e*
Toward a view of mind that is embodied, embedded, experiential, evolutionary, externalist...: e*. Lectures and writings by Ron Chrisley,...Video Episodes:
8 Views
13:35:48 10/24/10
Interactive Empiricism: The Philosopher in the Machine
[LESS INFO] 8 VIEWS | ADDED 13:35:48 10/24/10
Left to right: Igor Aleksander, Wendy Hall, Ron Chrisley, Nigel Shadbolt. Photo: unknown.
On July 11th, 2007, I gave an invited lecture as part of a Royal Academy of Engineering seminar entitled: "AI and IT: Where Philosophy and Engineering Meet", itself a part of their Philosophy of Engineering series. I elaborated on ideas that I have only hinted at before in print, most notably at the end of the paper "Embodied Artificial Intelligence" (can't provide a link to it here or it will screw up my feed - ugh).
Abstract: Although an understanding of the importance of engineering for philosophy can be traced back at least as far as Giambattista Vico's slogan "Verum Ipsum Factum" ("what is made is what is true"), the landmark elaboration of this understanding in the context of artificial intelligence (AI) is Aaron Sloman's The Computer Revolution in Philosophy. Using the key findings of that work as a foundation, I will argue that in the field of AI, the mutual benefits of philosophy and engineering extend well beyond the general salutary interdependence of theory and practice. Interactive empiricism will be introduced as the claim that key breakthroughs in both building and philosophically understanding consciousness will result from the theorist/philosopher being an integrated causal component of the system being designed. Recent work in AI will be used to support this claim.
As it happens, I didn't mention Sloman's work in the talk at all, and barely mentioned Vico.
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 26.7 MB; 34 min 04 sec)
* Audio (.mp3; 8.1 MB; 34 min 03 sec)
* PowerPoint file (.ppt; 2.0 MB)
* Flyer describing the seminar (.pdf; 136 kB)
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13:32:47 10/24/10
Sensory Augmentation, Synthetic Phenomenology and Interactive Empiricism
[LESS INFO] 15 VIEWS | ADDED 13:32:47 10/24/10
Helena de Preester using the Enactive Torch
On Thursday the 26th and Friday the 27th of March, 2009, the e-sense project hosted the Key Issues in Sensory Augmentation Workshop at the University of Sussex. I was invited to speak at the workshop; my position statement (included below) serves as a good (if long) summary of my talk.
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 19.3 MB; 26 min 25 sec)
* Audio (.mp3; 11.7 MB; 25 min 21 sec)
* PowerPoint file (.ppt; 696 KB)
* Position statement (.pdf; 78 KB)
Sensory Augmentation, Synthetic Phenomenology & Interactive Empiricism: A Position Statement
How can empirical experiments with sensory augmentation devices be used to further philosophical and psychological enquiry into cognition and perception?
The use of sensory augmentation devices can play a crucial role in overcoming conceptual roadblocks in philosophy of mind, especially concerning our understanding of conscious experience and perception. The reciprocal design/use cycle of such devices might facilitate the kind of conceptual advance that is necessary for progress toward a scientific account of consciousness, a kind of advance that is not possible to induce, it is argued, through traditional discursive, rhetorical and argumentative means.
It is proposed that a philosopher's experience of using sensory augmentation devices can play a critical role in the development of their concepts of experience (Chrisley, Froese & Spiers 2008). The role of such experiences is not the same as the role of say, experimental observation in standard views of empirical science. On the orthodox view, an experiment is designed to test a (propositionally stated) hypothesis. The experiences that constitute the observational component of the experiment relate in a pre-determined, conceptually well-defined way to the hypothesis being tested. This is strikingly different from the role of experience emphasized by interactive empiricism (Chrisley 2010a; Chrisley 2008), in which the experiences transform the conceptual repertoire of the philosopher, rather that merely providing evidence for or against an empirical, non-philosophical proposition composed of previously possessed concepts.
