Consciousness Club #36: Literature and the Problem of Other Minds

Speaker: Erik Hoel (Tufts University)

Abstract: What is the purpose of fictional stories? Why are humans attracted to reading about or watching events that never happened? As the mediums we use to tell stories shifts (such as from novels to TV) what do we lose, and what do we gain? Some have offered explanations to these questions by hypothesizing that forms like literature build empathy, or, as David Foster Wallace put it, are a "cure for loneliness." But what if saying the purpose of fictions is entertainment, loneliness, or even empathy training, is selling fictional stories short? Drawing from contemporary evolutionary biology, the neuroscience of dreams, and philosophy of mind, I propose an answer to these questions that reveals how irreplaceable the novel is in our culture, and how much will be lost should it lose its grip as a medium.

Entrance is free. Eventbrite registration is required. Click here to register.

Our format this season is an informal chat, followed by longer open-ended discussions among the participants, on the topic of consciousness and cognition.

This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org

Our format this season is an informal chat, followed by longer open-ended discussions among the participants, on the topic of consciousness and cognition.

This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org

Consciousness Club #35: Empiricism versus Nativism in Artificial Intelligence

Speaker: Robert Long (NYU)

Abstract: The age-old dispute between "empiricists" and "nativists" is a foundational issue in philosophy and cognitive science. Empiricists hold that knowledge is (almost) entirely learned from experience, whereas nativists hold that (many) mental capabilities are "built in" and arise independently of experience.

Historically, this has been a debate about human and animal minds. This talk expands the debate to artificial minds. Will truly intelligent AI require innate machinery, or can AI research proceed on empiricist grounds? Building on arguments advanced by Gary Marcus (team AI nativism) and Yann LeCun (team AI empiricism). I'll claim that, even though nativism about human intelligence is largely correct, there's reason to think that empiricism will prove more fruitful in artificial intelligence. However, the key challenge for AI empiricists, as for empiricists in general, is to account for how it is possible to learn abstract concepts from experience.

Entrance is free. Eventbrite registration is required. Click here to register.

Our format this season is an informal chat, followed by longer open-ended discussions among the participants, on the topic of consciousness and cognition.

This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org

Our format this season is an informal chat, followed by longer open-ended discussions among the participants, on the topic of consciousness and cognition.

This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org

Our format this season is an informal chat, followed by longer open-ended discussions among the participants, on the topic of consciousness and cognition.

This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org

Our format this season is an informal chat, followed by longer open-ended discussions among the participants, on the topic of consciousness and cognition.

This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org

Consciousness Club #34: Buddhists and the Trolley Problem—Implications for AI Ethics

Speaker: Kin Cheung (Moravian College)

Abstract: A 2017 article in The Atlantic by Alexis C. Madrigal is titled “If Buddhist Monks Trained AI.” The subheading is “Monks take on the trolley problem, a classic moral dilemma that has big implications for driverless cars.” Buddhists are outliers in their responses to the trolley problem sets because they would push the large person. I explore possible reasons for their position including the role of intention and the impact of karma. Though there are scholars who argue Buddhist ethics is most closely matched with virtue ethics, consequentialism, or even deontology, I hold the position that Buddhist ethics is interesting precisely because it does not fit neatly into one of the three main Western ethical systems. This talk investigates Buddhist stances and their implications for the development of autonomous vehicles and AI ethics in general.Entrance is free. Registration is required. Registration information coming soon.

Cognition Lunch Salon: Enthusiasm about Russellian monism

Presenter: Torin Alter (University of Alabama)

Abstract: According to Russellian monism, consciousness is constituted by intrinsic properties that underlie structural properties described by physics. Enthusiasm about this theory is on the rise. Is this enthusiasm justified? I will consider two reasons to think not. One is that the theory offers nothing truly new. The other is that it fails to deliver on its promise to well integrate consciousness into the natural, causal order. I will suggest that neither reason is compelling. I will also suggest that seeing why provides insight into what we should ask of a theory of consciousness and its place in nature.

Presenter: Brian P. McLaughlin (Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science; Director, Rutgers Cognitive Science Center)

Abstract: A number of AI researchers are predicting that there will be sentient robots with human-level intelligence or greater within the next thirty or so years. If this prediction is correct, we face enormously difficult moral and social issues. Status as a moral agent or moral patient depends only on mental abilities. Sentient robots would have moral rights, and so should have legal rights to protect them. Moreover, the sale of robots with intelligence even approaching human-level intelligence would be slavery. There is a tsunami of humanoid robots soon to enter our lives. I argue, however, that the prediction that sentient robots with human-level intelligence will soon be here is based, in part, on a false behaviorist assumption about mentality. Although the tsunami will bring a flood of difficult moral and social issues in its wake, robots rights is not among them. The robots will be devoid of mentality. They could be damaged or destroyed, but neither harmed nor wronged.

