At each tick of a computer clock the computer is in fact totally stationary as far as its calculating functions are concerned. It is, in fact, "dead". Only between ticks does it actually "work". And here the time taken is not known, and does not enter into the picture as long as its fast enough so it can be completed before the next tick occurs.
How does the computer therefore relate to the present?
Can we consider the computer to operate according to the image of time which we have learned from physicists? Its activities may be considered to span a period of from T1 to T2. The result of the calculation depends only on the sequence of logical operations or instructions carried out and is itself totally independent of how long it might have taken to complete them.
When a computer operates in real time it harmonizes the sampling rate of input and output so as to reproduce or produce output behavior corresponding to the physical changes which it attempts to model. Its calculations merely have to be fast emough to keep up with the sampling rate.
It is not concerned with human time consciousness nor that of any other species, nor with the human experience of the present.
But when a computer performs a time-form such as emotionally expressive music or speech, its real time operations need to reflect the real-real time experience of humans. In that domain a 1% difference in the time scale will already noticeably alter meaning. A 10% change is a considerable change for the meaning of music, for example. In speech a 10% change will not change the meaning of the words but will alter the effectiveness of the emotional "overtones" which the message carries. Accordingly therefore when communicating emotional qualities to humans the computer cannot choose its own convenient scaling but must match the output to human time consciousness, or real-real time. This requirement is unnecessary when a computer prints out verbal messages or presents visual information such as emotionally expressive faces, for example, as long as those faces are not in expressive motion.
Departure from real-real time results in the emotional qualities acquiring a Mickey Mouse character. They are still recognizable as representing particular emotional qualities, but lose most of their emotional impact. To understand this better we need to consider that the emotions as transmitted by these dynamic forms, which we have called sentic forms, also contain and imply cognitive substrates . Thus, we have shown experimentally that with the feeling of love, there is an openess and guilelessness as part of the inherent biological program [11]. Even a small lie effectively blocks the experience of love at that time. Similarly, grief affects memory function: the ability to learn, and short term memory are diminished by the feeling of grief, and the consequent loss of interest in interaction with the environment. The cognitive substrates are the first to disappear when the dynamic forms are distorted [24]. Thus the Mickey Mouse characteristics imply that the emotions denoted are robbed of their cognitive substrates. But it is precisely the cognitive substrates that provide the elements of profoundity which may be experienced through really true emotional expressions and of its sequences. Thus a piece of music may seem profound not merely because it contains a sequence of emotions but because the sequence of emotions implies a series of cognitive substrates which give it a widely and deeply probing story.
In the use of computers and robots to communicate emotions to humans, one therefore has a choice to communicate merely signs a la Mickey Mouse or to represent genuine, "sincere" human expressions and emotions. The particular applications will decide which approach may be more appropriate. If it is decided to use "sincere" expressions we have then the power in real-real time to make these expressions more powerful and more convincing than the average human would tend to produce under most average conditions. We have at our fingertips the knowhow to make these expressions powerfully communicative, contagious, and seductive in the manner of the very best that any human can do. (see footnote 4) We can optimize it beyond the abilities of the average human: we can optimize it to the degree of which our most powerful art is capable. Whether we chose to do so and for what reasons and needs, surely will comprise a new branch of social ethics which badly needs to be developed.
One positive way of using the new powers opened up by this Pandora's Box opened by the findings of our research is to provide great musical performances. How this can be done we will attempt to demonstrate with a performance of the Mozart Sonata K330, which will be brought into conjunction with the best available performances on CD by great artists for the first time. That this can be done now is only the first step in an endeavor that has many further possibilities, not easy to fathom.
Appendix A
Demonstrations of the Meaning and Precision of Time Forms
A Computer Interpretation of Mozart's Piano Sonata K330, which utilizes the composer-specific hierarchic pulse principle will be heard, along with 6 other performances of the greatest recordings available on CD of this Sonata. The music panel and the audience will be asked to rate the performances, and to pick which one is the computer performance. This test will compare the real-time performane of a computer in terms of musicality with the best real-real time human efforts.
Also played will be a computer interpretation of Bach's Air on the G string, for four independent voices, employing both Predictive Amplitude Shaping, and the Hierarchic Pulse.
