nonwestern philosophy

All posts tagged nonwestern philosophy

Appendix A: An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time

Posted by Damien P. Williams on September 19, 2023

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: ableism, afrofuturism, alan turing, alison kafer, alterity, anselm's ontological argument for the existence of god, artificial intelligence, astrobiology, audio, autonomous created intelligence, autonomous generated intelligence, autonomously creative intelligence, bodies in space, bodyminds, communication, cybernetics, cyborg, cyborg anthropology, cyborg ecology, cyborgs, darpa, decolonization, decolonizing mars, digital, disability, disability studies, distributed machine consciousness, distributed networked intelligence, donna haraway, economics, electronic personhood, embodied cognition, embodied machine consciousness, engineering, epistemology, ethics, eugenics, extended mind hypothesis, feminist ethics, gender bodies and technology, gordon moore, human augmentation, inspiration porn, intersectionality, Invisible Architecture of Bias, Invisible Architectures of Bias, john von neumann, journalism, kimberlé williams crenshaw, language, magic, magick, manfred e. clynes, mars, mental health, my words, my work, my writing, nasa, nathan s. kline, nonhuman animals, nonhuman personhood, nonwestern philosophy, norbert wiener, normalization, nutrition, occult, pascal's wager, personhood rights, phenomenology, philosophy, philosophy of engineering, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, political science, pop culture, popular culture, prosthetics, racism, ray kurzweil, religious studies, rené descartes, science and technology studies, science technology and society, sexism, sociology, space, space travel, sts, symbols, teaching, technoableism, technological ethics, technology, the occult, the ship of theseus, timnit gebru, transcripts, transhumanism, transphobia. Leave a Comment

Every so often, I think about the fact of one of the best things my advisor and committee members let me write and include in my actual doctoral dissertation, and I smile a bit, and since I keep wanting to share it out into the world, I figured I should put it somewhere more accessible.

So with all of that said, we now rejoin An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time, already (still, seemingly unendingly) in progress:

René Descartes (1637):
The physical and the mental have nothing to do with each other. Mind/soul is the only real part of a person.

Norbert Wiener (1948):
I don’t know about that “only real part” business, but the mind is absolutely the seat of the command and control architecture of information and the ability to reflexively reverse entropy based on context, and input/output feedback loops.

Alan Turing (1952):
Huh. I wonder if what computing machines do can reasonably be considered thinking?

Wiener:
I dunno about “thinking,” but if you mean “pockets of decreasing entropy in a framework in which the larger mass of entropy tends to increase,” then oh for sure, dude.

John Von Neumann (1958):
Wow things sure are changing fast in science and technology; we should maybe slow down and think about this before that change hits a point beyond our ability to meaningfully direct and shape it— a singularity, if you will.

Clynes & Klines (1960):
You know, it’s funny you should mention how fast things are changing because one day we’re gonna be able to have automatic tech in our bodies that lets us pump ourselves full of chemicals to deal with the rigors of space; btw, have we told you about this new thing we’re working on called “antidepressants?”

Gordon Moore (1965):
Right now an integrated circuit has 64 transistors, and they keep getting smaller, so if things keep going the way they’re going, in ten years they’ll have 65 THOUSAND. :-O

Donna Haraway (1991):
We’re all already cyborgs bound up in assemblages of the social, biological, and techonological, in relational reinforcing systems with each other. Also do you like dogs?

Ray Kurzweil (1999):
Holy Shit, did you hear that?! Because of the pace of technological change, we’re going to have a singularity where digital electronics will be indistinguishable from the very fabric of reality! They’ll be part of our bodies! Our minds will be digitally uploaded immortal cyborg AI Gods!

Tech Bros:
Wow, so true, dude; that makes a lot of sense when you think about it; I mean maybe not “Gods” so much as “artificial super intelligences,” but yeah.

90’s TechnoPagans:
I mean… Yeah? It’s all just a recapitulation of The Art in multiple technoscientific forms across time. I mean (*takes another hit of salvia*) if you think about the timeless nature of multidimensional spiritual architectures, we’re already—

DARPA:
Wait, did that guy just say something about “Uploading” and “Cyborg/AI Gods?” We got anybody working on that?? Well GET TO IT!

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women:
Wait, so our prosthetics, medications, and relational reciprocal entanglements with technosocial systems of this world in order to survive makes us cyborgs?! :-O

[Simultaneously:]

Kurzweil/90’s TechnoPagans/Tech Bros/DARPA:
Not like that.
Wiener/Clynes & Kline:
Yes, exactly.

Haraway:
I mean it’s really interesting to consider, right?

