Anyway, enough “dear journal”, I really have to quote these few sentences from Thomas Metzinger’s book, Being No One. While they do build on a lot of what he has written up to that point (starting with definitions of “transparency”, said constraints, “representation” and “phenomenal experience”), they’re utterly brilliant on their own as well, I think, and a big stepping stone for tackling the problem known as the hard problem of consciousness.

[...] If all other necessary and sufficient constraints for the emergence of phenomenal experience are satisfied by a given representational system, the addition of a transparent self-model will by necessity lead to the emergence of a phenomenal self. Phenomenal selfhood results from autoepistemic closure in a self-representing system; it is a lack of information. The prereflexive, preattentive experience of being someone results directly from the contents of the currently active self-model being transparent. [...] Under a general principle of ontological parsimony it is not necessary (or rational) to assume the existence of selves, because as theoretical entities they fulfill no indispensable explanatory function. What exists are information-processing systems engaged in the transparent process of phenomenal self-modelling. All that can be explained by the phenomenological notion of a “self” can also be explained using the representationalist notion of a transparent self-model.

Really, just brilliant.

(I do hope that this falls under fair use in the context of scientific research, if the quotation is too expansive please notify me and I will remove it, or narrow it down further, immediately.)

Ich schreibe diesen Post unter anderem auch als Antwort auf diesen Blogpost auf tou.ch (und spezifisch auf den Kommentar von “Blocher”). Ich finde ja, eine einzige Person als “Schuldigen” herauszustellen, wenn auch 121 andere Leute anders hätten wählen können, etwas seltsam – jeder einzelne Parlamentarier war ein pivotaler Wähler.

Wirtschaftspolitisch ein erfreuliches Ereignis, eigentlich. Aber dies soll nicht das Thema dieses Blogposts sein. Das hier hingegen schon (Video aus Late Service Public):

In der politischen Diskussion wurde in letzter Zeit regelmässig das Schlagwort der “Konkordanz” für diverse Positionen benutzt. Ich denke, dass wir uns hier vor allem deshalb nicht verstehen, weil jeder das Wort etwas anders definiert; ein typisch sprachphilosophisches Problem. Ich würde gerne die folgenden Arten der Konkordanz unterscheiden (Nomenklatur recht willkürlich, lediglich die arithmetische Konkordanz ist schon im Sprachgebrauch), über die gängige Definition der Konkordanzdemokratie hinaus:

• Arithmetische Konkordanz – jede Partei muss gemäss ihrer prozentualen Vertretung im Parlament auch prozentual im Bundesrat vertreten sein.
• Gleichschaltende Konkordanz – jeder Bundesrat sollte das denken und fühlen, was der Gesamtbundesrat beschlossen hat, und kann somit gar nichts dagegen sagen wollen. Er wird auch in Zukunft im BR gemäss vergangener Bundesratsbeschlüsse argumentieren.
• Inhaltliche Konkordanz – jeder Bundesrat sollte das vertreten, was der Gesamtbundesrat beschlossen hat, und sollte seinen Kollegen nicht in den Rücken fallen. (Auch: Kollegialitätsprinzip)
• Positionale Konkordanz – die Kernbotschaften jeder Partei müssen durch ihren Vertreter im Bundesrat vertreten sein.
• Personelle Konkordanz – die Kernbotschaften jeder Partei müssen durch die Vertreter, die sie designiert und vorgeschlagen haben, im Bundesrat vertreten sein.

Positionen

Die positionale und arithmetische Konkordanz werden von niemandem ernsthaft bestritten. Die inhaltliche Konkordanz wird nur von einigen wenigen radikaleren SVP-Exponenten in Frage gestellt, ich glaube, auch diese sollten wir als „Konsens“ abtun. Das Parlament hat ja bei der Abwahl von Alt-BR Blocher, die es bis in den Deutschen Blick geschafft hat, recht deutlich gemacht, was es von dieser Einstellung hält.

Bei den anderen Arten von Konkordanz jedoch gehen die Meinungen auseinander.

Die SVP: Sie findet, personelle Konkordanz sei wichtig, und stellt sie mit arithmetischer und positionaler Konkordanz gleich. Weiter stellt die SVP-Rhetorik inhaltliche und gleichschaltende Konkordanz oft gleich, und benutzt diese Gleichstellung als Argument gegen die inhaltliche Konkordanz (oder tat dies zumindest, diese Position hat sich mittlerweile wieder aufgeweicht – Worte widersprechen hier Taten).

