marcel@uiucdcs.UUCP (marcel ) (09/28/83)
#N:uiucdcs:32300003:000:3358 uiucdcs!marcel Sep 27 10:27:00 1983 I believe the pursuit of "consciousness" to be complicated by the difficulty of defining what we mean by it (to state the obvious). I prefer to think in less "spiritual" terms, say starting with the ability of the human memory to retain impressions for varying periods of time. For example, students cramming for an exam can remember long lists of things for a couple of hours -- just long enough -- and forget them by the end of the same day. Some thoughts are almost instantaneously lost, others last a lifetime. Here's my suggestion: let's start thinking in terms of self-observation, i.e. the construction of models to explain the traces that are left behind by things we have already thought (and felt?). These models will be models of what goes on in the thought processes, can be incorrect and incomplete (like any other model), and even reflexive (the thoughts dedicated to this analysis leave their own traces, and are therefore subject to modelling, creating notions of self-awareness). To give a concrete (if standard) example: it's quite reasonable for someone to say to us, "I didn't know that." Or again, "Oh, I just said it, what was his name again ... How can I be so forgetful!" This leads us into an interesting "problem": the fading of human memory with time. I would not be surprized if this was actually desirable, and had to be emulated by computer. After all, if you're going to retain all those traces of where a thought process has gone; traces of the analysis of those traces, etc; then memory would fill up very quickly. I have been thinking in this direction for some time now, and am working on a programming language which operates on several of the principles stated above. At present the language is capable of responding dynamically to any changes in problem state produced by other parts of the program, and rules can even respond to changes induced by themselves. Well, that's the start; the process of model construction seems to me to be by far the harder part of the task. It becomes especially interesting when you think about modelling what look like "levels" of self-awareness, but could actually be manifestations of just one mechanism: traces of some work, which are analyzed, thus leaving traces of self-analysis; which are analyzed ... How are we to decide that the traces being analyzed are somehow different from the traces of the analysis? Even "self-awareness" (as opposed to full-blown "consciousness") will be difficult to understand. However, at this point I am convinced that we are not dealing with a potential for infinite regress, but with a fairly simple mechanism whose results are hard to interpret. If I am right, we may have some thinking to do about subject-object distinctions. In case you're interested in my programming language, look for some papers due to appear shortly: one in Software Practice and Experience (short communication on AI '83 (METALOG: a Language for Knowledge Representation and Manipulation). Of course, I don't say that I'm thinking about "self-awareness" as a long-term goal (my co-author isn't) ! If/when such a goal becomes acceptable to the AI community it will probably be called something else. Doesn't "reflexive reasoning" sound more scientific?. Marcel Schoppers, Dept of Comp Sci, U of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign uiucdcs!marcel
marcel@uiucdcs.UUCP (marcel ) (09/28/83)
#R:uiucdcs:32300003:uiucdcs:32300004:000:275 uiucdcs!marcel Sep 27 11:22:00 1983 There is a line missing in the last paragraph. The references are: Logic-Programming Production Systems with METALOG. Software Practice and Experience, to appear shortly. METALOG: a Language for Knowledge Representation and Manipulation. Conf on AI (April '83).