Contents

Vol. 14, No.7, July 2007
Machine Consciousness: Embodiment and Imagination
Guest editors: Steve Torrance, Robert Clowes & Ron Chrisley
R. Clowes, S. Torrance & R. Chrisley    full text
Editorial Introduction
I. Aleksander & H. Morton   abstract
Why Axiomatic Models of Being Conscious?
S. Bringsjord   abstract
Offer: One Billion Dollars for a Conscious Robot; If You’re Honest, You Must Decline
R. Chrisley & J. Parthemore   abstract
Synthetic Phenomenology: Exploiting Embodiment to Specify the Non-Conceptual Content of Visual Experience
R. Clowes    abstract
A Self-Regulation Model of Inner Speech and its Role in the Organisation of Human Conscious Experience
P.O.A. Haikonen   abstract
Essential Issues of Conscious Machines
G. Hesslow & D.-A. Jirenhedthor   abstract
The Inner World of a Simple Robot
O. Holland   abstract
A Strongly Embodied Approach to Machine Consciousness
T. Ikegami   abstract
Simulating Active Perception and Mental Imagery with Embodied Chaotic Itinerancy
J. Kiverstein   abstract
Could a Robot have a Subjective Point of View?
S.A.J. Stuart   abstract
Machine Consciousness: Cognitive and Kinaesthetic Imagination
S. Torrance   abstract
Two Conceptions of Machine Phenomenality
T. Ziemke   abstract
The Embodied Self: Theories, Hunches and Robot Models

ABSTRACTS

Igor Aleksander and Helen Morton

Why Axiomatic Models of Being Conscious?

Abstract: This paper looks closely at previously enunciated axioms that specifically include phenomenology as the sense of a self in a perceptual world. This, we suggest, is an appropriate way of doing science on a first-person phenomenon. The axioms break consciousness down into five key components: presence, imagination, attention, volition and emotions. The paper examines anew the mechanism of each and how they interact to give a single sensation. An abstract architecture, the Kernel Architecture, is introduced as a starting point for building computational models. The thrust of the paper is to relate the axioms to the kernel architecture and indicate that this opens a way of discussing some first-person issues: tests for consciousness, animal consciousness and Higher Order Thought.

Correspondence: Igor Aleksander, Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Imperial College, London SW7 2BT. i.aleksander@imperial.ac.uk
Helen Morton, School of Social Sciences, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, U.K. Helen.morton@brunel.ac.uk (also Imperial College).

Selmer Bringsjord

Offer: One Billion Dollars for a Conscious Robot; If You’re Honest, You Must Decline

Abstract: You are offered one billion dollars to ‘simply’ produce a proof-of-concept robot that has phenomenal consciousness — in fact, you can receive a deliciously large portion of the money up front, by simply starting a three-year work plan in good faith. Should you take the money and commence? No. I explain why this refusal is in order, now and into the foreseeable future.

Correspondence: Selmer Bringsjord, Departments of Cognitive and Computer Science, Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Lab, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA.
selmer@rpi.edu

Ron Chrisley and Joel Parthemore

Synthetic Phenomenology: Exploiting Embodiment to Specify the Non-Conceptual Content of Visual Experience

Abstract: Not all research in machine consciousness aims to instantiate phenomenal states in artefacts. For example, one can use artefacts that do not themselves have phenomenal states, merely to simulate or model organisms that do. Nevertheless, one might refer to all of these pursuits — instantiating, simulating or modelling phenomenal states in an artefact — as ‘synthetic phenomenality’. But there is another way in which artificial agents (be they simulated or real) may play a crucial role in understanding or creating consciousness: ‘synthetic phenomenology’. Explanations involving specific experiential events require a means of specifying the contents of experience; not all of them can be specified linguistically. One alternative, at least for the case of visual experience, is to use depictions that either evoke or refer to the content of the experience. Practical considerations concerning the generation and integration of such depictions argue in favour of a synthetic approach: the generation of depictions through the use of an embodied, perceiving and acting agent, either virtual or real. Synthetic phenomenology, then, is the attempt to use the states, interactions and capacities of an artificial agent for the purpose of specifying the contents of conscious experience. This paper takes the first steps toward seeing how one might use a robot to specify the non-conceptual content of the visual experience of an (hypothetical) organism that the robot models.