Tech Bros:
Actually, if you think about the bidirectional nature of time, and the likelihood of simulationism, it’s almost certain that there’s already an Artificial Super Intelligence, and it HATES YOU; you should probably try to build it/never think about it, just in case.

90’s TechnoPagans:
…That’s what we JUST SAID.

Philosophers of Religion (To Each Other):
…Did they just Pascal’s Wager Anselm’s Ontological Argument, but computers?

Timnit Gebru and other “AI” Ethicists:
Hey, y’all? There’s a LOT of really messed up stuff in these models you started building.

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women:
Right?

Anthony Levandowski:
I’m gonna make an AI god right now! And a CHURCH!

The General Public:
Wait, do you people actually believe this?

Microsoft/Google/IBM/Facebook:
…Which answer will make you give us more money?

Timnit Gebru and other “AI” Ethicists:
…We’re pretty sure there might be some problems with the design architectures, too…

Some STS Theorists:
Honestly this is all a little eugenics-y— like, both the technoscientific and the religious bits; have you all sought out any marginalized people who work on any of this stuff? Like, at all??

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women:
Hahahahah! …Oh you’re serious?

Anthony Levandowski:
Wait, no, nevermind about the church.

Some “AI” Engineers:
I think the things we’re working on might be conscious, or even have souls.

“AI” Ethicists/Some STS Theorists:
Anybody? These prejudices???

Wiener/Tech Bros/DARPA/Microsoft/Google/IBM/Facebook:
“Souls?” Pfffft. Look at these whackjobs, over here. “Souls.” We’re talking about the technological singularity, mind uploading into an eternal digital universal superstructure, and the inevitability of timeless artificial super intelligences; who said anything about “Souls?”

René Descartes/90’s TechnoPagans/Philosophers of Religion/Some STS Theorists/Some “AI” Engineers:
…

[Scene]

Read more of this kind of thing at:
Williams, Damien Patrick. Belief, Values, Bias, and Agency: Development of and Entanglement with “Artificial Intelligence.” PhD diss., Virginia Tech, 2022. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/111528.

2017 SRI Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series Final Report

Posted by Damien P. Williams on March 8, 2019

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: A Future Worth Thinking About, ableism, Adrian Willoughby, advaita vedanta, algorithmic bias, Alva Noe, animal ethics, Antonio Chella, bias, Bill Rowe, biomedical ethics, biotech ethics, buddhism, Christof Koch, compassion, consciousness, damien patrick williams, Daniel Sanchez, daoism, David Chalmers, David Gamez, David Presti, David Sahner, disability, disability studies, Earth Erowid, eastern philosophy, embodied cognition, ethics, extended mind hypothesis, feminist ethics, Fire Erowid, Gary Small, gender, Giulio Tononi, Henk Barendregt, homophobia, Ian Horswill, implicit bias, intersubjectivity, Invisible Architecture of Bias, Invisible Architectures of Bias, Joanna Bryson, John Murray, John Rushby, John Sullins III, Jonathan Moreno, Julia Mossbridge, machine consciousness, Machine ethics, machine intelligence, machine minds, Marcia Grabowecky, Mark Bickhard, my words, my work, my writing, Naveen Sundar Govindarajulu, neurodiversity, neuroethics, nonhuman animals, nonhuman personhood, nonwestern philosophy, Owen Holland, Patrick Lincoln, Paul Syverson, personhood rights, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, race, racism, Robin Zebrowski, Ron Rensink, Selmer Bringsjord, sexism, shannon vallor, social cognition, social dynamics, sri international, Subash Kak, Susan Blackmore, Susan Kaiser-Greenland, Susan Schneider, taoism, technological ethics, technology, technology and consciousness workshop series, transphobia. 4 comments

So, as you know, back in the summer of 2017 I participated in SRI International’s Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series. This series was an eight week program of workshops the current state of the field around, the potential future paths toward, and the moral and social implications of the notion of conscious machines. To do this, we brought together a rotating cast of dozens of researchers in AI, machine learning, psychedelics research, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, cognitive computing, neuroscience, comparative religious studies, robotics, psychology, and much more.

[Image of my name card from the Technology & Consciousness workshop series.]

We traveled from Arlington, VA, to Menlo Park, CA, to Cambridge, UK, and back, and while my primary role was that of conference co-ordinator and note-taker (that place in the intro where it says I “maintained scrupulous notes?” Think 405 pages/160,656 words of notes, taken over eight 5-day weeks of meetings), I also had three separate opportunities to present: Once on interdisciplinary perspectives on minds and mindedness; then on Daoism and Machine Consciousness; and finally on a unifying view of my thoughts across all of the sessions. In relation to this report, I would draw your attention to the following passage:

An objection to this privileging of sentience is that it is anthropomorphic “meat chauvinism”: we are projecting considerations onto technology that derive from our biology. Perhaps conscious technology could have morally salient aspects distinct from sentience: the basic elements of its consciousness could be different than ours.