Die anderen Parteien: Sie können besser unterscheiden und sind nur nach “Zwängerei” der SVP mit knappster Mehrheit auf die personelle Konkordanz eingetreten, weil die SVP (nicht die anderen Parteien) sonst die arithmetische Konkordanz zerstört hätte.

Ueli Maurer

BR Maurer: Er scheint sich im Moment tatsächlich der inhaltlichen Konkordanz zu verschreiben. Diese beinhaltet ja nicht, dass er seine Position während BR-Beratungen nicht mehr vertreten und dafür argumentieren dürfte, beinhaltet aber sehr wohl, dass er Entschlüsse des Gesamtbundesrates vertritt und damit der Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft klare Zeichen von der Regierung sendet. BR Maurer scheint sie auch nicht mit einer gleichschaltenden Konkordanz zu verwechseln. Ich traue ihm zu, dass er uns alle noch positiv überrascht.

Weitere Betrachtungen

Die personelle Konkordanz ist ein Streitpunkt, bei dem in der Vergangenheit alle Parteien „schuldig“ sind. Gerade auch bei der SP wurden aber ja schon diverse Male (unter anderem durch die SVP) andere Vertreter in das Bundesratsamt gewählt, als von der Partei vorgeschlagen worden waren. Dies aber natürlich unter anderem auch deshalb, weil die dann gewählten Personen die Inhalte ihrer Partei anders und mehr im Sinne der wählenden Parteien vertreten hat – entsprechend sind tatsächlich personelle und positionale Konkordanz bis zu einem gewissen Grad miteinander verknüpft, aber natürlich nie in dem Ausmass, das die SVP uns weismachen möchte.

Schön ist ja, dass jetzt mit dem SVP-Anspruch auf einen Sitz von der SP oder FDP nun auch die arithmetische Konkordanz von rechter Seite in Frage gestellt wird – nachdem mit eben dieser arithmetischen Konkordanz für den Sitz, den sie nun mit BR Maurer erhalten hat, gekämpft wurde. Ich enthalte mich diesbezüglich eines Kommentars.

Ganz interessant in diesem Zusammenhang übrigens ist auch, dass die SVP bei den letzten kantonalen Wahlen es tatsächlich geschafft hat, aus der Exekutive aller urbanen Räume geworfen zu werden.

Update 2008-12-15 15:05: Im Stadtwanderer findet sich eine gute Übersicht bezüglich der Etymologie der Konkordanz, und wie sich das Prinzip in der Schweizer Politik entwickelt hat. Absolut lesenswert.

But, phenomenologists have a point: There are things science just can’t explain (yet?), and often, when trying to incorporate science (or rather, the scientific methods) and the way we have subjective intentionality, philosophers of mind either didn’t bring forth an entirely convincing argument or invented terms like supervenience or epiphenomenalism that essentially say “we don’t know how exactly, but it just happens”.

That didn’t satisfy me. So I went to write a paper of my own about the subject:

The Legitimation of Traditional Phenomenology in a Rational-Causalist World

From the Abstract:

Traditional phenomenology has both gained new followers and new opponents in the last years. Followers, because it can explain things other approaches (like neurophysiology, or even psychology) can’t. Opponents, because it is dualist in nature and not really compatible with the way our science these days operates.

I will, in this short paper, attempt to show up how the good and important findings of traditional phenomenology can be incorporated in our rational-causalist world view, while at the same time avoiding to commit to its controversial parts. I will also show why I choose this approach and not one starting with traditional phenomenology.

To that end, I will attempt to single out two fundamental dogmas of phenomenology – that mental objects are immaterial, and that mental objects are (or can be) directed at physical entities – and show in what way altering those changes the entire theory that’s built upon them, enabling a reading of phenomenology that takes its contents serious and at the same time is compatible with a rational-causalist world view.

I did hand in the paper already, and I’m really looking forward to discussing it with the Professor later this month.

Keep in mind that I’m still merely a student working on his Diploma thesis (equivalent to Master under Bologna), so I’m sure I still have lots to learn Particularly the whole subjectivity issue isn’t quite solved yet.

Also, thanks to Prof. Marbach for this opportunity and an always open ear, Ste for the feedback during the writing of this paper, and to my wife Arzo for her awesome support.

