Marvin Minsky's The Emotion Machine: Chapter 4 Consciousness

Original author: Marvin Minsky
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During the hype on the digital economy and *** chains, it's time to pay attention to how to bring the “human” to technology and how technology helps to understand and improve and scale the “human”. The stern Marvin Minsky will help us with this, who, with his ruthless mind, analyzes feelings, emotions, pain, love and consciousness.

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§ 4-1. What is the nature of Consciousness?

“Not a single philosopher, and hardly any of the writers, could ever explain the mystery of what human consciousness consists of. The body, external objects, memory, warm fantasies, other people's minds, guilt, fear, doubts, lies, fun, grief, breath-stopping pain and thousands of other things that words can only clumsily outline, exist and are merged into one connection of consciousness ”
- Iris Murdoch “The Black Prince”, 1973
What creatures are the owners of consciousness? Does it exist in chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans or baboons? And what about dolphins and elephants? Are frogs, fish, insects or vegetables aware of themselves to a certain extent, or is consciousness a separate trait that separates us from other creatures?

Although, these animals will not answer the question “Do you realize that you exist” or “What is your assumption of what consciousness is,” answers from people are hardly more useful. When you ask mystical thinkers how consciousness works, their answer doesn’t really reveal the essence.

Sri Chinmoy: “Consciousness is an internal spark or internal connection in us. The golden link that connects our highest and most illumined parts with our lower and least illuminated parts. ” [1]
Some philosophers even insist that there is no sane answer to this question.
Jerry Fodor: “No one has the slightest idea how something material can be conscious. Moreover, no one has the slightest idea how to be one who has at least some idea of ​​how something material can be conscious. An insurmountable task for the philosophy of consciousness. " [2]
Does consciousness work about the principle of “all or nothing” and has a clear boundary, or can it have different volumes and properties, just as objects can change their characteristics and be either cold or hot?

Relativist: Everything has a bit of consciousness. The atom has a little. More things should have more consciousness, and so on to stars and galaxies.

Absolutist: We do not know where consciousness begins and ends, but it is absolutely clear that every thing either has consciousness or not. From this it is clear that there is no consciousness in the stone.

Programmer: It seems to me that some computer programs already have the rudiments of consciousness.


Logistician (1):Before understanding that such consciousness should first give it a definition. Good arguments are found when they start with an exact statement about what exactly they are. Otherwise, you build a house on the sand.

Such an attitude may sound “logical,” but all this is wrong when it comes to psychology, because it takes on faith that “consciousness” has a clear and precise meaning. Naturally, we do not want to be inaccurate, but a strict definition can further complicate the situation until we make sure that our ideas are correct. We use the term “consciousness” for a wide variety of processes and for different types of intentions; we apply it to feelings, emotions and thoughts - and how we interpret them and how we feel about it. The same thing happens with most daily used words about the mind, such as “creativity” or “mind”.

So, instead of asking what “consciousness” is or what we mean by the word “realize,” we will try to take a closer look at when and why people use these mysterious words. But precisely why did such a question arise at all? What is the essence of mystery?
Daniel Dennett: “The phenomenon is called mysterious, because people do not know how to comprehend it yet. Human consciousness is almost the only remaining mystery. There were other great mysteries - the origin of the universe, time, space and gravity. ... However, Consciousness today stands out in this series of questions, since it is confusing and speechless even the most sophisticated thinkers. As with all previous riddles, there are many who insist and hope that the riddle of consciousness will never be solved. ”
- Explanation of Consciousness, 1991
In fact, many of those who “insist and hope” that consciousness cannot be explained at the same time claim that it is itself the source of most of the virtues of the human mind.

Thinker 1: Consciousness is what unites our present, past and future, and gives meaning to all our experience.

Thinker 2: Consciousness enables us to “become aware” of ourselves and gain a sense of identity; it is that which enlivens our minds and gives us the feeling that we are alive.

Thinker 3: Consciousness is what gives meaning to things for us; without it, we would not even understand that we have feelings.