Consciousness Club #33: Language as Bodily Gesture: From Perception and Action to Speech

Speaker: Hayden Kee (Fordham University)

Abstract: Embodied theories of the mind emphasize the centrality of action and perception in experience and cognition. A challenge for such approaches is to explain how our higher-order cognitive achievements, such as abstract thought and imagination, can be understood starting from more basic bodily abilities. The solution, I propose, may be as simple (or complex) as learning to speak. I turn to developmental studies of infant language learning for insights into the bodily foundations of language and cognition. Perhaps the 7,000 languages of the earth, for all their diversity, are all variations and elaborations of one fundamental bodily power of gestural expression.

Want to know what quantum computing really is? Could a quantum computer actually outstrip all known digital computers and build a better AI? Can a quantum computer become conscious? Who knows how to write algorithms for a quantum machine? What is quantum mechanics anyway and why is it such a beautiful headache?

Join acclaimed science journalist and author George Musser and YHouse co-founder and scientist Caleb Scharf as they struggle and sweat over these questions and more. If you've ever wanted a beginner’s guide to quantum physics, quantum computers, and one possible future for AI then this is your lucky evening! Get your wavefunction over to Caveat.

Presenter: Selmer Bringsjord (Director of the Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Laboratory).

Abstract: Panpsychism, let’s grant, is roughly the view that all the physical stuff in our world is conscious. This view seems to imply that a lot of things are conscious. After all, a lot of physical things exist!—people, pebbles, electrons, meteorites, politicians, umbrellas, llamas…ad indefinitum. On some versions of panpsychism, even some non-physical but existing things are conscious (e.g., you, if you’re a non-physical thing). Yet our view on and theory of consciousness casts an even wider net, for it counts Detective C. Auguste Dupin as not only conscious, but very conscious—and the great sleuth doesn’t even exist: he’s the creation of Edgar Allen Poe, and purely fictional. We explain why Dupin is indeed conscious, and why—on the \Lambda (as opposed to Tononi’s \Phi) measuring system of the degree of consciousness enjoyed by a being—he’s highly so. We also explain (with demos) that some of the artificial agents and robots in our lab are conscious as well, as are some of the fictional machines we’ve conceived, but not yet built.

Cylons and T2's and the Borg—Oh My!: The Danger and Potential of Artificial Life and Intelligence

Since the publication of Frankenstein in 1818, the idea of the artificial creation of life and intelligence has been considered the ultimate in "what humans are not meant to know." Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau, the colonists of Battlestar Galactica - all paid dearly for transgressing. Why is it that these things are considered so dangerous? How close are we to achieving them? Come join physicist Dr Chuck Adler and historian Bow van Riper for an evening tackling ideas from science fiction, world culture, science, and philosophy: From robots in popular culture, to Asimov's three laws of robotics, Lem's "robot fables", and Kurtzweil's "singularity" theory. 

Presenters: Kenji Doya (Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology, Japan)

Abstract: The standard paradigm in functional brain imaging is to ask subjects to perform tasks requiring a certain computation or not, to see which brain areas are more activated, and to conclude that those areas subserve the computation. However, we do not really know why and how those specific brain areas can be activated and connected when they are needed. As deep learning provides solutions to specific computations like image recognition and language processing, how to select and combine those networks as needed in different tasks and situations is a critical challenge in general and autonomous artificial intelligence. In this talk, we will explore possible anatomical and computational mechanisms that realize modularity and compositionality of the brain.

Open Discussion Led By: Michael Solomon (RWJBarnabas & MSNJ Bioethics Committee) and Olaf Witkowski (Earth-Life Science Institute)

Abstract: We are sharing this article in hopes of stimulating discussion at our Thursday March 8th meeting: "Personal robots are coming into your home. Will they share your family values?" Is it possible to program ethical values in the machines we use and have come to rely on? Can we even agree on fundamentals like “Do unto others...” or “Thou shalt not kill”? Is Diversity an obstacle to finding shared values? Can urban surveillance cameras with facial recognition be used to prevent crime and terrorism, without being used by authoritarian governments to weed out dissent? Can we have Transparency in decision making when no one can determine how neural networks reach conclusions? Ethics choices may not be between good and evil, but more often involve conflicting goods. Can we make better policies and choices with A.I. than we can without it?

Cognition Lunch Salon: Beyond or Not Beyond

Speakers: Catherine Prueitt (George Mason University) and Piet Hut (Institute for Advanced Study)

Abstract: Cat and Piet will continue an ongoing dialogue they started a few weeks ago at Columbia about the notion of exploring the notion of beyond in theory and experiment, in science and contemplation, as well as in daily life. Cat, a philosopher, and Piet, an astrophysicist, share a deep and burning interest in the question of how humans construct and experience the world they live in and themselves who live in it.

Speaker: Stephen Burlingham, an artist and thought-leader who works on projects around the world promoting global mind change.

Abstract: Life and work exploring the tangible-intangible frontier, where the moment of truth is an infinite instant.  Mr. Burlingham discusses Whisper and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; the GATEWAY art installation project and the initial engagement with Apple; and nevohteeB {Beethoven Backwards}, a current multi-media collaborative work-in-progress. Forget everything you know.