A means of evaluation is need to test the effectiveness of the device with respect to the goals of interactive empiricism and conceptual change. Experimental philosophy (Nichols 2004) looks at the way in which subjects' philosophical views (usually conceived as something like degree of belief in a proposition) change as various contingencies related to the proposition change (e.g., how does the way one describes an ethical dilemma change subjects' morality judgements of the various actions in that situation?; cf, e.g. (Knobe 2005)). One could apply this technique directly, by empirically investigating how use of sensory augmentation devices affect subjects' degree of belief in propositions concerning the nature of perceptual experience. However, it would be more in keeping with the insights of interactive empiricism if such experiments measured behaviour other than verbal assent to or dissent from propositions, such as reaction times and errors in classification behaviour. This might allow one to detect changes in subjects' conceptions of the domain that are not reportable or detectable by more propositional, self-reflective means.
Are there rigorous techniques that can characterise the subjective experience of using sensory augmentation technology?
Synthetic phenomenology is 1) any attempt to characterize the phenomenal states possessed, or modelled by, an artefact (such as a robot); or 2) any attempt to use an artefact to help specify phenomenal states (independently of whether such states are possessed by a naturally conscious being or an artefact) (Chrisley 2009; Chrisley 2010b; Chrisley 2008). Although "that" clauses, such as “Bob believes that the dog is running”, work for specifying the content of linguistically and conceptually structured mental states (such as those involved in explicit reasoning, logical thought, etc.), there is reason to believe that some aspects of mentality (e.g., some aspects of visual experience) have content that is not conceptually structured. Insofar as language carries only conceptual content, “that” clauses will not be able to specify the non-conceptual content of experience. An alternative means, such as synthetic phenomenology, is needed.
Earlier (Chrisley 1995), I had suggested that we might use the states of a robotic model of consciousness to act as specifications of the contents of the modelled experiences. This idea has been developed for the case of specifying the non-conceptual content of visual experiences in the SEER-3 project (Chrisley and Parthemore 2007a; Chrisley & Parthemore 2007b). Specifications using SEER-3 rely on a discriminative theory of visual experience based on the notion of enactive expectations (expectations the robot has to receive a particular input were it to move in a particular way). Depictions of the changing expectational state of the robot can be constructed in real time, depictions that require the viewer to themselves deploy sensory—motor skills of the very kind that the theory takes to be essential to individuating the specified content. Thus, the viewer comes to know the discriminating characteristics of the content in an intuitive way (in contrast to, say, reading a list of formal statements each referring to one of the millions of expectations the robotic system has).
Just as SEER-3 models, and permits the specification of, experiences in a modality we naturally possess (vision), so might other robotic systems, equipped with sensors that do not correspond to anything in the natural human sensory repertoire, model and permit the specification of other experiential states. As with the case of visual experience, specification cannot consist in a mere recording or snapshot of the sensor state at any moment, nor even in a sequence of such snapshots. Rather, the specification must be dynamically generated in response to the specification consumer’s probing of the environment (virtual or real), with the sensor values being altered in a way that compensates for both the subjectivity of the experience being specified, and that of the recipient herself.
References:
* Chrisley, R. (2010a, in press). "Interactive empiricism: the philosopher in the machine, in: McCarthy, N. (ed.), Philosophy of Engineering: Proceedings of a Series of Seminars held at The Royal Academy of Engineering. London: Royal Academy of Engineering. http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronc/papers/interactive-empiricism.pdf
* Chrisley, R. (2010b, in preparation) "Synthetic phenomenology". Scholarpedia. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Synthetic_phenomenology.
* Chrisley, R. (2009) "Synthetic Phenomenology", International Journal of Machine Consciousness 1:1. http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronc/papers/synthetic-phenomenology-ijmc.pdf
* Chrisley, R. (2008) "Philosophical foundations of artificial consciousness". Artificial Intelligence In Medicine 44:119-137. doi:10.1016/j.artmed.2008.07.011; http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronc/papers/phil-founds-artificial-consciousness.pdf
* Chrisley, R. Froese, T., Spiers, A (2008) "Engineering conceptual change: The Enactive Torch" Abstract of talk given November 11th, 2008, at the Royal Academy of Engineering as part of the 2008 Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronc/e-asterisk/WPE2008-Chrisley.pdf
* Chrisley, R. and Parthemore, J. (2007a) "Robotic specification of the non-conceptual content of visual experience". In Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium on "Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence: Theoretical foundations and current approaches". AAAI Press. http://www.consciousness.it/CAI/online_papers/Chrisley.pdf
* Chrisley, R. and Parthemore, J. (2007b) "Synthetic phenomenology: Exploiting embodiment to specify the non-conceptual content of visual experience". Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 pp. 44-58. http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronc/papers/ChrisleyandParthemore-SyntheticPhenomenology.pdf
* Chrisley, R. (1995) "Taking Embodiment Seriously: Non-conceptual Content and Robotics," in Ford, K., Glymour, C. and Hayes, P. (eds.) Android Epistemology. Cambridge: AAAI/MIT Press, pp 141-166. http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronc/papers/ae-embodiment.pdf
* Knobe, J. (2005). "Theory of Mind and Moral Cognition: Exploring the Connections", Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9, pp 357-359.
* Nichols, S. (2004). "Folk concepts and intuitions: From philosophy to cognitive science", Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8:11, pp 514-518.
4 Views
11:41:54 10/24/10
Painting an experience? How aesthetics might assist a neuroscience of sensory experience
[LESS INFO] 4 VIEWS | ADDED 11:41:54 10/24/10
IULM University, Milan, hosted a European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop on "Neuroesthetics: When art and the brain collide" on the 24th and 25th of September, 2009. In my invited lecture, I departed significantly from my advertised title, instead using my time to introduce the audience to five strands in my research related to the intersection of neuroscience/cognitive science and art/creativity:
* Embodied creativity
* Enactive models of experience
* Synthetic phenomenology
* Interactive empiricism
* Art works/installations
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 27 MB; 33 min 55 sec)
* Audio (.mp3; 15.6 MB; 33 min 51 sec)
* PowerPoint file (.pptx; 1.5 MB)
Further links:
* Workshop description
* Official workshop report
* "Beauty and the Brain: The Puzzle": An account of the workshop by author Tim Parks in the New York Review of Books blog
6 Views
11:25:15 09/20/10
Concepts and Proto-Concepts in Cognitive Science (part 2)
[LESS INFO] 6 VIEWS | ADDED 11:25:15 09/20/10
As explained in the previous post, in August of 2010 I gave two lectures as part of the annual Summer School of the Swedish Graduate School in Cognitive Science (SweCog; see http://www.swecog.se/summerschool.shtml ). The previous post contains the first of these lectures; this is part two. Near the end I showed a movie as a kind of dynamical specification of the non-conceptual content of visual experience modeled by the SEER-3 robot. This movie is not included in the PodSlide file; those interested in seeing it should download the supplementary file: "Non-conceptual content specification demo".
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 48.6 MB; 64 min 39 sec)
* Audio (.mp3; 29.7 MB; 64 min 39 sec)
* PowerPoint file (.pptx; 4.2 MB)
* Non-conceptual content specification demo (.mov; 10.9 MB)
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20:17:23 09/16/10
Concepts and Proto-Concepts in Cognitive Science (part 1)
[LESS INFO] 12 VIEWS | ADDED 20:17:23 09/16/10
In August of 2010 I gave two lectures as part of the annual Summer School of the Swedish Graduate School in Cognitive Science (SweCog; see http://www.swecog.se/summerschool.shtml ). I was invited to speak on the topic "Cognition (or Consciousness) and Non-Conceptual Content", so I devoted the first lecture to getting clear on the nature of concepts. This allowed me to contrast conceptual content (which is, briefly: content that is articulable, recombinable, rational and deployable) with non-conceptual content, which was detailed in the second lecture (to follow).