Wow! How is it possible that one single principle, energy or power endows us with so many abilities? And it can’t! And just in this chapter it will be shown that there is no reason to believe that all these different abilities come from one single source. In fact, from what we know about the brain, it is safer to assume that they are all based on different mechanisms.
William Calvin and George Ozheman: “Modern discussions about consciousness ... usually include such a side of mental life as focusing on things that you don’t know what you know, mental repetition, thinking, decision making, awareness, altered state of consciousness, voluntary actions, subconscious priming (2) the development in children of self-awareness and narration that we tell ourselves when we are awake or sleeping. ” [3]
All this shows that “consciousness” does not refer to one single idea or thing, but to the fact that we use this term as a compound word for many different processes.

§ 4-2. Opening the “suitcase” of Consciousness


Aaron Broken: “You should not ask how to define consciousness, how to explain it, how it developed, what its function, etc. because there is no single thing for which all the answers will be the same. On the contrary, we have many sub-capabilities for which the answers are different: for example, different types of perception, training, knowledge, attention control, self-monitoring, self-control, etc. ”[4]
To see the diversity of what the human brain does, think about this piece of daily thinking.

Joan partially crossed the street, heading for her report. While she ponders what to say at the meeting, she hears a sound, turns her head and sees a fast approaching car. Doubting to go or return, but feeling anxious about being late, she decides to run across the road. In the future, she recalls her injured knee and reflects on her impulsive decision. “If my knee let me down, I could die. What would my friends think of me then? ”

It might seem natural to ask: "To what extent was Joan conscious of what she did?" But, instead of dwelling on the word “consciousness,” let's look at a few things that Joan “did.”

Reaction: Joan quickly reacted to the sound.
Identification: She recognized it as a sound.
Characterization: She classified it as the sound of a car.
Note: She noted some things and ignored others.
Imagination: She imagined two or more possible scenarios of the future.
Uncertainty: She wondered whether it was worth crossing the street or moving away.
Decision making: She chose one of several alternative actions.
Recollection: She restored the description of previous events.
Revaluation: Subsequently, she redefined her choice.
Choice: She chose the preferred path among the possibilities.
Gloomy foreboding: She was anxious to be late.
Planning: She built a multi-stage action plan.
Association: She tried to describe the state of her body.
Emotions: She changed most of her mental state.
Presentation: She interconnected many descriptions.
Language: She built several verbal expressions.
Narration: She heard them as a dialogue in her mind.
Anticipation: She expected a certain state of the future.
Intention: She changed some of her target priorities.
Meditation: She made various inferences.
Reflection: She considered what she had recently done.
Empathy: She introduced the thoughts of other people.
Moral Reflection: She appreciated what she did.
Self-image: She created and used models of herself.
Self-identity: She characterized her mental states.
Sense of Identity: She saw herself as a creature.


This is only the beginning of a much longer list of sides of how we feel and think - and if we want to understand how our brain works, we will need to explain all of them. In order to do this, we must take each separately and consider in detail how each of them works. Then each reader can decide which bottom is and which is not, considered as the side of the “conscious”.

4-2.1. Compound words in Psychology


Holist [4]: Even after you analyze all those parts, you still need to explain how they are all combined to create the flows of consciousness that arise from them. Therefore, you will still need some words to describe this whole phenomenon.

Why did our language come to what includes such terms as “awareness”, “perception”, “consciousness”, each of which condenses many different processes?

Psychologist: Such collective words are useful in everyday social life because they help us communicate - both with our friends and with ourselves. And all because we all have some confusing ideas and we can put them in an indefinite compound term that gives visible relief in understanding.

Ethics:We need to instill in them a commitment to the principle of responsibility and discipline. Our legislative and ethical principles are mainly based on the idea that we should punish or encourage only “intentional” actions, that is, actions that are based on preliminary planning with forecasting consequences.

Psychiatrist: Perhaps we use these collective terms to keep ourselves from asking too many questions about how our mind controls itself and what underlies our decisions.

Student: If “consciousness” is simply a composite term, then why does it happen that it is crystal clear for us that we possess such a thing? And if such a thing constantly changes its meaning, then why doesn’t it become obvious when we think it over?

This may be because no part of the brain can “see” much of what the rest of the brain does. A standard resource (5) inside the brain performs work inside itself so that other resources cannot perceive it. Moreover, when a resource tries to probe another resource, this action itself can change the state of this other - and thus confuse exactly the data that would be necessary to find out what is happening.
David Hume: “The movement of our body follows the commands of our will. Every moment of this we are aware. But the means by which this is achieved; the energy by which the will performs such extraordinary operations; we are so far from a direct awareness of this that it should endlessly elude our most thorough study. ”
Hume suggests that we can never develop more powerful ways to examine ourselves - but today we have new scanners that show a lot of what is happening inside the brain. For example, we can note activity that begins before our limbs come in motion.

