Mark Solms and Michael Levin discuss Consciousness, Cognition and Opponent Processing
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- čas přidán 23. 06. 2022
- This episode is also on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5Vtm...
Dr. Mark Solms and Dr. Michael Levin join the Meaning Code to do a deep dive into recent thinking about the nature of consciousness and cognition and where these can be found as well as establishing their foundations.
The second conversation about current attempts to create artificial intelligence.
Mark Solms and Michael Levin on the Attempt to Build and Test an Artificial Consciousness
• Mark Solms and Michael...
Introductory video of Michael Levin: • What Matters to Me and...
Dr. Levin's work on limb regeneration: • Michael Levin; Regener...
The Levin Lab at Tufts U: ase.tufts.edu/biology/labs/le...
Background on Mark Solms:
Talk at The Royal Institution: • The Source of Consciou...
Solms' Q & A: • Q&A: The Source of Con...
A class on psychoanalysis taught by Mark Solms:
mark-solms-in-lock-down.teach...
The wonder of the small world:
DNA animated: • Animations of unseeabl...
Energy Conversion Processes in a Light Harvesting Organelle:
• Energy Conversion Proc...
Karen's websites:
karenwongart.com
TheMeaningCode.com - Věda a technologie
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:40 Opponent Processing
03:40 Explore and Exploit, opponent processes understood broadly, are of ubiquitous importance
07:45 How seriously does evolution take prior information? Picasso tadpoles
10:20 Is there more information in the cell than it an execute at any one time?
10:45 Restricting himself to talk about cell networks, cell collective intelligences navigating problem space
13:45 Maintaining homeostasis, prioritizing
15:00 Palpatiing uncertainty, categories of need are ground zero for quail
19:30 How do the cells prioritize? Multiscale competency architecture
24:00 at what point in the continuum does consciousness begin?
30:40 Being able to feel what you’re doing, what that contributes is the possibility of choice. Choice is required if you’re going to navigate any environment.
34:00 Feeling your way through a problem by trial and error
36:00 Even a single cell has a problem to solve
39:00 What if we were born with an immediate sense of our blood chemistry?
41:30 Some kind of primary consciousness
42:15 Aren’t they all judging against some sort of “correctness”?
44:00 Goals in morphospace
I gave up on the timestamps at this point, because every word they say is so interesting, but if anyone else wants
to take a crack at it, go for it. There is a transcript, so that simplifies things.
I'm very grateful to be hearing more from Michael Levin. Thank you so much Karen for facilitating these conversations. I think this is an extraordinarily rich direction for the conversation to be moving in.
Single-handedly redeeming the name Karen from the meme graveyard. Great work! Thanks for bringing these gentlemen together and putting together such a fascinating show.
LOL.
I like how Dr. Levin talks about different kinds of spaces. We are so use to thinking of space, since Euclid, within a visual three dimensional kind of space, but I think we need to leave ourselves open, as he says, to studying and navigating physiological and other kinds of spaces.
Thank you Karen. I look forward to the next installment of this conversation in which Dr Solms will discuss what he and his team are learning as they attempt to build a bot with basic consciousness, and listen to Dr Levin's take on what they are learning. I've been waiting for news about Dr Solm's project ever since I finished reading The Hidden Spring.
Levin has so many fascinating examples. Thanks for putting these guys together.
Looking forward to any comments you have about the implications of their research.
I'm definitely hoping that there is communication between either Sara Imari Walker, or Lee Cronin and Michael Levin, wondering if there is any relationship between their respective fields. Thank you Michael, Mark and Karen for a great conversation.
That’s a great video title, can’t wait to see it. Thank you
I had a difficult day. One needs training in these complex areas to stick with these difficult topics. All my understanding evolves out of experiential😢 realities.
My own ‘opponent processing’ was brought into sharp focus when Dr. Mike introduced the ‘barium induced exploding planarian heads’ - I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!
This was terrific Karen, so many implications derived. And your prodding question regarding your own intuitions was well made. Their next meeting is going to be enlightening for sure. I shall look forward to it immensely.
Thanks Karen!🩰
Very interesting. It seems a cell has agency and a group of cells that are self-organizing with the intention to seek out conditions to promote, produce, and protect its own existence has hyper agency.
