Manuel Blum Ryan Williams Brendan Juba Matt Humphrey

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13 June 2005TOWARD A HIGH-LEVEL DEFINITION OF
CONSCIOUSNESS 
Manuel BlumRyan WilliamsBrendan JubaMatt
Humphrey
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From Collins English Dictionary, 1995

• conscious adj.
• 4. a. denoting or relating to a part of the
  human mind that is aware of a persons self,
  environment, and mental activity and that to a
  certain extent determines his choices of action.
• b. (as n.) the conscious is only a small
  part of the mind. Compare unconscious.

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My credentials for studying consciousness
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My credentials for studying consciousness

• -
• 3rd grade, Bernard Blum (Dad) - brains
• Richard Schoenwald - Freud
• In the Neurophysiology Lab of
• Dr. Warren S. McCulloch and Walter Pitts A
  Logical Calculus
• Hartley Rogers - Recursion Theory
• Marvin Minsky (PhD advisor) - AI
• When I got tenure,

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A complete summary of my results

• Consciousness is a kind of flashlight. The
  flashlight beam is a limited resource (what
  Minsky calls a serial bottleneck)
• Our conscious self is offered a set of choices.
  The beam of consciousness selects one. This
  repeats ad infinitum

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Applications

• Philosophy
• Understanding understanding, self-awareness,
  free will, resolving
• All theory is against the freedom of the
  will all experience for it. Dr. Johnson
• Science
• Building good theorem provers (as opposed to
  proof checkers), and better CAPTCHAs

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Why Consciousness Now

• There are many researchers trying to understand
  consciousness, including
• Philosophers since forever
• Neurophysiologists fMRI studies!
• Cognitive psychologists
• Roboticists
• No complexity theorists that I know of
• Les Valiant comes closest
• Leslie Lamport How to Write a Proof

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Why should Complexity Theorists study
Consciousness?

• They have not thought about it, but they are
  well-suited to develop the theory
• Automata and Turing machines
• Knowledge (Zero-knowledge)
• Randomness (Pseudorandomness)
• They understand that complexity rulez
• Researchers in The Scientific Study of
  Consciousness cry out for a theory

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Our approach is to define a formal concept of
consciousness, called CONSCSness

• CONSCS Conceptualizing Strategizing Control
  Systems
• CONSCSness the state, condition, or quality of
  being CONSCS

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Informal Notion of Entity Environment

• An ENTITY is an organism (such as an ant or a
  person) or an organization (such as an ant
  colony, a cultural group, or a nation) in
  relation to an environment
• An entity's ENVIRONMENT at time t is the entity's
  (relevant) world at time t the context in which
  the entity functions

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More Formal Definition of Environment Entity

• An ENVIRONMENT is a computational device having
  the full power of a Universal Turing Machine
  (UTM). It is connected to a collection of other
  computational devices, called ENTITIES
• An ENTITY is a computational device that
  (together with memory supplied by the
  environment) has the full power of a UTM

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You have just seen the only definitions in this
talk

• unfortunately

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The CONSCS-defining game

• 1. Formal definition of CONSCS should be
  mechanically applicable to any entity in a
  well-defined environment
• One should not have to be conscious to test if an
  entity is a CONSCS
• This requirement has a similar (but weak) analogy
  with CAPTCHAs, which are bots that distinguish
  humans from bots
• We do NOT require that our definition of
  consciousness be black-box. One may be forced
  to open up an entity

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The CONSCS-defining game

• Formal definition of CONSCS should be
  mechanically applicable to any entity in a
  well-defined environment
• The question whether an entity is CONSCS is a
  function of its algorithms, not the stuff
  (silicon or carbon) that implements those
  algorithms
• 3. In the real-world environment, people are
  CONSCS while rocks are not (CONSCS)

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Informally An entity is CONSCS relative to a
given environment iff

• The entity has a model of its environment, and a
  model of itself in the environment
• 2. The entity is motivated/driven towards goals
  
• 3. The entity is able to try on any 'story' for
  size. Story provides strategy for dealing with
  the world
• 4. The entity has simple serial circuit the
  CONSCS processor as interface between self and
  world

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1. The entity has a model of its environment and
a model of itself in its environment
Environment
Entity
Model of Entity
Model of Environment

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A. These models are for making predictions B.
The models are derived from experiment C. The
models are constantly being revised
 1. The entity has a model of its environment and
a model of itself in its environment

• A, B, C are done unconsciously/automatically.
• Revisions C are called TACTICAL revisions.

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 2. The entity is designed to .
achieve certain goals

• Goals are determined by the values of two real
  variables, pleasure and pain, and a current
  story (CS).
• Options for conscious consideration (evaluation
  by below formula) bubble up to consciousness.
• The entity is designed to consider each such
  option and select the option that maximizes
• net payoff under CS (current story)

?
?
pleasurecs(t) paincs (t) dt
Expected
prob distribs inherent in models of environ and
self
t0 current time
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  Options bubble up

• Options are generated by systems of the
  (parallel) unconscious brain, which present their
  few best ideas to consciousness.
• Options presented to consciousness are considered
  for a vote by the entire brain.
• the entity uses its current story/strategy to
  decide which option to select
• a vote taken by the entire brain accounts for
  the (apparently) serial bottleneck.

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Two kinds of options bubble up from the
unconscious

• Some are stories/strategies, such as
• I am a scientist or I
  am a crook.
• Some are not stories, including
• Get a glass of water or Get a cup
  of coffee.
• Go for a swim or Write
  up your results.

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 3. The entity has the ability to try on ANY
story for size

• A story is a theory about the world, such
  as
• . Other entities are built just like me
• Other entities are mindless robots
• A story suggests a strategy for dealing
  with the world
  
• Treat other entities with respect
• Treat other entities any way you like
• ANY story means any story/strategy that any
  entity could use to make decisions
• We are not claiming that any story will or
  even could come up,
• only that if it came up it would be
  considered.

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models/tactics vs stories/strategies

• Models are updated unconsciously. We call these
  tactical updates.
• Stories are updated consciously. We call these
  strategic updates.

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 4. The entity has a simple serial circuit the
CONSCS processor as interface between
Entitys internal unconscious (parallel) brain
AND Entitys external (massively parallel) world

• CONSCS processor is for choosing a story, and
  using story to select strategic option to focus
  on
• The options are offered up by the entitys
  internal (unconscious parallel) brain
• Choice made according to current story/strategy

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What humans are conscious of
all options that bubble up to the CONSCS
processor (but not lesser options that dont
rise to that level).
This includes

• inputs from the external environment,
• inputs from the internal environment,
• actions that one can perform on the two
  environments.
• pleasure and pain current values.

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Applications

• Philosophy
• Understanding understanding, self-awareness,
  free will, resolving
• All theory is against the freedom of the
  will all experience for it. Dr. Johnson
• Science
• Building good theorem provers (as opposed to
  proof checkers), and better CAPTCHAs

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Bibliography on the Scientific Study of
Consciousness

• David Chalmers, philosopher logician, has a huge
  excellent online bibliography
• Rodolfo Llinas, neuroscientist, is finding
  Neural Correlates of Consciousness
• Bernard Baars has a long history of good writing
  his theater metaphor is widely accepted
• Daniel Dennett, Antonio Damasi,
• Marvin Minsky never uses consciousness in his
  emotion machine, as it means different things
  to different people.