[Synapse elist] More answers to Reva!

[Greg Hooper]

A few thoughts - not totally connected. My background first I guess -
I'm currently the artist in residence at the cognitive neuroscience
laboratory of the queensland brain institute - kindly funded by ANAT.
My PhD was undertaken in the Psychiatry Dept of the University of
Queensland, although it was not clinical but rather neuroscience.

 I'd like to pop in with a few comments on the idea of choice. I think
that choice, at least in it's relation to the idea of 'free will',  is
somewhat over-rated. There is very little evidence for something like
free-will and a lot of evidence that we behave in a manner that is
intimately related to the environment our history finds itself in. In
other words it would seem that a causal chain extends from our present
behaviour as far back and as wide out as we can fathom, linking us to
the history of our internal and external environments. Whilst we
appear to make choices, as far as psychology and neuroscience can
discern, these 'choices' are (in the limit of the predictability of
complex systems) utterly determined. Our choices then are unique, but
determined. For those who want to be 'free' there is no solace in
indeterminacy, chance or chaos (which is fundamentally different from
chance),  Chaos speaks only of our inabilities, that some things are
too difficult to predict though they are completely deterministic.
Indeterminacy or chance is no help either as by definition there is no
choice in a chance operation.

With respect to AI and biological systems there is the classic problem
of qualia - this problem can take the form of a complaint, that one
can read about how the visual system sees colour but it doesn't give
one the sensation of what it is like to 'see' red. But why should a
description of the mechanisms by which we see red induce in us the
state of seeing red. (this is where i see the difference between art
and science - science being about the compact description of systems
and phenomena and art about the induction of states)
It strikes me that we either create human like systems - and measure
them against human capacities, or we make non human like systems and
struggle to find a yardstick of their abilities that satisfies those
who want human like AI.  (see  Lem's Solaris for a poetic exploration
of the problem of understanding 'the alien' - how do we empathise with
alien (or artificial) life - if we don't empathise with them then
won't we reject them as human - also  one of Philip K Dick's
preoccupations)

To the room, is the thermostat a kindly soul who knows how to keep the
temperature just right?

Greg


On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 4:30 PM,  <ahenskens at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> -If I may toss in a question that arose when reading the contributors to date (Saturday 7th June '08), what part does choice make in considering AI in contrast to organic rational thought employed in the very personal way that an artist employs?  Does AI contain a system of choice, and how would this relate to human neurophysiology?
>
> My background - I have just completed a Ph.D in Visual Art that considers how we construct our concepts of reality, using landscape art and the visual cortex as vehicles, and how the beliefs and technology of the time influence the expression of these concepts, artistically.
>
> I had to do some research on the functioning and evolution of the visual cortex for this; in addition, I linked it to aspects of contemporary popular science programmes dealing with quantum physics, (consulting a Reader in Mathematics and Physics at my local university).  As it is, I cannot see a system that lacks an amygdala for instance, responding and framing neural networks in any comparable way.
>
> Hope to receive some response to this; you all sound terribly well into what you do.
>
> regards
>
> Ada Henskens
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