5:16 Yes! The Seeking Systems undergirds it all
Mark needs to really read more on Michael’s work. Mark relies on Damasio’s Homeostasis concept which is an important factor in mobilizing cellular level cognition but Michael Levin really hones in on multi scale intelligences to solve problems and then how they communicate through bioelectric field. His concept of agency goes all the way down to multicellular zygote level and is very much tied to bioelectric field. Bio electric field is one of the very important presence which brings coherence in a multicellular organ and it works all the way up with greater complexity. In this way,neurons are bodily cells - telegraphic cells which brings coherence in a short interval between multiple somatic levels. Mark Solm’s project is somewhat patchy in details and is an outcome of his struggle to bring freud to 21st century and may not be stretched to Levin’s take on notion of multiscale intelligences dealing with multi space problems.
Yes, indeed.
SO looking forward to this Karen!
30:33. "Choice is what is required if you are going to navigate an unpredictable environment."
Let's label this term "choice" as RRR (recursive relevance realization, John Vervaeke). And see where that takes us... Shall we....
Choices is what happens when we can no longer rely on our heuristics, then (at that moment) our literal survival depends on creative solutions. These choices and decisions are being made by two different brains. One is our left brain (the Ego) and the others are right brain (RRR and Wisdom).
We all have two brains and two personalities at work simultaneously. One is the deceptive dominant, and one is the receptive dominant.
Our deceptive intelligence and our receptive intelligence are in a bipolar disorder. Most the time one is running with the ball that would be the left brain and it's very rare that the right brain has to step in and take the ball, but if it'll do what it has to do to survive if necessary.
At all levels of consciousness. If you want to use the term consciousness, we have biological life evolving from one degree to the next, but at every stage of development, there is the realization of an ego self that needs to fight to survive to struggling its environment to find its moments of joy and pleasure. This is universal to all of life.
What we have in our left-right brain battle is an example of opponent processing at work, it is a relationship of give and take, or a battle of will. Sometimes one side of the brain takes the ball and runs with it ...and sometimes the other side decides they're going to have to get tough and take the ball away.
We can call this truth. We can call this choice. We can call this relevance realization, but really it is just natural intelligence of 10,000 brains, each with their own model or theory of everything.... Each voting up or voting down the consensus reality. This general intelligence is little more than weak A.I. in biological form. We're just creating our own algorithm, our own heuristic for beauty, and our own heuristic for suspicion... That all we are at the core of the human source code.
Unless there is some force of Good, or greater Truth, or Beauty... we are just pretending to be this or that is a meaningless similacrum. There is some unseen force by gravity pulling us into a better future. What is it?
Mystic say it's love.
.
You will like the new episode 3 on the role of the observer and the concept of choice. It will publish tomorrow.
I'm hearing shades of McGilchrist in you. Familiar with his work?
@@hiyoowihamainza949 yes, "The Matter With Matter" is on point.
Hey Karen! Big fan! I believe I can provide some answers here. First I want to say I believe intellectuals don’t take story seriously enough. Meaning, they don’t interrogate what a story is to a significant degree. I believe the answers that Dr. Vervaeke and Dr.Levin are looking for, a storyteller can provide. From the storyteller perspective there are clear answers to the question “what to look for”. Karen when you were talking about the phenomenological of the art, you touched on a path in realizing what to look for. I completely agree with how “art” is relevant to these scientific exploration. How I understand “art” in this context is very much how I understand storytelling, in fact art is the domain in which there is active storytelling. Hence I argue storytelling is art. When a storyteller discovers their story the possibilities of what to look for become clear because they’re aware of the ground in which the content stands on or in other words they understand how the story arises in the first place. The story comes from its theme! There hasn’t been to many investigations into theme because storytelling as a science hasn’t been looked at with a serious enough eye.
I agree with the entire notion of “stories about being causal agents”, but its curious that the scientist doesn’t turn to professional storytellers to try to answer this part of the issue at large - the “what to look for aspect”. Story has its own science, it’s ground is theme. It’s a different ground then the ground of natural science. It’s different but not mutually exclusive. To bring in Dr. Smith here, here’s a snippet of a book I’m currently working on that touches on the scientific issue discussed by Dr. Smith and is echoed by Dr.Levins questions:
“Theme is the measurement of perception. It’s the realm in which one sees the whole of a thing and not just it’s mere physical parts (like a scientist). Theme measures the cognition of ‘an object’. The soul, of the dialectical tension between the subject and object is what creates the wholeness for ‘the subject’ to even have the ability to view ‘an object’ in the first place, which is theme. Even ‘an object’ in the mind has a wholeness that’s curated by theme, that is the mental thing is realized as a whole and not in terms of its ‘parts’. Science (i.e. the science realm or the story realm) now truly realized, is the clearing of the parts that make up the whole, while theme (the thematic realm) clears a path that makes up the whole not in terms of the parts but as the whole itself. These two realms are not mutually exclusive in terms of Being, rather they’re occurring at the same time but just on different cognitive focuses (or levels). That is not to say one is better than the other but again the focus in both realms are different within the cosmos.”
