structure, so ingrained in our language, implied a clear underlying model of mind which is more often than not entirely transparent. It implies for example an inherent subject-object separation, a distance that in turn allows, even prompts, action, causation, and effect. If we stop just for a brief moment and try to figure the meaning implied by this very simple and common structure, we immediately realize its immense impact on the way our conscious experience is organized. Furthermore, if we stop for just another brief moment to consider the particular impact such linguistic structure has in the context of our subject of inquiry, we cannot escape the conclusion that when it comes to mind, most of what can be put into words (including the above) is seriously inadequate, verging on sheer nonsense.

Even as we just scratch the surface, we discover that this inquiry is both profoundly disturbing and intriguing. Perhaps because we can perceive absolutely no depth just an infinite surface of appearances, glimpsing into the mind invokes a strong sense of mental vertigo which soon becomes highly pleasurable, even addictive…

Mon, May 25, 2009  Permanent link

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Mind - The need for a new model
Project: Polytopia

At the very core of being human, at the core of human social and cultural fabric lays the human mind, and the knowledge of the mind. Its roots are as ancient and as diverse as human civilization. It is colored by myth, folk psychology, cultural belief systems, common sense, philosophy and relatively recently by science. How do we perceive? What is there to perceive? What is consciousness? What is the nature of reality? What are thoughts and how do thoughts arise? How do we know whatever we know? Is there continuity beyond physical death (or before birth)? These are just a few of the fundamental riddles a theory of mind should answer. Whether we are aware of it or not, every perception, thought, emotion, behavioral stance, interaction or value we have is entailed by an underlying theory of mind.

Theories of mind held by individuals arise at a very early age as a consequence of interactions with the environment. They can be fairly simple or incredibly complex depending on factors such as the individual’s mental and emotional capacity, upbringing, education, life experience and cultural background. At a higher level, a theory of mind operates as cohering glue that guides human interactions and integrates human individuals into complex cultural organisms. With very few exceptions, diverse theories of mind operated by individuals are instances of the theory of mind sustained by the larger cultural organism they belong to. In this sense, both the dynamics of an individual mind and the collective dynamics of cultural organisms derive from the same theory of mind.

Due to its profound influence on the reality of being in all dimensions, a theory of mind is perhaps the single most significant and remarkable reflection of a civilization. Moreover, the fitness of a civilization to address existential problems that arise in the course of its evolution is intimately connected to what openings, opportunities and fields of interaction its underlying theory of mind allows.

Recently it is becoming overwhelmingly clear that modern civilization is experiencing change on scales and speeds never experienced in human history. In the face of such massive transformative pressures, a revision of the prevailing theory of mind, the very manner by which we perceive reality and ourselves, seems to become imperative.

In a 1970 lecture Gregory Bateson, a prominent thinker who realized the connection between mind culture and nature said:

If you put God outside and set him vis-à-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or con-specifics against the environment of other social units, other races and the brutes and vegetables. If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of over-population and over grazing.

Most remarkable in Bateson’s reflections is the connection he makes between the theory of mind and the dynamics of culture, and between this dynamics and the culture’s prospects of continuity and evolution. As we address an increasing imbalance and collapse of ecological systems verging on a disaster of a planetary scale, we still think in terms of ‘protecting nature’, ‘saving the planet’, or ‘warding off climate change’. The change in attitude is perhaps apparent, but sadly it is fundamentally constrained by a language and conceptual system belonging to the increasingly obsolete separated and separating worldview reflected in Bateson’s words. We still try to handle ‘the situation out there’ instead of addressing the Mind- our mind as the only state of affairs.

At the beginning of the 3rd millennium we witness a very wide spectrum of similar observations. More than that; it seems that much of our deeper understanding of mind which is still rooted in biblical myth and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic worldview is becoming inadequate and profoundly so. The abuse of the environment is only one extreme example of such inadequacy. Dysfunctional governance systems, fragile economy, corruption, the decline of individual mental balance and emotional fitness are additional symptoms of the dangerously decreasing fitness of human civilization on this planet. Even the immense impact of science on our understanding of the brain and human psychology do not compensate for the fact that at the root of our deepest scientific understandings lays an obsolete theory of mind.

Indeed, a civilization is a very complex organism with immense capabilities of adaptation and transformation. Adjustments are taking place at many levels with varying degrees of effectiveness. Yet, most of these adaptations are superficial. It seems that civilization is reaching a phase where an effective response to the accelerating selective pressures at play invites a profound revision of first principles: we need to augment our theory of mind. It is perhaps the first time in the history of humanity that an intense inquiry into the nature of mind is becoming a clear imperative.

The inquiry into the nature of mind does not and cannot belong to any specific field of human inquiry, not even to philosophy or religion or science that historically, each in turn, claimed a privileged authoritative status or even ownership in regards to what mind is or might be. It is my belief that the inquiry into the nature of mind should be all encompassing, multidisciplinary and multidimensional, integrating all aspects of the phenomenal and mental realms. Above all it should be open ended: there are no final truths to be uncovered, no fixated conceptions. Moreover, the inquiry into the nature of mind should become a primary challenge of every human being as hinted by the ancient aphorism ‘Know thyself’. Such inquiry holds the promise of the deepest most profound aesthetic pleasure. It seems to capture and distill the very essence and meaning of being an intelligent evolving conscious being.

Fri, May 15, 2009  Permanent link

Sent to project: Polytopia

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Who needs uplift* ?

Watch this jaw dropping performing parrot called Snowball. It certainly makes one reconsider animal intelligence. More details on the dancing parrot can be found here and here.





* Uplift is a futuristic procedure described in science fiction literature (mostly by author David Brin) of increasing the intelligence of an animal to a degree comparable to human standards by means of genetic manipulations and neural augmentations. Uplift was mentioned lately in conjunction to new discoveries in the field of animal intelligence and in the context of the ethical discussion about the present and the future of animal rights.

Tue, May 5, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: Animal Intelligence

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