The purpose is to demonstrate the degree of understanding of the principles of unconscious musical thought, of musicality.
In a second presentation, emotionally expressive sounds will be presented, which were transformed from touch expressions of the same emotion, by a transform that conserves the dynamic form - to illustrate that the nature of a particular emotion expression depends on the dynamic form, and not on the output mode, ie. is largely independent of the output mode. White urban touch expressions of specific emotions transformed to sound expressions were tested on Australian Aboriginees, for additional cross-cultural validation [13] .
Appendix B
A Short Note on the Development of Consciousness
In the context of this paper some remarks on the natural development of consciousness may be permitted. Experience of emotion is not possible without consciousness. Also, sensory experience, such as red for example, has continuity in time, and stability over long time (in addition to its unique quality), which are so far difficult to ground on the discontinuous events in time and in space of the multiple neuronal events accompanying the experience. Accordingly some thoughts on how consciousness may have arisen in nature may be assayed, in view of our developing knowledge of molecular biology. As a newly evolved phenomenon, it is of such importance that it seems not unlikely that its potentiality is provided for in the laws of nature, ie. that like water, say, it appeared in the evolution of the universe not as a total surprise. Contrary to a prevelant view according to which consciousness is deemed to become possible only when complexity increases to a sufficiently high degree, i.e. that consciousness is essentially complexity- related, the author puts forward a different view of what may be required for consciousness to arise. This approach is outlined briefly here, and will be described elsewhere more fully.
In exploring such a view, one should also consider the pervasive unconscious mental functioning, dreaming, and especially the unexplored questions of the boundaries between the unconscious and the autonomic, and whether unconscious mental function predates consciousness.
1. Content of Consciousness --- Humans are able to see, hear, smell and touch simultaneously without notable interference of one sensory experience with the other. This defines in size, and in also complexity, a minimum capacity of consciousness even without considering other mental functions.
2. Animals, even relatively primitive animals, appear to share this capacity of consciousness with humans in that they too can simultaneously see, hear, smell, touch and so on. Moreover, many primitive animals can sense some of these variables with higher resolution than can humans. Consequently, with regard to these functions one cannot take the view that animals have a smaller capacity of consciousness. The argument that such animals have no consciousness at all and act as reflex automatons is rejected (animals clearly appear to make decisions based on their sensory experience involving many of these variables, aneasthetics are used to eliminate consciousness in these animals, etc.).
3. One of the earliest qualities of experience developed in evolution is hunger. Experience of hunger - a remarkable "invention" of nature, replaced chemotaxis and served as a fount of knowledge for the animal concerning what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat - all of which is encapsulated in the experiential entity, "hunger". But hunger, as well as experience of sexual attraction which also developed at an early stage, can exist and function only if there is consciousness.
4. It is suggested therefore as plausible that consciousness itself may have developed through newly evolved genes at a relatively low stage of evolution. It would be supposed that these genes for consciousness produce certain proteins or other gene products which cause consciousness in the brain. According to this view, it is thus not complexity per se but these specific genes that would account for the emergence of consciouness in evolution. (If this is so, the capacity for being a little bit conscious would appear somewhat like a little bit pregnant.)
As progress is being made in the human genome project it is possible that such genes for consciousness could be identified in decades to follow. As we share so may of our genes with animals we may also share such consciousness creating genes with them.
5. In achieving consciousness through the interaction of proteins and other gene products in a totally unknown way it could be that a physical law would be invoked which is as yet unknown - a law which would in effect provide for the establishment of a Leibnitzian monad, as a result of specific molecular interaction. This kind of creation of one from many, similar to the creation of the oneness of the molecule from so many atoms (the potentiality of which preexists, predictable through the laws), and in some ways in effect reminescent of a field which at any one point automatically and necessarily summates the effects of many contributing sources in space, but obeying relationships as yet quite unknown would seem, according to this view, to be necessarily involved in the phenomenon of consciousness.
Accordingly, machines that do not possess the gene functions for consciousness would not become conscious no matter how complex they might become.
This does not preclude that those effective gene functions might be reproduced by an alternative molecular realisation, so that consciousness could then also be produced by a different configuration of matter than in natural evolution on this planet. But that would depend on the specific nature of the interaction and functions; it could also be that the solution realised by nature which we observe on earth is the only one possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment