April 19, 2018 YHouse Cognition Lunch Salon at IAS
Presenter: Brian P. McLaughlin (Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science; Director, Rutgers Cognitive Science Center)
Title: On the Matter of Robot Minds
Abstract: (By the presenter) “A number of AI researchers are predicting that there will be sentient robots with human-level intelligence or greater within the next thirty or so years. If this prediction is correct, we face enormously difficult moral and social issues. Status as a moral agent or moral patient depends only on mental abilities. Sentient robots would have moral rights, and so should have legal rights to protect them. Moreover, the sale of robots with intelligence even approaching human-level intelligence would be slavery. There is a tsunami of humanoid robots soon to enter our lives. I argue, however, that the prediction that sentient robots with human-level intelligence will soon be here is based, in part, on a false behaviorist assumption about mentality. Although the tsunami will bring a flood of difficult moral and social issues in its wake, robots rights is not among them. The robots will be devoid of mentality. They could be damaged or destroyed, but neither harmed nor wronged.”
Presenter: Torin Alter (University of Alabama)
Title: Enthusiasm about Russellian Monism
Abstract: (by the speaker) “According to Russellian monism, consciousness is constituted by intrinsic properties that underlie structural properties described by physics. Enthusiasm about this theory is on the rise. Is this enthusiasm justified? I will consider two reasons to think not. One is that the theory offers nothing truly new. The other is that it fails to deliver on its promise to well integrate consciousness into the natural, causal order. I will suggest that neither reason is compelling. I will also suggest that seeing why provides insight into what we should ask of a theory of consciousness and its place in nature.”
Synopsis of our March 15, 2018 YHouse Luncheon talk by Kenji Doya
Presenter: Kenji Doya (Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology, Japan)
Title: How Does the Brain Wire up Itself on the Fly?
Abstract: “The standard paradigm in functional brain imaging is to ask subjects to perform tasks requiring a certain computation or not, to see which brain areas are more activated, and to conclude that those areas subserve the computation. However, we do not really know why and how those specific brain areas can be activated and connected when they are needed. As deep learning provides solutions to specific computations like image recognition and language processing, how to select and combine those networks as needed in different tasks and situations is a critical challenge in general and autonomous artificial intelligence. In this talk, we will explore possible anatomical and computational mechanisms that realize modularity and compositionality of the brain.”
Synopsis of YHouse Luncheon 3/8/18 Michael Solomon and Olaf Witkowski
Title: Ethics and A.I.
Abstract: “We are sharing this article in hopes of stimulating discussion at our Thursday March 8th meeting. The topic will be Ethics and A.I. Is it possible to program ethical values in the machines we use and have come to rely on? Can we even agree on fundamentals like “Do unto others...” or “Thou shalt not kill”? Is Diversity an obstacle to finding shared values? Can urban surveillance cameras with facial recognition be used to prevent crime and terrorism, without being used by authoritarian governments to weed out dissent? Can we have Transparency in decision making when no one can determine how neural networks reach conclusions? Ethics choices may not be between good and evil, but more often involve conflicting goods. Can we make better policies and choices with A.I. than we can without it? Please share this with others who may be interested in attending.”
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900010378/personal-robots-are-coming-into-your-home-will-they-share-your-family-values.html
Synopsis of the 3/1/18 YHouse Luncheon Talk at IAS by Catherine Prueitt and Piet Hut
Presenters: Catherine Prueitt (George Mason University) and Piet Hut (Institute for Advanced Study) Title: Beyond or Not Beyond Abstract: “Cat and Piet will continue an ongoing dialogue they started a few weeks ago at Columbia about the notion of exploring the notion of beyond in theory and experiment, in science and contemplation, as well as in daily life. Cat, a philosopher, and Piet, an astrophysicist, share a deep and burning interest in the question of how humans construct and experience the world they live in and themselves who live in it.”
Synopsis of YHouse Luncheon 2/15/18
Presenter: Hayden Kee (Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy at Fordham University) Title: Phenomenological Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Consciousness Abstract: (At the Start Hayden said that he had made substantial changes to his presentation since submitting the abstract, so his focus will be different.) “To what extent do we require a phenomenological level of description to adequately grasp the behavior of non-human organisms? At one extreme, some versions of autopoietic enactivism endorse a strong phenomenological life-mind continuity thesis, maintaining that wherever we find life, we find also a mind exhibiting the same basic phenomenal interiority as human experience. In this talk, I will argue that this broad application of phenomenological concepts to all living beings, including ones believed to lack sentience, introduces a fateful equivocation into the phenomenological idiom, which is designed to describe sentient experience. But this terminological clarification serves to bring into focus an underlying ontological and methodological issue: autopoietic enactivism (along with other approaches to naturalized phenomenology) is radically incomplete in the absence of a foundational (meta)physics of consciousness.”
The revised question that Hayden chose to discuss is, “What does consciousness Do (make happen) in Nature?” He is trained in Phenomenology, and in Phenomenology you are told not to ask what consciousness does as a natural phenomenon. That is because that puts consciousness in the material world, a thing among other things. And that can restrict exploring it (the thing itself) as a natural phenomenon....
Synopsis of Christoph Salge’s 11/16/17 YHouse Luncheon Talk
Presenter: Christoph Salge (New York University / University of Hertfordshire)
Title: A Short Introduction to Empowerment – an Information Theoretic, Intrinsic Motivation
Present: Olaf Witkowski, Ed Turner, Piet Hut, Michael Solomon, Stephen Lin, Renzo Comoletti, Christoph Salge.
Abstract: “Empowerment is a formalization of how much an agent is in control of its own perceivable future. This is captured by the channel capacity from an agent’s actuators to an agent’s sensor at a later point in time. In this short presentation, I will briefly introduce the formalism and idea behind empowerment. I will outline how empowerment relates to the concept of intrinsic motivation and show some recent applications that demonstrate the range of behaviors that can be created in different scenarios. In particular, I will talk about recent work looking at coupled empowerment maximisation in a human-AI system – and how this can be used to define some core companion duties.”
Christoph introduced himself as now working at NYU’s Game Computation Group. He stated his goal for this talk is to introduce Empowerment and formalism....
Synopsis of YHouse Luncheon Talk 10/5/2017 by Smitha Vishveshwara
Title: Pathless Journey
On Thursdays at noon Yhouse holds a lunch meeting at the Institute of Advanced Study, in Princeton. The format is a 15 minute informal talk by a speaker followed by a longer open-ended discussion among the participants, triggered by, but not necessarily confined to, the topic of the talk. In order to share I am posting a synopsis of the weekly meetings.
Preliminary Abstract: "The Universe at the quantum and cosmic scales instills wonder and exercises physical laws quite foreign to the human scale. Here, I share my three interconnected collaborative ventures that explore these two awe-inspiring realms through the arts. One concerns the writing of a popular book on quantum physics and Einstein's relativity in the format of letters between father and daughter. Another relates to science-art creations stemming from an interdisciplinary course, Where the Arts meets Physics. The third involves devising a performance piece entitled Quantum-Cosmic Journeys."
The title of Smitha’s presentation was inspired by her quoting philosopher and educator J. Krishnamurti, ‘Truth is a Pathless Land’. ....
Title: Math, Matter, Mind, and Beyond
Presenter: Piet Hut (IAS, Princeton) and Yuko Ishihara (ELSI, Tokyo)
Title: Math, Matter, Mind, and Beyond
A link to the 2006 Paper is: https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0510188.pdf
Present: Piet Hut, Yuko Ishihara, Ed Turner, Michael Solomon, Bob McClennan, Kim Cheung, Michael Rassias, Olaf Witkowski
Piet opened the presentation noting that the paper published 12 years ago was the product of 20 plus years of discussions...
On Thursdays at noon Yhouse holds a lunch meeting at the Institute of Advanced Study, in Princeton. The format is a 15 minute informal talk by a speaker followed by a longer open-ended discussion among the participants, triggered by, but not necessarily confined to, the topic of the talk. In order to share I am posting a synopsis of the weekly meetings.
Synopsis of Li Zhaoping’s Yhouse Luncheon talk 11/9/17
Presenter: Zhaoping Li (University College London)
Title: Looking And Seeing In Visual Functions Of The Brain
Abstract: "Vision is a window to the brain, and I will give a short introduction and demonstrate that it can be seen as mainly a problem of "looking and seeing", which are two separable processes in the brain. Understanding vision requires both experimental and theoretical approaches, and to study the brain using our own brains have its peculiar difficulties."
Present: Piet Hut, Olaf Witkowski, Yuko Ishihara, Arpita Tripathi, Li Zhaoping, Michael Solomon
Li Zhaoping studied physics in China before getting her PhD in Brain Science at Cal Tech and coming to the IAS 27 years ago as a post doc working then on the olfactory system. She currently works at University College London on vision, with an emphasis on computer science and on artificial and natural intelligence. She began with the statement that “The Eyes are the window to the Brain”...
TITLE: Is cancer a metabolic disease caused by mitochondrial dysfunction?
ABSTRACT: For the past 40 years we have thought of cancer as the result of somatic mutations in nuclear DNA that either block tumor suppressor genes or unblock oncogenes resulting in malignant transformation. But our success in understanding or in treating cancer has been sadly limited. Thomas Seyfried and others have made a strong case that, in fact, cancer results from the loss of the cell’s ability to obtain energy (ATP) via oxidative phosphorylation, resulting in the cancer cell’s reverting to more primitive metabolic pathways and fermenting glucose (and the amino acid glutamine) even in the presence of adequate oxygen (aerobic glycolysis). This theory was originally suggested by Otto Warburg in the 1940’s, the so-called Warburg effect. I will offer evidence supporting the possibility that malignant transformation in all cancer is a metabolic disease resulting from mitochondrial dysfunction and is not a genetic disease caused by nuclear DNA changes which occur secondarily. This leads to alternative management strategies for cancer without toxic radiation or chemotherapy.....
Abstract: Information is found all across the domain of physics, seemingly retaining all its properties regardless of the media in which it is instantiated. Substrate-independence and interoperability made possible symbolic representations such as the genetic code, allowing for life to develop upon it. The next transition closed the loop by producing organisms increasingly aware of their environment. This eventually led to human life, capable of learning the underlying principles that created it, with the invention of language and science.
I focus my research on collective cognition, which one can see as the informational software to life's physical hardware......
Title: The Psycho-Physical Lab
Ohad is working on a book with this title about the Mind/Body problem in philosophy and links to the practice of Yoga. This book is not intended as an academic contribution to research but for a broader audience. His coauthor, Eyal Shifroni, Has been a yoga teacher for years. He argues that reflective yoga practice goes beyond health, but offers a way to engage body and mind to train each other. We use our physical abilities and limitations to train our mental capacities, and vice versa, to improve each. Reflective practice is essential to development. He emphasizes practice with less effort and more attention. This does involve posture and breathing exercises, but to what purpose? We cannot make sense of mental states without referring to our physical bodies. Body and Mind are interconnected. We train the body through reflective processes and improve the whole being......
In my talk I will present the account of understanding I am developing under the title of 'expectationalism'. The account draws heavily on Jamesian Pragmatism and the thought of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Its central premises are: 1. That the meaning of something is its consequences, and to understand something is to grasp its consequences. and 2. That expectations are not some internal content, but are rather actualized by our bodies. I will link this account with contemporary approaches in cognitive science and philosophy of mind, and suggest that if the account is correct this implies that strong AI is possible and that limited instances of it already exist......
Abstract: "I will briefly describe two intertwined research programs. The first concerns issues of embodiment, situatedness and dynamics in understanding how an animal's behavior arises from the interaction between its nervous system, its body and its environment. Specifically, we use genetic algorithms to evolve model brain-body-environment systems and then analyze their operation using the tools of dynamical systems theory and information theory. This approach has been applied to a wide variety of behaviors, including locomotion, action-switching, learning, categorization, selective attention, and referential communication. The second concerns the organization of minimal living systems and its consequences. Specifically, we analyze persistent spatiotemporal entities in cellular automata models from the perspective of autopoiesis and enaction. We identify the local processes that underlie
Speaker: Yuko Ishihara
Title: Consciousness: not a “thing” but a “place”.
We Work, 110 E 28th Street NYC, NY.
Abstract: Modern western thought has given consciousness a special place in the understanding of human beings. According to Descartes, it is the fact that we are "thinking things" that sets us apart from unconscious things like a desk or a pen. While scientists and philosophers today disagree with Descartes on what constitutes the nature of the thinking thing, most people agree on the basic Cartesian assumption: that consciousness is a kind of "thing."
But can we not question this assumption? Putting aside all theories, our direct experience teaches us that consciousness does not primarily appear as a thing. Rather, it appears more as a ground or "place" wherein our experience occurs. Drawing on insights from twentieth-century philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Nishida Kitaro who developed a philosophy of place, let us think together about what it really means to understand consciousness not as a "thing" but as a "place." Perhaps such ideas can open doors towards a better understanding on the nature of consciousness.
