Re: Paper by ~MM on distributed self-awareness


<mimo_545@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1146421304.022332.181740@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Stephen Harris wrote:
Is MM referring to collective consciousness here?
In some ways you might liken a human being to
a collective of cells (living ones) performing minute
tasks for the collective good of the body. If you
say that consciousness is the border between the living
and the dead, and the limit of our consciousness
extends only as far as our physical (including cerebral)
experiences, then I can't see a problem. Accepted the
idea is a holistic one, but there are many many differences
between active ant colonies and 'human-cell-colonies' :\
Another thing I was reminded of was of group
dynamics, how living, related organisms (humans, ants,
sheep etc) communicate, swarm, flock etc.

Just a few ideas. N.

She doesn't mention consciousness in her paper. Jung used
collective consciousness to mean the merged consciousness
of all the individual humans who had minds.

I don't know if individual cells are conscious. Consciousness
does appear to emerge when you have enough of the right
kind of cells. But she is talking about self-awareness.

MM: "This information about the global state is distributed and statistical
in nature, and thus is difficult for observers to tease out. However, the
system's components are able, collectively, to use this information in such
a way that the entire system appears to have a coherent and useful sense of
its own state. Defined in this way, self-awareness is not unique to the
brain."

This use of self-aware is like the meaning that Java programmers
use when they talk about their software and network systems,
which makes no claims about being conscious.

Her example was the immune system. The individual cells collect
information which relates to the system as a whole. The immune
system performs its job without a foreman, something in control
of the whole process. The self of self-aware is the immune
system itself. The aware of self-aware only means information
or states are communicated to the cells which makes their
entire behavior appear _as if_ if were planned. There is no
claim made about self-awareness being equivalent to a mind,
or to a consciousness which knows it exists or to consciousness
at all. She also uses ant conlonies. They act as if they have a
social mind. Nobody is the boss. But at different times which
are appropriate to the situation, more ants will hunt food, or
at another time more ants will repair the nest. There is no
boss to say you guys quit that and go work over there.
But the ants become aware of the need to change their task.
Another way to say it is there is some stimulus that changes
their behavior so that their collective behavior is cooperative.
or perhaps intelligent if a group of humans were to do it,
like when termites build six foot mounds in Africa I think.

People used to object to using terms usually applied to
humans to dogs and especially computers. Like saying
a computer thought when it solved a problem rather
than saying it calculated a solution to a problem. I think
the controversy has died out with the failure of AI to
achieve any of the early claims for it. Except I still
can't see calling an inorganic substance "conscious"
because it plays better chess than me.

Regards,
Stephen





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