Correspondence: Ron Chrisley, COGS/Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QH, UK. ronc@sussex.ac.uk

Robert Clowes

A Self-Regulation Model of Inner Speech and its Role in the Organisation of Human Conscious Experience

Abstract: This paper argues for the importance of inner speech in a proper understanding of the structure of human conscious experience. It reviews one recent attempt to build a model of inner speech based on a grammaticization model (Steels, 2003) and compares it with a self-regulation model here proposed. This latter model is located within the broader literature on the role of language in cognition and the inner voice in consciousness. I argue that this role is not limited to checking the grammatical correctness of prospective utterances before they are spoken. Rather, it is a more broadly activity-structuring role, regulating and shaping the ongoing shape of human activity in the world. Through linking inner speech to the control of attention, I argue that the study of the functional role of inner speech should be a central area of analysis in our attempt to understand the development and qualitative character of human consciousness and that modelling can play a central role in that understanding.

Correspondence: Robert Clowes, Centre for Research in Cognitive Science, Department of Informatics, Sussex University, Brighton BN1 9QH, East Sussex.
robertc@sussex.ac.uk

Pentti O.A. Haikonen

Essential Issues of Conscious Machines

Abstract: The development of conscious machines faces a number of difficult issues  such as the apparent immateriality of mind, qualia and self-awareness. Also consciousness-related cognitive processes such as perception, imagination, motivation and inner speech are a technical challenge. It is foreseen that the development of machine consciousness would call for a system approach; the developer of conscious machines should consider complete systems that integrate the cognitive processes seamlessly and process information in a transparent way with representational and non-representational information-processing modes. An overview of the main issues is given and some possible solutions are outlined.

Correspondence: Dr Pentti O.A. Haikonen, Principal Scientist, Cognitive Technology, Nokia Research Center, P.O. Box 407, FI-00045 NOKIA GROUP, Finland.
pentti.haikonen@nokia.com

Germund Hesslow and Dan-Anders Jirenhed

The Inner World of a Simple Robot

Abstract: The purpose of the paper is to discuss whether a particular robot can be said to have an ‘inner world’, something that can be taken to be a critical feature of consciousness. It has previously been argued that the mechanism underlying the appearance of an inner world in humans is an ability of our brains to simulate behaviour and perception. A robot has previously been designed in which perception can be simulated. A prima facie case can be made that this robot has an inner world in the same sense as humans. Various objections to this claim are discussed in the paper and it is concluded that the robot, although extremely simple, can easily be improved without adding any new principles, so that ascribing an inner world to it becomes intuitively reasonable.

Correspondence: Germund Hesslow, BMC F 10, S 221 84 LUND, Sweden. germund.hesslow@med.lu.se

Owen Holland

A Strongly Embodied Approach to Machine Consciousness

Abstract: Over sixty years ago, Kenneth Craik noted that, if an organism (or an artificial agent) carried ‘a small-scale model of external reality and of its own possible actions within its head’, it could use the model to behave intelligently. This paper argues that the possible actions might best be represented by interactions between a model of reality and a model of the agent, and that, in such an arrangement, the internal model of the agent might be a transparent model of the sort recently discussed by Metzinger, and so might offer a useful analogue of a conscious entity. The CRONOS project has built a robot functionally similar to a human that has been provided with an internal model of itself and of the world to be used in the way suggested by Craik; when the system is completed, it will be possible to study its operation from the perspective not only of artificial intelligence, but also of machine consciousness.