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 49.7 MB; 59 min 30 sec)
* Audio (.mp3; 28.6 MB; 59 min 30 sec)
* PowerPoint file (.pptx; 1.2 MB)
4 Views
00:10:57 04/29/10
Naturalizing the Spiritual: Lessons from Cognitive Science
[LESS INFO] 4 VIEWS | ADDED 00:10:57 04/29/10
On November 13th, 2007, I gave a talk at a meeting of the Yale Divinity School Initiative in Religion, Science and Technology, entitled: "Naturalizing the Spiritual: Lessons from Cognitive Science". This recording includes introductions from both James van Pelt and Wendell Wallach, so the lecture itself doesn't start until about 6:30 into the recording. Also, I took far too long to get to the point, spending the first half of my time on a tutorial concerning the various means of naturalization (reduction, elimination, etc). So at the end, there are many slides that whiz by with no comment from me. If anyone goes to the trouble of freeze-framing these final slides long enough to read them (or, more plausibly, reads them in the PowerPoint file, below) and wants to know more, they should feel free to email me.
Abstract: The primary goal of cognitive science is to naturalize the mind: to show how mental phenomena, with their distinctive properties of normativity and subjectivity, can be accommodated within a natural scientific world view that is usually thought to have little room for such notions. Over the course of two decades of disputes as to how or whether this can be done a number of possible strategies, conceived as relations between mental and physical discourse, have been identified: non-reductive elimination, reductive elimination, reductive accomodation, and non-reductive accommodation. These distinctions will be applied to the case of (some kinds of) spiritual discourse to help identify the possibilities for, and prospects of, the naturalization of the spiritual.
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 66.9 MB; 68 min 32 sec)
* Audio (.mp3; 32.4 MB; 66 min 52 sec)
* PowerPoint file (.ppt; 344 kB)
6 Views
21:59:09 11/12/08
Engineering For Conceptual Change: The Enactive Torch
[LESS INFO] 6 VIEWS | ADDED 21:59:09 11/12/08
On November 11th, 2008, I gave a talk at the Royal Academy of Engineering as a part of the 2008 Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering. In the talk, entitled "Engineering For Conceptual Change: The Enactive Torch", I presented work done with Tom Froese at Sussex and Adam Spiers at Bristol.
Abstract: In the Philosophy and Engineering community, there is general agreement that interaction between the two fields can be mutually beneficial. However, there are distinctive ways in which engineering can play a crucial role in assisting the particular case of philosophy of mind, especially concerning our understanding of conscious experience and perception. The reciprocal design/use cycle of certain kinds of experience-augmenting technologies can facilitate the kind of conceptual advance that is necessary for progress toward a scientific account of consciousness, a kind of advance that is not possible to induce, it is argued, through traditional discursive, rhetorical and argumentative means. We present an example of engineering activity that plays this crucial role in informing philosophical research in the PAICS group at the University of Sussex: the design and use of a novel sensory substitution device (the Enactive Torch) as a means of inducing in the user new philosophical concepts of perceptual experience.
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 23.6 MB; 22 min 38 sec)
* Audio (.mp3; 5.3 MB; 22 min 31 sec)
* PowerPoint file (.ppt; 1 MB)
* Extended abstract (.pdf; 496 kB)
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13:54:53 11/05/06
New computationalism
[LESS INFO] 18 VIEWS | ADDED 13:54:53 11/05/06
This lecture, given at the University of Skövde on October 19th, 2006, is an extended version of one I gave in Laval in May ( "In defense of transparent computationalism" ). The main additions are examples of how the transparent reading of computationalism can save it from some standard anti-computationalist arguments (Gödelian, externalist, dynamical, Chinese room), and mention of the work of Bill Bigge at Sussex as an illustration of how Strong AI might be possible, even if computationalism is false.
I botched an example in the talk, but rectified matters during discussion. The question I meant to ask was "Is the nth sitting-down person's answer to this question not "yes"?", where the only permitted responses are "yes" and not answering. As a standing up person, I can answer this question correctly for all n, while no sitting-down person can (they must not answer when considering their own case).
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 36.5 MB; 43 min 21 sec)
* Audio (.mp3; 10.0 MB; 43 min 21 sec)
* PowerPoint file (.ppt; 2.1 MB)
8 Views
22:19:51 10/18/06
"After Philosophy": Introduction (part 2)
[LESS INFO] 8 VIEWS | ADDED 22:19:51 10/18/06
See the description of Part 1 .