Some additional comments of the video:
What do we then look for (1:36:22)? You look for theme. What I mean by this is the following:
When you look at an object is you see how you are for the object, if the object reveals itself for you to be able to fit into it, then the object is by definition thematic. A story arises from and out through theme. I am not talking about being in the ordinary sense of the word. It is not something that comes after the story but rather gives rise and even shines through story. It is neither a singular word nor moral. From a story perspective, it’s the realization of two elemental forces. An example of theme in story: Don’t let ego change your ethics. A theme is a command like that, that gives off an existential disposition for a internal feed back loop to occur.
It’s not about obtaining “the first person perspective” (1:27:00) but seeing what triggers a self referencing feed back loop, and depending on the clarity of this feed back loop, indicates how conscious the thing is. Why is it plausible for a salamander to be a salamander (1:31:20)? “What makes it plausible to speak on sentiment life?” (1:32:14). I ask the same question in terms of content in story. What makes its plausible for there to be a story. Why have this content in the story versus different content or rather no content at all? From a storyteller perspective the answer is theme.
“Active inference” (1:32:50), is done when storytelling to a significant degree. Meaning a good story references their theme in a way that allows for an active inference to occur because the storyteller is aware of the theme and hence an inference reveals itself to the storyteller throwing them in an active state in relation to the theme.
The questions Dr. Vervaeke, Dr. Levin and Dr. W. Smith are posing about cognition to me are actually story questions. Wolfgang’s Triadic schema is amazing and in my opinion gets closest to the root problem that science has when embarking on these types of questions (“what to look for?”). This process of “what to look for” is a thematically grounded process, meaning it deals in the icon realm or transjective realm to use John’s language. Theme gives the very ability to be incited on, that is for a phenomena to reveal itself as intelligible qualia.
My current position (as a storyteller) on their issue with “what to look for” is the following:
A moment is thematic when the wholeness, that which is theme, is shining through the particular part (that which is in the story/scientific realm). With that said typically when a storyteller doesn’t know what to look for when writing their story it means they’re not one with their theme. Hence they would have to go back to the the ground (theme) and work back through their story according to the theme that was clarified from its initial conception. So if scientist aren’t sure what to look for then their initial position is either off or they have deviated from their “theme”.
Thank you for putting out such wonderful content! It has helped my writing career as a professional screenwriting in LA immensely. My goal on the side of being a screenwriter is to co-investigate with philosophy and science. It’s not shocking that that a professional storyteller wouldn’t be involved in these research projects considering the current understanding of storytelling. Thus, story needs to be taken more seriously and that too is the goal in my books that I am currently developing. Again, everything that I have spouted is all from a storyteller perspective. It would be interesting to have a more scientific mind think in terms of a storyteller and to see what thoughts they may have. I’m sorry if I come off confusing! Please let me know if you have any questions. Forgive me I’m trying to fit a book series into a comment.
Thanks for the kind words. It would be fun to explore more the role of story and theme. Would you be interested in having a conversation in the new year?
Absolutely! Let’s schedule something.
@@andrewluber880 email me klwong43atgmaildotcom
This conversation explains why mercy is a fundamental: needs and how I feel…
Sounds like the cells network within context
Explains the nature of perception vis a vis directed conversations: dialogos even at the cell network level
Explains the centrality of quality as categorization, as realm for attention
I love the way pivotal scientific research validates Dante’s Medieval Visioning
He was determined to show that poetry with the limitation of the terza rima equaled, if not surpassed, the Scholastic tradition
To Karen’s point about limits, Dante restricted himself as well to patterns within lengths of lines in syllables etc to form a numerical grid within the centre of the Commedia, which actually end up highlighting a cross-form around the concept of free will
Could you say more about the limitation of the terza rima?
Each stanza has 3 lines and the rhyme scheme is such that the ending word of line 2 rhymes with the last word of lines 1 and 3 of the next stanza. So the stanzas are tightly woven together like a chain.
It is mesmerizing to read in Italian.
Dante also draws deeply on tradition, another strong limit, including the history and people of Florence and Italy. Virgil, a Roman pagan, is his guide through The Inferno and Purgatorio. Dante, a Christian, had memorized by heart the entire Aeneid. Beatrice, whom he loves deeply as a child and a young man, is the one who guides his attention and forms his perception in Paradiso: an ancient understanding of the guiding feminine going back millennia. Dante is constantly pulling the past into the present and embedding the present into the past, creating eternity: reality.