Update 08-11-13, 15:52: Gee, I just had the first part (originally meant to be the whole) of some kind of a review discussion with Prof. Marbach, and I realized I misunderstood quite a few things about phenomenology, while I was not entirely clear on quite a few points in the paper, too, and actually have some things in there that border being factual errors. It’s great that I see those now, the idea that I could was one of the main things that drove me when writing the paper and putting forth such a controversial point. But take this as a word of caution – even less than I thought in this work here can be taken at face value, and I’ll revise quite a few points for my diploma thesis.

Now, looking for reasonable GUIs (because I’m just too old to hack anything without a comfortable environment) I stumbled upon LyX, which seems to be reasonably comfy. It runs now, after an afternoon of shouting and crying, so I decided I’d make a little tutorial as to how exactly you’ll have to install it.

My Windows Vista Business (32-Bit) is German, so bear with me regarding the screenshot texts.

Update 2009-03-25 13:41: There is a Windows Installer now, which still takes some time to install and requires various steps, but has some message boxes guiding you through the process. It’s still in beta, but worked a treat on my Windows XP machine.

Which LyX? And What Else?

Now, first off, there are two installation packages for LyX (which you find on the Wiki). At the time of this writing, do not download the one linked on the download page. The installer you want is (currently) this one:

LyX-1.5.6-1-Installer-Bundle.exe (95 MB)

(There might be a newer version on the Wiki, so check back there if you access this post later than September 2008.)

The non-bundle installer tries to download MiKTeX during the installation, which is nice, but it obviously does so with an outdated URL, yielding a 404 (not found) error:

404 Error

The installation will complete despite this error, but you won’t have a LaTeX frontend, but just … a standalone editor without any exporting functionality, basically worth nil.

Keep in mind that despite the LyX setup telling you it can use an existing MiKTeX installation, that’s simply not true, as it looks for a tex.exe file, which the current distribution of MiKTeX just doesn’t include. So don’t download MiKTeX individually either, unless you don’t plan to use the LyX frontend.

So just install the bundle from the start.

Installation

OK, now that you have the proper file, it’s time to install it. You will need to install it as administrator, as the installation process will otherwise abort after 30 minutes (more in this later). So right-click the file, “Run as Administrator”.

Run as Admin

OK, enter your credentials if you use UAC, and off you go. Select “Install MiKTeX”, UI language and dictionaries, select a directory and start. You’ll probably want to install it for all users. The LyX installation itself will be over rather quick, although you’ll have to agree to each dictionary’s terms of use individually.

After a minute or so, the MiKTeX license agreement will pop up, tick “I accept” and off goes the long part. First, select whether you want to install MiKTeX for all users or just yourself – choosing the same here as for LyX is wise – and a directory.

Now, the next question for settings seems rather innocent, but I strongly suggest switching “install missing packages” to “yes” (I’ll write about why yes and not “ask every time” a bit below, selecting “no” doesn’t make much sense since you want a working program):

Install Missing Packages

Good, start. You will see the following screen for quite some time now:

LyX installing MiKTeX

After about 15 minutes on my mobile Core2 with 2GHz, you will need to push “Next >” after the completion of the MiKTeX setup, to continue the LyX setup. Now, if you didn’t select “Yes” above, a plethora of package installation dialogs will pop up – and grab focus, so if you happen to install happily, and do something else while the computer is milling, you might screw up your installation with a careless key press.

Just imagine, you happily type a blog post, and then you cancel the running installation because that blog post would’ve contained a “C” next when the popup grabs focus. Yes, experience speaking (although, OK, it must’ve been me panicking and pushing “Escape” instead).

Package Installation

OK, so you haven’t screwed up. Another 20 minutes, and you will be greeted with an inviting image. If you started as administrator, that is, otherwise the installation routine will abort right here with an error and leave you with half a program installed.

LyX Driver Error

Don’t worry, it’s just Vista being paranoid about the Metafile to EPS Converter, a printer driver that’s installed in the course of this setup. “Install anyway” is the way to go.

Now, you’re nearly done. Close the setup (without checking the “run LyX immediately” box, unless you want to run it as administrator, too), and start LyX from the start menu. You will need to provide your UAC credentials yet again upon running LyX for the first time, since it does some further installation stuff for your standard user.

LyX Installed!

Conclusion

In all honesty, I didn’t expect to spend an entire afternoon (well into the evening) installing a working LaTeX environment. It works now it seems, and I’m looking forward to writing things in a WYSIWYM typesetting system instead of a WYSIWYG word processor (where you don’t quite get what you see after all, and it’s easy to focus on presentation over content or structure). But the way there could have been less annoying.