YHouse President Piet Hut joins in conversation with prominent Buddhist teacher Loch Kelly. Will include a brief meditation.

Speaker: Hayden Kee

Abstract: To what extent do we require a phenomenological level of description to adequately grasp the behavior of non-human organisms? At one extreme, some versions of autopoietic enactivism endorse a strong phenomenological life-mind continuity thesis, maintaining that wherever we find life, we find also a mind exhibiting the same basic phenomenal interiority as human experience. In this talk, I will argue that this broad application of phenomenological concepts to all living beings, including ones believed to lack sentience, introduces a fateful equivocation into the phenomenological idiom, which is designed to describe sentient experience. But this terminological clarification serves to bring into focus an underlying ontological and methodological issue: autopoietic enactivism (along with other approaches to naturalized phenomenology) is radically incomplete in the absence of a foundational (meta)physics of consciousness.

Speaker: Dr. Katsunori Miyahara (Harvard University/Rikkyo University)

Abstract:
I plead for the introduction of the perspective of philosophical phenomenology into recent neuroscientific studies of consciousness. Since its origin in the mid-19th century, psychology developed in two diverging directions, namely, as descriptive psychology and as experimental psychology. Phenomenology as a philosophical discipline initiated by Edmund Husserl is a direct descendent of the descriptive psychology of Franz Brentano. Cognitive neuroscience is a distant offspring of the early experimental psychologists including Wilhelm Wundt. Because in part of this historical background, the perspective of phenomenology remains largely ignored (with some notable exceptions) in the burgeoning sciences of consciousness. I think this is unfortunate.

After presenting a brief overview of Husserlian phenomenology and its historical origin, in this talk, I will illustrate how the absence of the phenomenological perspective can mislead scientific investigations of consciousness by taking the experimental use of the psychological phenomenon of binocular rivalry as a central example.

Organizer: YHouse (Yuko Ishihara and Benjamin Strosberg)

Date: February 13, 2018

Venue: Fordham University Bronx Campus, room TBA

Speakers: Fred Wertz (Fordham University), Hayden Kee (Fordham University), Olaf Witkowski (Tokyo Institute of Technology/Institute for Advanced Study/YHouse) and Katsunori Miyahara (Harvard University)

How can we see things that aren’t there (yet)? How can we know what we do not know? Imagination and curiosity are powerful mechanisms by which the human mind explore the unknown and creates new worlds. What are the similarities and differences of imagination in the sciences and the arts? And what are the consequences for education?

YHouse, Inc. is a nonprofit institute in New York City devoted to innovative and transdisciplinary research, intellectual partnership, and public discourse tackling humanity’s greatest questions on awareness, consciousness, and the future of intelligence. 

This Friday, February 9th at 7:00pm, Caleb Scharf (YHouse Co-founder and Columbia University Director of Astrobiology) will speak about his most recent book The Zoomable Universe. 

Speaker: Christoph Salge, University of Hertfordshire / New York University

Abstract:

What makes a mind want to do things in the first place? AI research focuses a lot on how to achieve a given goal or optimize for a given utility function. But how are these goals acquired in the first place, and are all possible utility functions suitable to motivate an AI towards more complex an interesting behaviour? It is hard to imagine that one could build a conscious agent that has no genuine goals or essential motivations.

The Great AI Debate

Artificial intelligence - it seems you either love it, hate it, or don't know what it really means. Will

thinking machines save us and enlighten us, or destroy us? Can we control what's happening with developments in machine learning, or are they already controlling us? Join YHouse's guests Simon DeDeo and Erik Hoel as their human minds battle it out, while you, the audience, get the final vote.

YHouse, Inc. is a nonprofit institute in New York City devoted to innovative and transdisciplinary research, intellectual partnership, and public discourse tackling humanity’s greatest questions on awareness, consciousness, and the future of intelligence. 

Erik Hoel, neuroscientist and 2017 Emerging Writers Fellow, interviews authors Zia Haider Rahman and Mark de Silva. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know weaves an intricate tale of the 2008 financial crisis, the Afghanistan war, and how we construct our personal narratives. Mark de Silva’s Square Wave spans from the future of the United States to the past of Sri Lanka, addressing climate change, and the nature of art and consciousness, drawing from the author’s PhD in philosophy from the University of Cambridge. Erik Hoel is a writer and neuroscientist at Columbia University researching the neurobiological basis of consciousness.

Great scientific revolutions come from challenging what we all assume to be true and expanding what science is 'allowed' to ask. Recent technological breakthroughs are pushing against our cherished assumptions about the nature and primacy of our minds, and forcing us to ask new questions about our reality.

Just before Thanksgiving, enjoy a mental feast as the YHouse Institute's brightest and best chew through some tough questions: how do we evaluate the reality of our awareness from within that same awareness? Where does consciousness really come from, and how does it fit into our ideas about the nature of life and the human future? We can't promise to answer them all, but we can guarantee a stimulating evening of stories and provocative thinking from researchers working on the extreme edge of scientific innovation.

Doors: 5:30, event 6:00.

Click here for tickets.