@@thesecondlawandthetowerhou6026
Embedding the past into the present to create the eternal, reality!! That is fucking dope! This is awesome. I can't believe how hard it must have been to create Dante's Inferno now. I totally failed to see that while being exposed to it in school. Though to be fair, I doubt anyone teaching it had your level of understanding to actually show this. What a legend he was, illustrating so much through so many layers on all these deep levels that resonate across time. The part about it forming a picture of a cross around the lines about free will?! Dude. That's so wild.
Correction The patterns are not from syllables, but rather from the number of verses in each canto. The digits of the number of verses were added together and those numbers form a distinct pattern of a cross emanating from the central canto of the entire work. The numbers all have specific meaning to the Medievals.
Thanks 🙏 so much for creating such great 👍 guidance! Amazing 😉 collaborative videos. Would love a talk from either of them or both on how the microbiome 🦠 relates to these things like instincts and electrical systems please?
29:36 unbelievable, my hero argues that the job of babies is easy. They learn to hear, they learn to smell, kick without knowing that they can do that. They are doing non-stop work. In fact no cell in human body is just standing there and enjoying life by slacking. They are all working.
Into late life, if lucky.
An extremely important consideration might be that you have a need of thirst with a value 2 and food value 3, but for some reason, sleep will actually ‘allow you to go’ without those for another 12 hours… Also coffee…
Yeah, I definitely feel it’s an incomplete paradigm. For starters, before any action can begin, there has to be a better/worse or good/bad value structure. Without that, where would the will to live come from? Continuing to exist must be preferable to not continuing. This is something I think the origin of life researchers don’t consider enough. Jordan Peterson puts it this way, “ Meaning precedes matter.”
To counter Mark's argument at 15:00, I think just because we are /aware/ of the choices being made in our central nervous system does not mean it is any less "autonomic" than our "autonomic" nervous system. One could imagine a reality where we are /aware/ of our autonomic nervous system's choices, and not our thoughts, where our lives feel more like a thermostat might feel (solving immediate problems) and are less concerned with longer term existential problems.
Lots of people do live like thermostats these days it seems
Is it possible that the oversized cell is not morphing istelf into the circular tube shape but rather that the network of neighboring cells are doing what they alsoways do to force each other into the tubular shape. Its just that they have to force a single large cell to bend. The are collectively bending the single cell into the circular shape to support the tube development.?
I really wish these were on Spotify.
This one is on Spotify! open.spotify.com/episode/5Vtm373gpY297LYkIXPaQV?si=KWm5tBQbTyaGK4q0qEGbcA
I’m uploading my back episodes as fast as I can, starting from the beginning of the channel, so you can see the trail I have followed to get here. I will also upload new episodes as I have time.
@@TheMeaningCode :)
Could parts the psychedelic experience be an interaction of the different forms of cognition within us, that doesn't occur "normally"?
A very intriguing thought…
Chakra & the Homeostats - new punk band
Yes, the model is too vast. It's beyond the beyond, and impossible to explain. Does one accept the undefinable or dismiss the impossible?
29:03 I disagree, I think baby is working hard in there.
I'm glad Michael thinks that too.
I agree:-) There was a lot I wanted to say there but decided to let it go.
🤓👍 Blūeprint
Panpsychism comes in different flavors. If, for example, Solms’ “feeling” connects to a fundamental substance in the universe (feelium), well then, we are back to panpsychism! If, for another example, Levin’s non-binary logic carries a middle-term that connects again to a said feelium, then we are back again to panpsychism! Moreover, it’s the non-binary interface that more correctly accommodates Karen’s opponent processing. How else will a nested system of conscious activity (coming with multiple levels) find a creative balance without an ineffable core representing a middle-term that is connected to the fundamental feelium?
I feel like this is what she was getting at with her description of making art. There is a central thing that has a vision of the blueprint of what the goal is. She was analogizing that similar to Michael's research revealing some kind of blueprint outside of DNA that dictates the morphology of a species and can solve problems (make adjustments) in alignment to that goal, it seems like we have a set of blueprints we follow as well that dictates our ability to problem solve in direction of that goal.
She was asking if perhaps that blueprint layer is one of the required pieces of consciousness.
@@AB-wf8ek Thanks for the reply. If the feelium has a source that connects to something timeless, then directions will point to a future that "feels good," and the presumed one-sided blueprint succumbs to Karren's more flexible art (more two-sided and showing foresight), it seems to me. Cheers!