Disclaimer: This isn’t the first time I’m writing something with LaTeX, the last time I wrote in a text editor with just basic highlighting. But that’s over five years ago – I do hear though that templating hasn’t gotten a lot easier since. I’ll now write a “test” 15 page paper with this first, before I fully delve into my diploma thesis. If this test doesn’t prove successful by my yet to be determined standards, which may include those dreaded custom styles (anybody has good documentation on .sty files?), off I am to OpenOffice with TinyPDF again.

The Republican Party is gathering in St. Paul, to put forth its vision of the future. [...] Which makes us wonder: what does science fiction, the literature of the future, have to say about liberal-run dystopias? And it turns out, there are plenty of horrendous futures blighted by the heavy hands of our zinfandel-spitting liberal elites. Here are the scifi stories John McCain should mention in his acceptance speech.

There there, it’s OK. McCain is everything but elected just yet. Let’s talk about the subject matter though, and let’s even ignore the three or four implied insults in “zinfandel-spitting liberal elites”.

Liberalism and the Americans

It’s funny how Americans use the word “liberalism”. As US Democratic politics are not actually (traditional) liberal politics at all. Liberalism is freedom from what liberals perceive as “oppression from the state”, it is the strive for maximum liberty for both individuals and corporations, and as such particularly not things such as the gouvernment of 1984, which allows no individual liberties whatsoever.

The context makes it clear that this is not the kind of liberalism the author is speaking about, but still I find it puzzling how the wide array of policies and agendas that call themselves (derivates of) liberal in one way or another is often thrown into the same pot, although they’re quite contradictory in important points.

Not even A Clockwork Orange should be seen as a work about liberal dystopia in this strict sense. Indeed it does start out with some kind of liberal dystopian world, in that law and order are overthrown and everybody does what they want. But it then goes on to show that even in such a society, too severe restriction of individual liberties (by restriction of the free will) can only lead to harm. And when Alex truly changes, it’s because of his inner drives and the free will the gouvernment nearly took from him, not because of the Pavlovian treatment.

Those Works and Social Liberalism

I think it’s correct to assume that the author knew this and talked about social liberalism, which is more or less the Democrat’s policies, instead. I’m actually rather convinced that’s true, in face of this comment of hers:

About half the works I’m discussing are by conservative commentators seeking to use science fiction to dramatize what they see as liberal ideas taken to their furthest extreme. The other half are all-purpose dystopian works that one could claim (and that people have claimed) represent an extreme view of liberal ideals.

Even so I’d disagree with some interpretations. Admittedly, I haven’t read more than half the works there, so I can’t analyze them all, and even if I could I wouldn’t want to because it’s not specifics we should be talking about.

It’s still important to note that political correctness is everything but egalitarianism: It’s realization of and respect for the fact that we’re different and the belief that it doesn’t and shouldn’t influence our judgements. It’s also important to note that redefining “discrimination” to include things like abilities and fitness for jobs doesn’t make a particularly convincing argument. And even social liberals don’t want to suppress religion, they just don’t want religion to suppress science. Finally, socialism is a different thing than liberalism (and “liberalism”) entirely.

Why This Kind of Propaganda is Wrong

Now, even with the works where the above reservations don’t apply: abusing them for pro-Republican propaganda seems just wrong to me. Which US party again was it that made Homeland Security (which is essentially utterly useless, but about as totalitarian as the western world gets) as powerful as it is now? Who made nationalism en vogue (via Stupid Evil Bastard) again? Whose current-day politics are the ones that are closer to totalitarian dystopias?

Swashbuckling aside, and acknowledging that republican policies are everything but politically correct or egalitarian, we’re getting to the core issue with using those books for propaganda. Yes, they’re warning signs, but they should warn us from something else than the ideas they take to the extreme:

Every “simple” idea taken to the extreme leads to implications nobody can want, and only fundamentalist indoctrination can reach. Just look at Utilitarianism, which is the idea of “everybody should be happy” transcribed to “the sum of all happiness combined should be maximized”. So you have two thirds of the population incredibly happy and the rest in slavery and not happy at all – strictly utilitarian speaking, that’s better than everybody half as happy as the two thirds served by slaves would be. Now, utilitarians of course don’t want that, and do everything to avoid that conclusion, but their idea taken to the extreme would lead there.