Correspondence: Department of Computer Science, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, CO4 3SQ, UK. owen@essex.ac.uk

Takashi Ikegami

Simulating Active Perception and Mental Imagery with Embodied Chaotic Itinerancy

Abstract: We explore the understanding of conscious states in terms of spatio-temporal dynamics through modelling a mobile agent. Conscious states are associated with an agent’s spontaneous and deterministic fluctuation between attachment to and detachment from the surroundings. It is because of this fluctuating nature, we argue, that an agent can perceive structure in the world. Perception requires a conscious state in physical devices. This is a central concern of this paper, and we examine it by simulating a mobile agent equipped with an interconnected Fitz-Hugh-Nagumo (FHN) neuron network with delayed signal transmissions. The agent can move around a space by sensing the environment pattern through the input neurons and computing the motor outputs via the FHN network.

The agent shows a variety of motion styles and a spontaneous selection of motion styles responding to the surroundings. Such a phenomenon is named embodied chaotic itinerancy (ECI), as an extension of chaotic itinerant dynamics, which is known to be a typical dynamic with a high degree of freedom. We take this selective mode of response to be significant, particularly those interacting with spatial pattern, as an inevitable property of conscious states.

Correspondence: Department of General Systems Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan. ikeg@sacral.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Julian Kiverstein

Could A Robot Have A Subjective Point Of View?

Abstract: Scepticism about the possibility of machine consciousness comes in at least two forms. Some argue that our neurobiology is special, and only something sharing our neurobiology could be a subject of experience. Others argue that a machine couldn’t be anything else but a zombie: there could never be something it is like to be a machine. I advance a dynamic sensorimotor account of consciousness which argues against both these varieties of scepticism.

Correspondence: J.Kiverstein@ed.ac.uk

Susan A. J. Stuart

Machine Consciousness: Cognitive and Kinaesthetic Imagination

Abstract: Machine consciousness exists already in organic systems and it is only a matter of time — and some agreement — before it will be realised in reverse-engineered organic systems and forward- engineered inorganic systems. The agreement must be over the preconditions that must first be met if the enterprise is to be successful, and it is these preconditions, for instance, being a socially-embedded, structurally-coupled and dynamic, goal-directed entity that organises its perceptual input and enacts its world through the application of both a cognitive and kinaesthetic imagination, that I shall concentrate on presenting in this paper. It will become clear that these preconditions will present engineers with a tall order, but not, I will argue, an impossible one. After all, we might agree with Freeman and Núñez’s claim that the machine metaphor has restricted the expectations of the cognitive sciences (Freeman & Núñez, 1999); but it is a double-edged sword, since our limited expectations about machines also narrow the potential of our cognitive science.

Correspondence: Dr Susan Stuart, 11 University Gardens, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QH S.Stuart@philosophy.arts.gla.ac.uk

Steve Torrance

Two Conceptions of Machine Phenomenality

Abstract: Current approaches to machine consciousness (MC) tend to offer a range of characteristic responses to critics of the enterprise. Many of these responses seem to marginalize phenomenal consciousness, by presupposing a ‘thin’ conception of phenomenality. This conception is, we will argue, largely shared by anti-computationalist critics of MC. On the thin conception, physiological or neural or functional or organizational features are secondary accompaniments to consciousness rather than primary components of consciousness itself. We outline an alternative, ‘thick’ conception of phenomenality. This shows some signposts in the direction of a more adequate approach to MC.

Correspondence: Centre for Research in Cognitive Science, Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Falmer, Sussex BN1 9QH. stevet@sussex.ac.uk

Tom Ziemke

The Embodied Self: Theories, Hunches and Robot Models

Abstract: Many theories and models of machine consciousness emphasize the role of embodiment. However, there are different interpretations of exactly what kind of embodiment would be required for an artifact to be at least potentially conscious. This paper contrasts the sensorimotor approach, which holds that consciousness emerges from the mastery of sensorimotor knowledge resulting from the interaction between agent and environment, with the view that the living body's homeostatic regulation is crucial to self and consciousness.
Correspondence: Professor Tom Ziemke, School of Humanities & Informatics, University of Skövde, PO Box 408, 54128 Skövde, Sweden. tom.ziemke@his.se
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