Table Of ContentMIND OUT OF MATTER
STUDIES IN COGNITIVE SYSTEMS
VOLUME 20
EDITOR
James H. Fetzer, University of Minnesota, Duluth
ADVISORY EDITORIAL BOARD
Fred Dretske, Stanford University
Charles E.M. Dunlop, University of Michigan, Flint
Ellery Eells, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Alick Elithom, Royal Free Hospital, London
Jerry Fodor, Rutgers University
Alvin Goldman, University ofA rizona
Jaakko Hintikka, Boston University
Frank Keil, Cornell University
William Rapaport, State University ofN ew York at Buffalo
Barry Richards, Imperial College, London
Stephen Stich, Rutgers University
Lucia Vaina, Boston University
Terry Winograd, Stanford University
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
MIND OUT OF MATTER
Topics in the Physical Foundations of
Consciousness and Cognition
by
GREGORY R. MULHAUSER
Applied Research and Technology,
British Telecom Laboratories,
Martlesham Heath, England,
#http://www.labs.bt.com/people/mulhaug
and
Department of Philosophy,
University ofGlasgow, Scotland
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-94-010-6144-5 ISBN 978-94-011-5104-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-5104-7
Printed an acid-free paper
AlI Rights Reserved
© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1998
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
incJuding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
Having written it on the peaceful European soil which he fought to keep free
more than half a century ago, I dedicate this book to the memory of my
grandfather, Raymond B. Mulhauser.
Table of Contents
SERIES PREFACE ix
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS xi
TABLE OF FrGURES xv
FOREWORD xvii
CHAPTER ONE: FRONTAL ASSAULT
CHAPTER TWo: ZOMBIES AND THEIR LOOK-ALrKES 15
CHAPTER THREE: INFORMATION, COMPLEXITY, AND REPRESENTATION 31
CHAPTER FOUR: A ROSE, By ANy OTHER NAME (OR DESCRIPTION) 54
CHAPTER FIvE: FUNCTIONAL SYSTEMS 72
CHAPTER SIX: SELF MODELS 103
CHAPTER SEVEN: SCHRODINGER'S CATIS DEAD 141
CHAPTER EIGHT: BUILDING CONSCIOUS DATA STRUCTURES 171
CHAPTER NINE: CHAOS, COMPUTABILITY, AND REAL LIFE 208
CHAPTER TEN: My 'HIDDEN' AGENDA 236
REFERENCES 257
INDEX 277
Series Preface
This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the
investigation and exploration of knowledge, information, and data-processing
systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal, or machine. Its
scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in
the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology through issues in cogni
tive psychology and sociobiology (regarding the mental abilities of other spe
cies) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and computer science. While em
phasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual, and epistemological aspects
of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental, and methodological
studies will also appear from time to time.
In this volume, Greg Mulhauser undertakes the ambitious task of introduc
ing a novel approach to the mindlbody problem that not only integrates scientific
and philosophical concepts and methods but promises to combine computational
and dynamic approaches to understanding the mind. On this approach, a theory
that unifies conscious experience with the material world emerges from adopting
a perspective according to which the conscious subject (the 'I' or 'self' of per
sonal experience) is a materially instantiated structure of dynamically changing
information. The span of this work is broad (from unconscious zombies to inef
fable feels and from quantum mechanics to analogue computers). Every reader
should fmd it both challenging and illuminating.
J.H.F.