I’m carefully avoiding talking about the Islam in this context just yet, just want to make it clear that for Muslims, the same applies as does for Christians: Fundamentalism is wrong and exists. It’s just that western (US like European) media likes to portray Muslim fundamentalists instead of reasonable people when they’re talking about the evil east. Anyway.

So, taking “liberal” (or “Democratic”, both with the meanings Americans commonly apply to them) ideas to the extreme does nothing to show anything about their fitness for anything, bar the fitness for being taken to extremes that reasonable people (and presidential candidates) never mean to reach.

The Chinese Room

When I started preparing for my upcoming diploma thesis about consciousness, the possibility of AI and how it all fits together, I couldn’t help but stop at this thought experiment that the famous and bright philosopher John Searle brought up in 1980.

Few papers are still so disputed after now 25 years (although, this being philosophy we’re talking about, all papers are still somewhat disputed after hundreds of years), and the subject matter is as or more current as it was then: The Chinese Room, brought up in the article Minds, Brains and Programs that was published in the journal Behavioural and Brain Sciences.

In short, the thought experiment that my paper (link further down) tries to shed a light on, goes as follows, synopsis mine and maybe a tad jovial for the subject:

There is a thinking homunculus in a room who doesn’t understand Chinese, but has an elaborate set of rules gouverning his actions.

He receives pieces of paper from scientists on the outside, with Chinese symbols, processes them with his rules and paints other Chinese symbols that he returns to the outside – without understanding a thing.

Now the scientists outside cackle with glee, for they think they have crafted a machine that, by merely following rules, can understand Chinese.

However, so Searle argues, since the homunculus on the inside doesn’t understand Chinese, the whole machine can’t possibly understand Chinese (as there is no single part that does the understanding). From this and the similarity from this to any other machine, he follows that no machine can possibly have true understanding and as such, strong AI (that he defines as truly understanding) cannot exist.

OK, so … is he right? Is (strong) AI research doomed?

There are of course several answers to this, quite different in both approach and consequences:

• Yes, he’s right. Now, that would be boring, and if I’d believe this I wouldn’t have written this blog post nor the paper it’s about.
• We don’t even want strong AI research, what Searle deems “weak AI” is actually a huge feat and more than enough for all our wishes. Which Searle doesn’t deny by the way, he didn’t mean to diminish the value of “weak AI” by calling it “weak” (which I can’t help but find a tiny bit funny) and respects advances.
• Searle seems to underestimate the complexity of the required rules, and believes that we can wrap our heads around a machine with millions of moving parts consisting of pipes and flows of water. While I do think that we can’t due to too limited mental capacity, I do believe that Searle is aware of that restriction of ours and, as he makes clear himself, believes in a matter of principle that doesn’t change with growing system complexity.
• His argument is fundamentally flawed and looking for the smallest atomic bit of understanding (or, as he later specifies, the non-reproducible biological-causal properties of the human brain that a computer can’t have by matter of principle and material) is the wrong approach in the first place. Searle basically dismisses this because he finds it ridiculous and contradictory to common sense.

Myself, I like to put myself into the last of those camps. Particularly because I don’t believe in such a thing as “common sense” being actually common, or even a guideline towards truth.

For all those approaches trying to disprove him, Searle thinks he showed they’re wrong – and with most of his rebuttals, I’ll have to admit that I agree with him wholeheartedly. However, there are a few points where I strongly disagree despite all due respect for one of the greatest thinkers of our time.

And those points are where my paper regarding that subject comes into play:

The Chinese Chatroom

I try and figure out which arguments can be found in which ones of the various answers that said article provoked already upon the time of its release (and in particular those that were printed in the same issue of the journal), research what the Turing Test and (even more so) the Turing Machine are really about, and how the question and possibility of simulation versus replication of causal effects come into play.

I’m quite convinced that if what the current perception of the Turing Machine as “a machine to replicate all machines” is correct (which I know hasn’t been mathematically proven), there is no such thing as a fundamental problem with us eventually getting to the point where we do or at least can have strong AI, with machines that are very similar in functionality (albeit probably necessarily much more powerful) to today’s computers.

I’ll have to add that since I wrote this paper, I read quite a bit more about some subjects that appear in the paper, and meanwhile I could add more references to philosophers (in particular, Daniel Dennett) who share views similar to mine and have developed them a lot further than I could so far.