Dualist philosopher: And yet, our instruments will ultimately fail, because the brain can be measured, but not the idea. Some creatures have consciousness, others not - and consciousness is a subjective thing that cannot be explained in terms of physics.

Functional philosopher:What evidence can support your belief that consciousness cannot be explained? We can look at it simply as a name for what happens when certain processes start inside our brain.


I agree with this second opinion, except for the moment that we also have to say what these “certain processes” are doing - and why we distinguish them as a group. (The next section will suggest a theory of this). However, many thinkers still believe that the structure of the brain should be based on something that goes beyond the reach of our current machines.

Emergentist [6]: Apparently, consciousness is one of those “whole things” that arise when a system becomes quite complex. Perhaps this is exactly what we should expect from a network of billions of cells in the brain.

If we increase the size of the system, then, usually, it becomes worse to work until we improve its design, and this always implies some compromise; if a system is built with too many connections, then it will lead to congestion - at the same time, if there are too few connections, it is generally a useless system.

In addition, if complexity is the only thing we need, then almost everything would have consciousness. We do not want to conclude that the waves of water think, however, the way the wave crashes to the shore is more complicated (at least in some way) than the processes that go on in our brain.

So, it makes no sense to ask what consciousness is because it is a compound word that we fill with a lot more things than one simple common sense can have. It is also futile to try to discuss so many different things at the same time, except for the case when we are trying to explain why we strive to consider all these things as a whole. Let's listen to Aaron Broken again:
Aaron Broken:“Personally, I believe that the definition of consciousness is an unnecessary task that distracts attention from important and complex problems. The whole idea is based on a fundamentally false idea that if there is a noun “consciousness”, it means that there is a “thing” and it is the same as magnetism or electricity or pressure or temperature and that a relative concept of this thing should be sought. Or another misconception that it’s worth trying to prove that a certain mechanism may or may not create “this”, or try to find out how “this” developed, or try to find out which of the animals have “this”, or try to decide at what point “this” "Begins when the embryo develops, or at what point" it "ends when the death of the brain occurs, etc. "There is not one single thing to correlate, but a very large set of very different things."
I completely agree with Broken's view of this. In order to understand how our thinking works, we must study those “very different things” and then ask what kind of mechanisms some or all of them can do. In other words, we should try to create - as the opposite of defining - mechanisms that our mind can do.

[1] Logicism is a direction in mathematics that seeks to reduce all mathematics to logic (approx. Translator).

[2] Priming is a short-term effect that leaves a deep trace in the psyche. For example, the first thing that hatched ducklings will see is so imprinted in their memory that they will treat it like a mother (approx. Translator)

[3] Aaron Sloman is an English modern philosopher, one of not many whom Marvin Minsky truly respected (translator's note).

[4] Holism is a position in philosophy and science on the problem of the correlation of part and whole, proceeding from a quality originality and priority the whole in relation to its parts (Wikipedia)

[5] Resource - by this word Marvin Minsky means any of the isolated centers performing a certain function. For example, the Wernicke center in the brain is responsible for understanding speech (approx. Translator)

[6] Emergence - the irreducibility of system properties to the sum of the properties of its components (Wikipedia)



Thank you for the translation Victor Ivanov. Who wants to help with the translation - write in a personal email or mail magisterludi2016@yandex.ru


about the author


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Marvin Lee Minsky (born Marvin Lee Minsky; August 9, 1927 - January 24, 2016) is an American scientist in the field of artificial intelligence, co-founder of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [ Wikipedia ]

Interesting facts:

  • Minsky was friends with the critic Harold Bloom of Yale University, who spoke of him only as “the sinister Marvin of Minsky.”
  • Isaac Asimov described Minsky as one of two people who are smarter than himself; the second, in his opinion, was Karl Sagan.
  • Marvin is a robot with artificial intelligence from the Douglas Adams cycle of hitchhikers in the galaxy and the movie Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film).
  • Minsky has a contract to freeze his brain after death in order to be "resurrected" in the future.
  • In honor of Minsky, the dog is named the main character in the movie Tron: Legacy. [ Wikipedia ]



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