Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!ncar!boulder!hassell
From: hassell@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Christopher Hassell)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: THE MIND EXTENDS BEYOND THE SKIN
Keywords: Mind, Brain, Robots, Searle
Message-ID: <7337@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 11 Mar 89 09:12:37 GMT
References: <305@edai.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@boulder.Colorado.EDU
Reply-To: hassell@monarch.Colorado.EDU (Christopher Hassell)
Organization: (Let's see, I'm positive <clang> .. I've <rustle> got ... )
Lines: 185

In article <305@edai.ed.ac.uk> cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
# THE MIND EXTENDS BEYOND THE BRAIN AND BODY
# ------------------------------------------
# 
# I would like to introduce a new perspective to the Searle and
# symbol-grounding argument, which I hope will clarify some of the
# points which many of those disputing with Harnad fail to recognise,
# due to having too much experience of computers, and too little with
# real creatures, whether natural (biological) or artificial (robots).

It is debatible that either would give a *pure* observation point.

# It is a nice argument by Gregory Bateson from the heyday of
# cybernetics to the effect that mind extends beyond the brain and even
# beyond the boundary of the creature (Searle's argument is a corollary,
# as is Harnad's "robotic functionalist" rebuttal). This is a theme
# further developed by the biologist Maturana, and used by Winograd and
# Flores, in the concept of "structural coupling" between a creature and
# its environment.
  
# I belong to that small but annoying company of roboticists who think
# that these considerations have direct implications for the
# architecture of even the simple and incompetent (relative to natural
# creatures) kinds of robots we can build with today's technology. In
# other words, there are some ways of building robots which are never
# going to work, and the issues underlying Searle's argument as well
# explicated by Harnad contain useful pointers to this.

I still find predictions about what *won't* work to be misleading
and impotent at later stages.  Even proofs such as Von Neuman's
program-tracing problem truly only states that not ALL programs are
machine-tracible ... (without knowing ALL of its states).  This provides
no real benefit and has only been extrapolated to mean "NO programs..."

# I will quote Bateson in detail, since the paper from which this nice
# argument comes is not otherwise of general (comp.ai) interest, and
# since it is clear that most comp.ai disputants never read papers
# anyway, even when they are central to the dispute :-)

BUT of course.  What else is Usenet for except for us uneducated dopes
who come up with the nerve-racking answers :->?
  
# Gregory Bateson:
  
# We can assert that _any_ ongoing ensemble of events and objects which
# has the appropriate complexity of causal circuits and the appropriate
The measurement of complexity is far from the whole requirement, as is known.

# energy relations will surely show mental characteristics.  It will
# _compare_, that is, be responsive to _difference_ (in addition to
# being affected by the ordinary physical "causes" such as impact or
# force).  It will "process information" and will inevitably be
# self-corrective either towards homeostatic optima or toward the
# maximisation of certain variables.
  
  [..]
  
# But, most relevant in the present context, we know that no part of
# such an internally interactive system can have unilateral control over
# the remainder or over any other part.  The mental characteristics are
# inherent or immanent in the ensemble as a _whole_.

# Even in very simple self-corrective systems, this holistic character
# is very evident. In the steam engine with a "governor", the very word
# "governor" is a misnomer if it is taken to mean that this part of the
# system has unilateral control. The governor is, essentially, a sense

Control is entirely a misnomer in itself.  In a deterministic system
what controls what???  What can EVER "control" what else?  The governer
is "controlled" by speed, and from this there is never a "peak" in ANY
deterministically closed system.

# organ or transducer which receives a transform of the _difference_
# between the actual running speed of the engine and some ideal or
# preferred speed. This sense organ transforms these differences into

    [..]

# The holistic and mental character of the system is most clearly
# demonstrated by this last fact, that the behavior of the governor
# (and, indeed, of every part of the causal circuit) is partially
# determined by its own previous behavior. Message material (i.e.

    [..]  <memory exists by a feedback loop>

# "governor" has no control over these factors. Even a human governor in
# a social system is bound by the same limitations. He is controlled by
# information from the system and must adapt his own actions to its time
# characteristics and to the effects of his own past action.
  
# Thus in no system which shows mental characteristics can any part have
# unilateral control over the whole. In other words, __the mental
# characteristics of the system are immanent, not in some part, but in
# the system as a whole__.
  
# The significance of this conclusion appears when we ask, "Can a
# computer think?" or, "Is the mind in the brain?"  And the answer to
# both questions will be negative unless the question is focussed upon
# one of the few mental characteristics which are contained within the
# computer or the brain.  A computer is self-corrective in regard to

    [..]

# But it would be incorrect to say that the main business of the
# computer --- the transformation of input differences into output
# differences [i.e. symbol crunching]--- is "a mental process".  The
# computer is only an arc of a larger circuit which always includes a
# man and an environment form which information is received and and upon
# which efferent messages from the computer have effect.  This total
# system, or ensemble, may legitimately be said to show mental
# characteristics. It operates by trial and error and has creative
# character.

With what he goes on to say, you might want to ask what ANY definition of
a "mind" might be.  I find the limit of the skin to be quite appropriate
because we MUST deal with it ourselves and also try to develop a computer
that can attempt to deal WITHIN a framework itself.
  
  ...  <About the mind as a _closed_-loop entity only>

# Consider a blind man with a stick.  Where does the blind man's self
# begin?  At the tip of the stick? At the handle of the stick?  Or at
# some point halfway up the stick?  These question are nonsense, because
# the stick is a pathway along which differences are transmitted under
# transformation, so that to draw a delimiting line _across_ this
# pathway is to cut off a part of the systemic circuit which determines
# the blind man's locomotion.
  
I have always considered that there must always be a definition of External
interaction to produce a "good" reaction-to-the-world or a "bad" reaction.
All internal interaction is not "thought" itself.  Its proper definition is
that which "molds" to the rest of the system, the external system.

# [....]
  
# The total self-corrective unit which processes information, or, as I
# say, "thinks" and "acts" and "decides", is a _system_ whose boundaries
# do not at all coincide with the boundaries either of the body or of
# what is popularly called the "self" or "consciousness"; and it is
# important to notice that there are _multiple_ differences between the
# thinking system and the "self" as popularly conceived:

The popular definitions are tautilogical and defined to be what they are.
 ...

# 	3.  This network of pathways is not bounded with
# 	consciousness but extends to include the pathways of all
# 	unconscious mentation - both autonomic and repressed, neural
# 	and hormonal.

There definately are such "intelligences", but because they are neither
selected-against nor uniformly or in any meaningful manner "taught", they cannot
be said to "learn" in the best and most likely of senses.
  		
# 	4.  The network is not bounded by the skin but includes all
# 	external pathways along which information can travel.  It
# 	also includes those effective differences which are immanent
# 	in the "objects" of such information.  It includes the
# 	pathways of sound and light along which travel transforms of
# 	differences originally immanent in things and other people -
# 	and especially _in our own actions_.

There should ALWAYS be considered to be different abstractions of where
"smartness" can lie.  But, as a mountain may be considered to "sense" its
upwelling and erosion and its growth and precipitation, there is no net loop
in any manner from this.  The information flow becomes either too 
non-interactive (as in a mountain) or too random (as in mob psychology <with no
complex internal communcation>) to produce any sort of sensible self-modifying
behavior.  The self-communication just isn't in there.

Man himself has a beautiful version of this only through the channels of 
evolution and culture as well as the practiced sciences.  (Though he impedes
them quite thoroughly some times :-/).
  		
# REFERENCES
  
   [excluded, but in previous article]
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Chris Malcolm, Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University.
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If I am what is considered to be "intelligence" <hopefully> then there is
no need or means to place this "outside" of me.

### C>H> ###