Weekly QuEST Discussion Topics, 27 Mar

QuEST lecture simulation representation tenets

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QuEST March 27, 2020

We then want to continue our discussion on the tenets of artificial consciousness.

Recall we seek a Theory of Consciousness:

THE ULTIMATE GOAL of a theory of consciousness is a simple and elegant set of fundamental laws, analogous to the fundamental laws of physics.

We provide the QuEST tenets – they are unlikely to be the right answer to this challenge.

1.)  Structural Coherence (interaction to ensure stable, consistent and useful representation)

2.)  Situation based processing (situations as variables) – fundamental unit of conscious cognition (narratives)

3.)  Conscious representation of situations are done via simulation (cognitively decoupled – imagined past, present and future in the form of a cohesive narrative)

Concluding:  Consciousness is Stable, consistent and useful ALL SOURCE situated simulation that is structurally coherent

Our previous discussions covered ideas in structural coherence and situated representations.  We want to continue this week with the ‘simulation’ tenet:

1. Conscious representation of situations are done via simulation (cognitively decoupled)
2. simulation is an organized body of knowledge that produces specific simulations of a situation’s instances
3. Imagined past, imagined present, imagined future – cognitively decoupled
4. Exformation (pattern completion inferring mechanism)
5. Compression (infinite number of stimuli into a single quale, low bandwidth 50 bits/sec)
6. Ability to generate meaning / situated  simulation of a new concept – the unexpected query

Some relevant aspects of the simulation tenet:

A good perceptual system has to go beyond the information given; it has to ‘invent’ things.

Your brain sees more than what your eye senses

Key is to have perceptual representation the same as what is used for cognition NOT separate distinct systems – the question is – common representational system underlies perception and cognition, not independent systems

The simulation tenet idea is – Recording systems versus conceptual systems

Solution must be a fully function concept encoding system ****

• Key aspect of solution is ‘simulators’ – simulators implement a basic conceptual system that represents types, supports categorization, and produces categorical inferences.
• These simulators further support productivity, propositions, and abstract concepts, thereby implementing a fully functional conceptual system!

Simulators  that can:

• represents types (binding a concept (type) to an individual (token) in a manner that is true or false.),
• supports categorization, and
• produces categorical inferences.

These simulators further support:

            productivity (from integrating simulators combinatorially and recursively to produce complex simulations),

            propositions (result from binding simulators to perceived individuals to represent type-token relations), and

            abstract concepts (grounded in complex simulations of combined physical and introspective events).