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 43.7 MB; 31 min 08 sec)
* Audio (.mp3; 7.2 MB; 31 min 03 sec)
* PowerPoint file (.ppt; 72 KB)
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16:45:14 10/18/06
"After Philosophy": Introduction (part 1)
[LESS INFO] 6 VIEWS | ADDED 16:45:14 10/18/06
The first e* post of the new academic year is a first in another sense. Previously, all my postings here have been research lectures, about my own work. This post is of a lecture I gave on October 17th, 2006 as part of a Theoretical Philosophy course on the pioneering Consciousness Studies Program at the University of Skövde, Sweden. That is, it is a teaching lecture (that I have been giving for a few years), aimed at third-year undergraduate students on a course primarily on Modern European (read "Continental") Philosophy. As such, it is not primarily my own work. However, given my rather skewed and limited knowledge of this area, proper scholars of this kind of philosophy will probably see more of me in this lecture than they see of the work of Derrida, Foucault, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, etc.
The lecture is almost entirely based on the Introduction chapter of After Philosophy: End or Transformation? , edited by Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy, and so they deserve credit for most of the ideas presented. My contributions consist primarily in giving examples, and an extended, perhaps laboured, Bernstein-influenced musicological metaphor, that can be summarized in the slogan: "Kant is the Mahler of Philosophy".
This lecture makes poor use of the PodSlide format, going through only 6 slides in 40 minutes. It is actually only the first part of the lecture; part two, which is shorter, will be posted soon.
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 67.1 MB; 40 min 17 sec)
* Audio (.mp3; 9.3 MB; 40 min 12 sec)
* PowerPoint file (.ppt; 72 KB)
3 Views
23:16:31 07/03/06
Counterfactual computational vehicles of consciousness
[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 23:16:31 07/03/06
Given April 7th 2006 in Tucson at Toward a Science of Consciousness 2006 , this is really two talks in one. My attendance at the conference was made possible in part by grant OCG43170 from the British Academy; I am grateful for their support.
Abstract :
In a recent paper (Bishop 2002), Bishop argues against computational explanations of consciousness by confronting them with a dilemma. On a non-causal or weakly causal construal of computation, familiar arguments from Putnam and Searle reveal computation to be too observer-relative to be able to underwrite any law-involving explanation of consciousness. On a (much more plausible) strongly causal notion of computation (Chalmers 1994; Chalmers 1996; Chrisley 1994), computational explanations must advert to non-actual, counterfactual states and state transitions. Working this fact into versions of Fading Qualia and Suddenly Disappearing Qualia arguments, Bishop concludes that strongly causal computationalism cannot be physicalist, in that it maintains that two states may differ only their non-physical (i.e. counterfactual) properties and yet be phenomenally distinct. I rebut this argument by embracing the second horn, and denying that appeal to non-actual or counterfactual properties is at odds with physicalism; indeed, it is the lifeblood of normal, physical, causal explanation. I further cast doubt on the argument by showing that it is too strong; if it is correct, computational states could not explain anything at all, not even computational phenomena, let alone conscious experience. I show how computational states that differ in their counterfactual properties must, contra Bishop's characterization, differ with respect to some of their actual properties. However, I note that inter-dependencies between current experience and computational state may only be explicable by reference to explicit, counterfactual states rather than the occurrent physical states which realize those dispositional properties. This is shown to cohere with at least one understanding (Chrisley 2004) of the sensorimotor contingency theory of perceptual experience (O'Regan and Noe 2000), in which expectation is understood as a disposition to produce a computational state corresponding to the sensation one would have if one were to perform a particular action. I conclude by sketching some implications for the search for correlates of experience. The considerations arising out of Bishop's argument show that if computationalism is true, then the search for correlates will fail if it only considers occurrent non-dispositionally construed physical states at a time to be the possible correlates of the experience being had at that time.
References:
* Bishop, J.M. (2002) "Dancing With Pixies", in Preston, J. & Bishop, J.M., (eds), Views into the Chinese Room , pp. 360-379, Oxford University Press.