All of these meetings were held under the auspices of the Chatham House Rule, which meant that there were many things I couldn’t tell you about them, such as the names of the other attendees, or what exactly they said in the context of the meetings. What I was able tell you, however, was what I talked about, and I did, several times. But as of this week, I can give you even more than that.

This past Thursday, SRI released an official public report on all of the proceedings and findings from the 2017 SRI Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series, and they have told all of the participants that they can share said report as widely as they wish. Crucially, that means that I can share it with you. You can either click this link, here, or read it directly, after the cut.

“Consciousness and Conscious Machines: What’s At Stake?”

Posted by Damien P. Williams on January 16, 2019

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: A Future Worth Thinking About, ableism, advaita vedanta, algorithmic bias, animal ethics, autonomous created intelligence, autonomous creative intelligence, autonomous generated intelligence, autonomously creative intelligence, bias, biomedical ethics, biotech ethics, buddhism, compassion, consciousness, daoism, disability, disability studies, distributed machine consciousness, eastern philosophy, embodied cognition, embodied machine consciousness, ethics, extended mind hypothesis, feminist ethics, gender, homophobia, implicit bias, intersubjectivity, Invisible Architecture of Bias, Invisible Architectures of Bias, machine consciousness, Machine ethics, machine intelligence, machine minds, my words, my work, my writing, neurodiversity, neuroethics, nonhuman animals, nonhuman personhood, nonwestern philosophy, personhood rights, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, race, racism, sexism, social cognition, social dynamics, taoism, technological ethics, technology, technology and consciousness workshop series, transphobia. 1 comment

[This paper was prepared for the 2019 Towards Conscious AI Systems Symposium co-located with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2019 Spring Symposium Series.

Much of this work derived from my final presentation at the 2017 SRI Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series: “Science, Ethics, Epistemology, and Society: Gains for All via New Kinds of Minds”.]

Abstract. This paper explores the moral, epistemological, and legal implications of multiple different definitions and formulations of human and nonhuman consciousness. Drawing upon research from race, gender, and disability studies, including the phenomenological basis for knowledge and claims to consciousness, I discuss the history of the struggles for personhood among different groups of humans, as well as nonhuman animals, and systems. In exploring the history of personhood struggles, we have a precedent for how engagements and recognition of conscious machines are likely to progress, and, more importantly, a roadmap of pitfalls to avoid. When dealing with questions of consciousness and personhood, we are ultimately dealing with questions of power and oppression as well as knowledge and ontological status—questions which require a situated and relational understanding of the stakeholders involved. To that end, I conclude with a call and outline for how to place nuance, relationality, and contextualization before and above the systematization of rules or tests, in determining or applying labels of consciousness.

Keywords: Consciousness, Machine Consciousness, Philosophy of Mind, Phenomenology, Bodyminds

[Overlapping images of an Octopus carrying a shell, a Mantis Shrimp on the sea floor, and a Pepper Robot]

Nonhuman and Nonbiological Phenomenology

Posted by Damien P. Williams on May 15, 2018

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: alterity, artificial intelligence, autonomous created intelligence, autonomous generated intelligence, autonomously creative intelligence, bodyminds, communication, digital, distributed machine consciousness, distributed networked intelligence, electronic personhood, embodied cognition, embodied machine consciousness, Emma Stamm, extended mind hypothesis, John Flowers, k.g. orphanides, language, my face, my voice, my words, my work, my writing, nonhuman animals, nonhuman personhood, nonwestern philosophy, personhood rights, phenomenology, philosophy, philosophy of engineering, philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, Robin Zebrowski, sri international, symbols, theorizing the web, ttw18, wired, wired uk. 1 comment

Late last month, I was at Theorizing the Web, in NYC, to moderate Panel B3, “Bot Phenomenology,” in which I was very grateful to moderate a panel of people I was very lucky to be able to bring together. Johnathan Flowers, Emma Stamm, and Robin Zebrowski were my interlocutors in a discussion about the potential nature of nonbiological phenomenology. Machine consciousness. What robots might feel.

I led them through with questions like “What do you take phenomenology to mean?” and “what do you think of the possibility of a machine having a phenomenology of its own?” We discussed different definitions of “language” and “communication” and “body,” and unfortunately didn’t have a conversation about how certain definitions of those terms mean that what would be considered language between cats would be a cat communicating via signalling to humans.

