Readings in Scaruffi
So I’ve been reading the third chapter of Scaruffi’s book on consciousness, concerning (quote-unquote) machine intelligence. More than the previous chapter, I feel like I’m being presented with a list of relevant facts upon which a narrative is being implied but not explicitly argued.
Instead of re-stating a summary of the chapter, I’ll attempt a summary of the implicit narrative:
Logic is a concept and subject matter that evolved along history. This means first that it should not be assumed to be an eternal static form, but it also allows for a description of an apparent trend in that history. That trend seems to be along two streams. There has been a very utilitarian trend towards producing a logical language that is the most versatile and the most capable of conducting the tasks assigned to it. There has also been an increased self-awareness within the subject matter. Thus whereas Aristotle (for example, and being one of the earliest actors within this play) was satisfied to describe the “laws” of logic, his conception of what it was that those laws did was even more primitive. It seems to really only be the last couple of centuries (gaining real steam with Ferge) that philosophers became interested in the question of what logic does. Thus we start talking about meaning.
Additionally, Scaruffi notes, the history of logic (qua philosophy) is also a movement towards an axiomatization of thought. Its as if (consciously or not) philosophers were attempting to provide an explication of the thought that underlay their entire enterprise. But (I would add) once logic becomes a sufficient carrier of thought, it is no longer limited to becoming a tool of traditional philosophy, and in fact allowed the story of logic to join onto another historical storyline: computers.
The story of computers begins as the story of logic as people (most famously Turing) pursue the project of mechanical logic. (The legitimization of mechanical logic in the form of computers has implications for philosophers: If logic can be represented and enacted by material and mechanical means, then an understanding of mechanical “thinking” may be an analogue of an understanding of biological/neurological “logical calculus”).
As theory caught up with the real production of computers, another parallel between the artificial and the biological was encountered in a field that became known as cybernetics. The study of communication and information within systems (i.e. cybernetics), and related concepts of feedback, homeostasis, and control systems, all conspired to further this parallel. At this point, it seems fairly safe to assume that there is a significant identity in whatever paradigm or law underlay both things like computers (but also other artificial systems) and brains (but also other living and other natural systems).
However, acknowledging and describing that parallel is a project that can be pursued separately from understanding why it is the case. And (so-far in the chapter at least) Scaruffi is yet to address this question head-on.
(I see a few obvious candidate targets that may offer an advantage against this query. The first one I offer is very general, that these new data are best utilized as an illustration for philosophies of mind, and may possibly not even recommend any (significant) difference from the philosophies already in existence (whose summary ostensibly forms chapter two of this book). Another approach is to look for something “x” that forms the foundations for these unities. The reason this may be fruitful is that it forms an alternative to traditional foundations of mind (including life, consciousness qua substance, matter in general, the brain in particular) with a further advantage of it having this unique defence. Yet another approach is to suggest that, given all these instances of difference in unity, that once we manage to collect these instances into this shared set, we can continue by building upwards. That was obtuse. Another way of saying it is by analogy: after discovering that all of termite nest, American adobe, and camping tent, are all instances of accommodation, we can ask whether a property that was thought to be unique to x qua accommodation might be true of other cases qua accommodation. That may easily backfire: If a house has a cooking arena (kitchen) because it is an accommodation that is not true for all members of that set, and only occurs in accommodations within a particular milieu. Anyway: Food for thought.)
(In my note taking I’m currently reading about information theory and algorithmic information theory. The details of these are not important insofar as they are continuing the trend of what was described above):
There is an intriguing parallel between a set of ideas that began with logic and on the other hand a set of paradigms associated with life especially, most extraordinarily with the mind, but also with nature in general. These two sets have only been described in the coarsest of terms (artificial vs natural), and there is yet no descriptive delineation of what they share in common. (Nb. I have slipped in the train of thought that began with logic and resulted in computers. This heralds its own conundrums).
That problem is the most intriguing challenge posed by this chapter. I would restate it (and bifurcate it):
How are we to understand or describe the two sets that have been (inaccurately) called “natural” and “artificial”?
What is the paradigm that underlies the commonality of those two sets?