Detailed Table of Contents
Series Preface ix
Table of Figures xv
Foreword xvii
CHAP1ERONE: FRONTAL ASSAULT
1. STRUCTURE AND OVERVIEW 4
1.1 Pathways Through the Book 4
l.2 Chapters Summary 5
2. UNDERLYING THEMES AND METHODS 7
2.1 Dynamics and Computation 7
2.2 Priorities and the Naturalistic Urge 9
2.3 Description Complementarity and Puzzles of Perspective 10
3. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE 12
CHAP1ER Two: ZoMBIES AND THEIR LooK-Am~Es 15
1. AN EMBARRASSMENT TO OUR DISCIPliNE 16
2. BUILDING A ZOMBIE 17
3. ZOMBIES, FUNCTIONS, AND MATHEMATICAL MYSTICISM 22
CHAP1ER THREE: INFORMATION, COMPLEXITY, AND REPRESENTATION 31
l. INFORMATION IS PHYSICAL 32
2. MEASURING INFORMATION 36
2.1 Algorithmic Information Content 37
2.2 Joint, Relative, and Mutual Information 40
3. GROUNDING REPRESENTATION 41
4. GODEL DE-MYSTIFIED 44
4.1 Decidability and the Halting Problem 45
4.2 Incompleteness and the Limits of Human Cognizers 49
5. PLATONIC HELL 51
CHAP1ER FOUR: A ROSE, By ANy OTHER NAME (OR DESCRIPTION) 54
1. SENSATIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS-PRELIMINARIES 55
2. GETTING SENSATIONS FROM DESCRIPTIONS 56
3. 'MACMARY' 59
4. A TASTY SIDE NOTE 62
5. THE THIRD PERSON PROBLEM 65
xii TABLE OF CONTENTS
5.1 What is it Like to be Nagel? 66
5.2 Explanation-Good Arguments and Bad 68
CHAPTER FIVE: fuNCTIONAL SYSTEMS 72
1. LmERAL FUNCTIONAUSM 72
1.1 General Trivialities 73
1.2 Particular Trivialities 76
1.3 Teleofunctionalism 78
2. LOGICAL DEPTH MEASURES 80
3. CHOOSING MODULES BY MINIMISING COMPLEXITY 86
3.1 Minimising Functional Logical Depth 87
3.2 Functional Relevance, Equivalence, and Similarity 90
3.3 Observations and Applications 91
3.4 Chaitin's Mathematical Approach to 'Life' 94
4. BROADER CONCERNS ABoUT FUNCTIONAL DECOMPOSmON 95
4.1 Decidability and Functional Decomposition 95
4.2 Natural Kinds 97
4.3 Levels, Languages, and Symbols 98
CHAPTER SIX: SELF MODELS 103
1. SUPERVENIENCE AND LEVELS OF EXPLANATION 104
2. PRELUDE TO A THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 108
3. TROUBLES WITH 'MENTAL STATES' 109
3.1 Frozen Qualia 110
3.2 Chopped Qualia 112
3.3 Real Qualia Need Cognition in Real Time 113
3.4 Nothingness, Nothingness, and More Nothingness? 116
4. CAPTURING CONSCIOUSNESS 117
4.1 Mileage from a Necessary Connection 117
4.2 Implication, Entailment, and the Return of GOdel 120
4.3 The Illusion of Merely Metaphysical Supervenience 121
5. INSIDE THE SELF MODEL 127
5.1 Explanatory Strategy 127
5.2 What Am I? 128
5.3 Data Structures 131
5.4 The Self Model as a Data Structure 133
5.5 What is it Like to be a Self Model? 135
CHAPTER SEVEN: SCHRODINGER'S CATIS DEAD 141
1. TWo PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION 143
1.1 Conscious Observers 143
TABLE OF CONIENTS xiii
1.2 Quantum Consciousness 144
2. QUANTUM FORMAUSM IN A NUTSHELL 145
2.1 States and Geometry 145
2.2 Observables and Matrix Operations 147
2.3 Spectra and Probabilities 149
2.4 Wavepacket Reduction 151
3. CONSISTENT HISTORIES 152
3.1 Consistency Conditions 153
3.2 Complementary Logics 155
4. THE CLASSICAL APPROXIMATION 157
5. INIERACTIVE DECOHERENCE 159
5.1 Macroscopic Interference 159
5.2 A Simplified Example 160
5.3 Decoherence in the General Case 162
5.4 Decoherence and Measurement Theory 163
6. Is THIS AFAPP? 164
7. MIND-WHAT'S QMGOTTODoWITHIT? 167
CHAPTER EIGHT: BUILDING CONSCIOUS DATA S1RUCfURES 171
1. INFORMATION AND THE SELF MODEL 171
1.1 Lossy Compression and Conditional Coupling 172
1.2 Coupling and Hypothesis Testing 173
2. REPRESENTATION AND FUNCTION IN NEURAL SYSTEMS 174
2.1 Neural Basics 175
2.2 Neural Darwinism 183
2.3 Representation-Being One vs. Serving as One 185
3. GROSSBERG'S ADAPTIVE RESONANCE THEORY 188
3.1 Competitive Feedback Networks 189
3.2 The Gated Dipole 191
3.3 ART Dynamics 193
4. CIRCUITS OF THE SELF MODEL 196
4.1 Representational Efficacy and Selective Advantage 196
4.2 Natural Emergence of the Self Model 198
4.3 Self Models, Language, and Self Awareness 201
4.4 The Symbol Grounding Non-Problem 203
CHAPTER NINE: CHAOS, COMPUTABIUTY, AND REAL LIFE 208
1. Too MUCH OF A GOOD THING? 210
2. MODELS AND COMPUTATION 211
2.1 Computational Limits and Physical Limits 212
2.2 Numbers, Models, and the Real World 213
