International Workshop on Artificial Consciousness 23-24 November - Agrigento - Sicily |
Full papers
Who's afraid of phenomenology? Igor Aleksander, Elen Morton, Imperial College, London
Towards a new generation of autonomous conscious robots. by Antonio Chella, Robotics – University of Palermo
Intelligent artificial systems. by Salvatore Gaglio, Università di Palermo
Levels of a theory of mind as steps towards artificial consciousness. by Peter Gardenfors: Lund University Cognitive Science, Lund, Sweden
The role of the self process in embodied machine consciousness. By Owen Holland, Department of Computer Science – University of Essex.
Consciousness as existence. By Ted Honderich, Grote Professor Emeritus Of The Philosophy Of Mind And Logic, University College London
Sense as a "translation" of mental content. by Andrea Lavazza, Scientific Journalist
The enlarged mind. by Riccardo Manzotti, Psychology – IULM (Milan)
Consciousness as the emergent property of the interaction between brain body & environment. by Piero Morasso, Biomedical Engineering – University of Genoa (Italy)
Mental robotics. by Domenico Parisi, Psychology - Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies - National Research Council
A rationale for artificial consciousness. by Ricardo Sanz, Automatic Control and Systems Engineering – University of Madrid
On the way to consciousness. by Luc Steels, Artificial Intelligence Lab – Free University of Bruxelles, Director of the SONY Computer Science Laboratory - Paris
Abstracts
Who's afraid of phenomenology?
Igor Aleksander, Helen Morton
In this paper we argue that phenomenology needs to be supported by explicit mechanisms if one is to have computational models of
consiousness. Computational work in this area is reviewed and a set of axioms that help to decompose being conscious into
manageable concepts is evoked. This leads to a kernel architecture and a digital implementation which is shown to work in examples
of visual illusions that are revealing of how the brain supports phenomenology. This model is used to address the unstable
phenomenology related to observation of the ambiguous Necker cube.
Mental robotics
Domenico Parisi
What is consciousness? From the point of view of science, this is the wrong question to ask. If we ask what is consciousness we are led to think that there is some entity called consciousness which has the
following properties: it is one single entity, it is an entity with well defined boundaries that separate it from other related
entities, it is something that either an organism can have or not have, it is an entity with fixed characteristics. Real entities
have the opposite properties: there is always a plurality and variety of them, they are never entirely different from other related
entities, they have degrees, they change all the time, they evolve, develop, disappear. It is language, i.e., the sheer existence
of a word “consciousness”, that induces us to ask the wrong question “What is consciousness?” This is a philosophical question, not
a scientific one. Philosophers are restricted to working with language but scientists need to go beyond language and observe,
measure, and analyze reality itself. Instead of asking “What is consciousness?” what we should do is look at the variety of
phenomena denoted, rather confusedly, by the word “consciousness”, and try to separately describe and explain these phenomena.
The Enlarged Mind
Riccardo Manzotti
I present a view of direct conscious perception that supposes a processual unity between the activity in the brain and the
perceived event in the external world. On account of the role played by this process I refer to it as ‘onphene’. I will use the
rainbow to provide a first example, and subsequently I will extend the same rationale to more complex examples such as the
perception of objects, faces and movements. I will use the onphene as an explanation of direct perception and other variants, such
as illusions, memory, dreams and mental imagery. This approach provides new insights into the problem of conscious representation
in the brain and phenomenal consciousness. It is a form of anti-cranialism different from but related to the radical externalisms
of Honderich and Tonneau.
Seeing,
Thinking, Wanting
Ted Honderich
The history of the philosophy of mind and psychology, and current research and speculation in the science of consciousness, support
the idea that conciousness has three parts, sides or elements: perceptual, reflective and affective. Their distinctive natures and
their relationships remain mysterious. It is not easy to frame questions about them. The theory of Conscious as Existence, a
limited form of Radical Externalism, gives different accounts of seeing, thinking and wanting -- fundamentally different if in part
recursive. To be perceptually aware is for an extra-cranial and spatio-temporal state of affairs to exist in a specified way. To
reflect on the past and to want a future thing are given related but different analyses, partly having to do with internal as
against external representations. The present paper considers objections to this differentiation in consciousness, and the
possibility that it is a necessity.
The role of the self process in embodied machine consciousness
Owen Holland
Although embodiment is becoming a key issue in the fields of cognition and consciousness studies, its possible use in achieving
machine consciousness has received relatively little consideration to date. However, the use of an embodied agent for the study of
machine consciousness can lead to the neglect of what may be another key factor: the self process (or self structure), which is
also an important element in many modern approaches to consciousness. The reason for this is clear: an embodied agent is a clearly
defined and delimited structural and functional entity, with all of its elements bound by the common fate of the body, and this
physical self seem to require no further elaboration – the system as a whole is already more complete than the self-free
non-embodied information processing architectures at the heart of many machine consciousness studies.
This paper sets out a theory of consciousness in which both embodiment and a self process play fundamental roles, and describes an
ongoing robot-based machine consciousness project in which the key element is the development and use of such a self process – the
internal agent model, or IAM. The nature, rather than the mere fact, of the embodiment is thought to be important for the
understanding of the structure of the self process, and this has led to the construction of a new type of robot – an
anthropomimetic robot. Conventional humanoid robots have an external envelope that approximates to the human form, but the internal
structure of the joints and actuators reflects modern engineering practice, being designed for precise control. In contrast,
anthropomimetic robots use elastic actuators modelled on human musculature, and joints modelled on the human skeleton. The
resulting control problems are severe, but they are solved by the human brain, and we suspect that the form of their solution may
be represented in the nature of our consciousness.
Sense as a "translation" of mental contents
Andrea Lavazza
The paper deals with the concept of sense and clams that it is an important aspect of phenomenal consciousness. “Sense” is defined
an emerging internal mainly non-sensory experience of coherence(or rightness) and/or a feeling of affective resonance linked to the
assessment of something, to an experience of fitting something, a strong experience of unity between the object and the
subject. The scope of the paper is the following. Firstly, despite the fact that sense might appear to be vague concept, it is impossible to
deny its role (and perhaps its existence). Secondly, sense is seen in terms of a “mind-content translation”. Accordingly, a machine
might be able to “reproduce” sense inside, but in doing so it would face a “hard problem” of sense, possibly linked to
transparency/opacity trade-off both for brain and computer.