It was a really great conversation and the Live Stream video for this is here, and linked below (for now, but it may go away at some point, to be replaced by a static youtube link; when I know that that’s happened, I will update links and embeds, here).

Audio & Outline: Science, Ethics, Epistemology, and Society: Gains for All via New Kinds of Minds

Posted by Damien P. Williams on October 29, 2017

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: A Future Worth Thinking About, ableism, advaita vedanta, algorithmic bias, animal ethics, bias, biomedical ethics, biotech ethics, buddhism, compassion, consciousness, daoism, disability, disability studies, eastern philosophy, embodied cognition, ethics, extended mind hypothesis, feminist ethics, gender, homophobia, implicit bias, intersubjectivity, Invisible Architecture of Bias, Invisible Architectures of Bias, machine consciousness, Machine ethics, machine intelligence, machine minds, my words, my work, neurodiversity, neuroethics, nonhuman animals, nonhuman personhood, nonwestern philosophy, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, race, racism, sexism, social cognition, social dynamics, sri international, taoism, technological ethics, technology, technology and consciousness workshop series, transphobia. 2 comments

[Direct Link to Mp3]

Above is the (heavily edited) audio of my final talk for the SRI Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series. The names and voices of other participants have been removed in accordance with the Chatham House Rule.

Below you’ll find the slide deck for my presentation, and below the cut you’ll find the Outline and my notes. For now, this will have to stand in for a transcript, but if you’ve been following the Technoccult Newsletter or the Patreon, then some of this will be strikingly familiar.

Audio & Presentation: A Discussion on Daoism and Machine Consciousness

Posted by Damien P. Williams on October 21, 2017

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: A Future Worth Thinking About, algorithmic systems, artificial intelligence, audio, autonomous created intelligence, autonomously creative intelligence, bias, buddhism, chuang tzu, comparative religion, compassion, consciousness, daoism, distributed machine consciousness, eastern philosophy, embodied machine consciousness, ethics, lao tzu, laozi, loving kindness, machine consciousness, Machine ethics, machine minds, metta, my voice, my words, nonhuman personhood, nonwestern philosophy, philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, religious studies, scholar of comparative religion, taoism, technological ethics, technology and religion, wu-wei, zhuangzi. 1 comment

[Direct link to Mp3]

My second talk for the SRI International Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series was about how nonwestern philosophies like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Daoism can help mitigate various kinds of bias in machine minds and increase compassion by allowing programmers and designers to think from within a non-zero-sum matrix of win conditions for all living beings, meaning engaging multiple tokens and types of minds, outside of the assumed human “default” of straight, white, cis, ablebodied, neurotypical male. I don’t have a transcript, yet, and I’ll update it when I make one. But for now, here are my slides and some thoughts.

A Discussion on Daoism and Machine Consciousness (Slides as PDF)

(The translations of the Daoist texts referenced in the presentation are available online: The Burton Watson translation of the Chuang Tzu and the Robert G. Hendricks translation of the Tao Te Ching.)

A zero-sum system is one in which there are finite resources, but more than that, it is one in which what one side gains, another loses. So by “A non-zero-sum matrix of win conditions” I mean a combination of all of our needs and wants and resources in such a way that everyone wins. Basically, we’re talking here about trying to figure out how to program a machine consciousness that’s a master of wu-wei and limitless compassion, or metta.

The whole week was about phenomenology and religion and magic and AI and it helped me think through some problems, like how even the framing of exercises like asking Buddhist monks to talk about the Trolley Problem will miss so much that the results are meaningless. That is, the trolley problem cases tend to assume from the outset that someone on the tracks has to die, and so they don’t take into account that an entire other mode of reasoning about sacrifice and death and “acceptable losses” would have someone throw themselves under the wheels or jam their body into the gears to try to stop it before it got that far. Again: There are entire categories of nonwestern reasoning that don’t accept zero-sum thought as anything but lazy, and which search for ways by which everyone can win, so we’ll need to learn to program for contradiction not just as a tolerated state but as an underlying component. These systems assume infinitude and non-zero-sum matrices where every being involved can win.

A Future Worth Thinking About

Thinking about magic, cyborgs, robots, and artificial intelligence--and why some of those words could use changing--since 1982.

nonwestern philosophy

All posts tagged nonwestern philosophy

Appendix A: An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time

Nonhuman and Nonbiological Phenomenology

Audio & Presentation: A Discussion on Daoism and Machine Consciousness

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