* Chalmers, D.J. (1994) "On Implementing a Computation", Minds and Machines , vol.4, pp.391-402.
* Chalmers, D. (1996) "Does a Rock Implement Every Finite-State Automaton?", Synthese , vol.108, pp.309-333.
* Chrisley, R. (1994) "Why Everything Doesn't Realize Every Computation," Minds and Machines 4:4, pp 403-420.
* Chrisley (2004) "Perceptual Experience as the Mastery of Sensorimotor Representational Contingencies", abstract in Proceedings of Towards a Science of Consciousness 2004 , p 119.
* O'Regan, K., and Noe, A. (2001) "A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness", Behavioral And Brain Sciences 24(5).
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 31.7 MB; 19 min 41 sec)
* audio (.mp3; 9.2 MB; 19 min 49 sec)
* Powerpoint file (.ppt; 1.7 MB)
10 Views
21:34:11 07/02/06
Epistemic blindspot sets: A resolution of Sorensen's strengthened paradox of the surprise examination
[LESS INFO] 10 VIEWS | ADDED 21:34:11 07/02/06
I am not officially a member of the Department of Philosophy at Sussex (I'm in the Department of Informatics and am the Director of COGS), so the fact that I was invited to speak at the Philosophy Department's Away Day on June 13th is evidence of the fact that the "HUMS Philosophers" and "COGS Philosophers" at Sussex maintain a good working relationship. I didn't want to talk on a very COGSy topic, so I chose to speak on what I take to be a solution to a paradox that Sorensen formulated in 1986. Sorensen presented it as a strengthened version of the paradox of the surprise examination, and claimed that neither his solution, nor any other purported solution to the usual version of that paradox, solves the strengthened version. The strengthened version is a generalisation of Kavka's toxin puzzle to multiple instances of the cycle of offer-intention-consumption of the toxin. My solution is to take Sorensen's notion of an epistemic blindspot and generalise it to the case of an epistemic blindspot set. I then show that the premises and conclusion of the reasoning of the subject of Sorensen's paradox form an epistemic blindspot set, which implies that that reasoning is not epistemically consistent, and therefore cannot confer knowledge, thus resolving the paradox.
Unfortunately, the audio recording levels were too high, so there is a lot of distortion; you may find this to be too irritating for the podcast to be listenable. Also, instead of a PowerPoint file of slides, there is a two-page PDF handout.
References:
* R. A. Sorensen, A strengthened prediction paradox, Philosophical Quarterly 36 (1986), 504-513.
* R. A. Sorensen, Conditional blindspots and the knowledge squeeze: a solution to the prediction paradox, Australasian J. Phil. 62 (1984), 126-135.
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 31.2 MB; 24 min 14 sec)
* audio (.mp3; 11.1 MB; 24 min 13 sec)
* handout (.pdf; 60 KB)
6 Views
02:48:13 06/29/06
Machine models of consciousness: An ASSC tutorial (part 1)
[LESS INFO] 6 VIEWS | ADDED 02:48:13 06/29/06
Last Friday (June 23rd), as part of the 10th meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness in Oxford, Igor Aleksander, Murray Shanhan and I jointly offered a tutorial on machine consciousness. I started with a discussion of general philosophical issues, the approach of Aaron Sloman and myself, and Pentti Hakonen's model. Igor Aleksander followed with a description of his axiomatic approach, a demo of his system in action, and a quick survey of the work Franklin and Baars, and Krichmar and Edelman. Murray Shanahan took the third hour with a description of his own approach, showing how it unifies the Global Workspace approach of Baars with the Simulation Hypothesis approach of Cotterill and Hesslow. He also described Holland's approach, showing the latest videos of his spooky robot Cronos.
Some general information about the tutorial can be found at http://www.assc10.org.uk/workshops.html#A1 .
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 40.5 MB; 47 min 25 sec)
* audio (.mp3; 21.7 MB; 47 min 26 sec)
* Powerpoint file (.ppt; 280 KB)
* "Virtual Machines and Consciousness" (.pdf; 232 KB) , a paper by Aaron Sloman and myself from the Journal of Consciousness Studies , that is the basis of the second part of my presentation.
8 Views
23:52:00 06/01/06
Evolving concepts of creativity: A mirror, a tightrope and an inkblot
[LESS INFO] 8 VIEWS | ADDED 23:52:00 06/01/06
A few hours ago I spoke at the second University of Sussex creativity workshop, "Evolving Views of Creativity". Speaking near the end of the day, my role was to synthesize what had been said, in aid of developing a consensus on what we at Sussex mean by creativity. For these reasons, this lecture will be of most interest to people at Sussex, but others may get something out of it as well.
My main point is that creativity can be seen as the result of maintaining a fruitful tension between:
* Self and environment
* The intuitive and the conceptual
* "Blue-sky" and applied
* Novel and familiar
* Chaos and order
* Disconnection and engagement.
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 16.8 MB; 15 min 10 sec)
* audio (.mp3; 7.1 MB; 15 min 12 sec)
* Powerpoint file (.ppt; 3.3 MB)
1 Views
00:02:57 05/24/06
Finding aesthetic pleasure on the subjective edge of chaos: A proposal for robotic creativity
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 00:02:57 05/24/06
This is a lecture I gave at Goldsmiths College in London on May 16th 2006 as part of a Workshop on Computational Models of Creativity in the Arts .
In the talk, I give the nine axioms that constitute my approach to creating systems that exhibit creativity. The axioms are:
* Axiom 1: If you make your robot pleasure-seeking, and make creativity pleasurable, you'll make your robot creative
* Axiom 2: To be a good creator, it helps to be an appreciator
* Axiom 3: Let the robot experience output in the real world, as we do
* Axiom 4: We won’t like what it likes unless it likes what we like
* Axiom 5: An important motivator is the approval or attention of others
* Axiom 6: Sometimes it is better not to try pursue novelty directly, but something that is correlated with it
* Axiom 7: Let dynamics play a role in appreciation
* Axiom 8: Patterns in one's own states can be the objects of appreciation
* Axiom 9: The best way to make outputs in the real world is to be embodied in the real world
But you'll have to listen to the talk if you want to know what all that means!
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 38.1 MB; 21 min 38 sec)
* audio (.mp3; 10 MB; 21 min 38 sec)
* Powerpoint file (.ppt; 2.1 MB)
* Three-page summary (.pdf)
1 Views
00:02:30 05/24/06
In defense of transparent computationalism
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 00:02:30 05/24/06
This talk, given on May 5th 2006 in Laval, France at the International Conference on Computers and Philosophy , was originally to be based on a paper I wrote in 1999, but ended up diverging from it substantially.
Abstract of the original 1999 paper:
"A distinction is made between two senses of the claim “cognition is computation”. One sense, the opaque reading, takes computation to be whatever is described by our current computational theory and claims that cognition is best understood in terms of that theory. The transparent reading, which has its primary allegiance to the phenomenon of computation, rather than to any particular theory of it, is the claim that the best account of cognition will be given by whatever theory turns out to be the best account of the phenomenon of computation. The distinction is clarified and defended against charges of circularity and changing the subject. Several well-known objections to computationalism are then reviewed, and for each the question of whether the transparent reading of the computationalist claim can provide a response is considered."
I added to this by claiming that Gödel-style arguments don't show AI is impossible, but rather that the Church-Turing thesis is false. I rejected currently fashionable notions of pan-computationalism in favour of a view that makes having semantic properties essential to computation. I also argued that even if computationalism turns out to be false, it might still be possible for an artificial computational system to have a mind by virtue, at least in part, of the program it is running, since programming a computer not only changes it functionally, but also physically.
Media:
* PodSlides: iPod-ready video (.mp4; 31.7 MB; 17 min 50 sec)
* audio (.mp3; 8.4 MB; 18 min 11 sec)
* Powerpoint file (.ppt; 2.1 MB)
* "Transparent computationalism", the original 1999 paper
10/24/10