Sentience is the key to Consciousness

keywords : sentience - the ability to feel sensations, consciousness - the feeling of being alive

   Behaviors are sequences of outputs of animal nervous systems. Behaviors are generated in response to perceptions. Does consciousness direct behavior or is consciousness a reflection of behavior after the fact or is it a combination of the two?
   Suppose all or some of the time consciousness directs behavior. Implication is that consciousness decides behavior in response to the perceived world. So consciouness reads the sensory inputs, memories, and inputs from mental simulations of various possibilities in the real world for each of the possible action. And then it decides on the beahvior that is a best fit for the desired result. Desired result has to be predetermined as a goal. Goals are needed to direct behavior. We experience the computational selection of a goal by our brains as drive to reach goal or as desire. In every step of the way, feeling is experienced of sensory and nuerological inputs. It is feelings, as in "I feel good or, right, comfortable, fearful, angry, irritated etc.."  that guide us toward our goals. It is also feelings that make us set goals. eg. I want a good job goal. To come to this goal, I simulate life with a good job and life with out one. The simulations generate information and we can feel the consequnces in simulated feelings. We sense a feeling of the would be future in our imagination. Now, if it feels good, we set the goal as something we want to accomplish in the real world.
  Suppose consciousness directs behavior. This can be possible if consciousness is a state of mind that is always simulating a model of the world and integrating information coming through senses. The state of mind also uses information from memory and then generates behavior so as to move closer to goals. Drives to do anything is experienced as a desire. Those feeling keeps guiding actions. Now the big problem is how is brain able to produce consciousness or how does it feel any thing. If we can solve that problem, then synthesizing consciousness in machines can be worked on. An example - think of a robot that can feel hungry when it is battery needs charging. It then proceeds to a power outlet and charges itself.  Artificail Intelligence is being used to make such automatic machines. Such machines perform as programmed by human masters. But they do not have a deire to produce any particular behavior as they do not feel. If they could feel, then they will start behaving as animals rather than machines. The above robot that feels hungry can simulate what needs to be done to remedy the pain of hunger - charge batteries. Now that it has a goal of charging it's batteries, it can invoke algorithmic programs to find a power outlet and feed itself. Sentience is the component in the synthesis of consciousness that cannot be generated algorithmically. At least, we do not have good theories on how it can be generated algorithmically.

Motivation and Inspiration

Mechanism of motivation and inspiration can be understood by introspection. Walk back in time to an occasion that inspired and motivated you. Trace your thoughts and feelings as you went from an unmotivated to a motivated state. What was it that triggered motivation? Using the example of exercise, say you were unmotivated and looking for reasons to skip exercising on a day. But then some thought inspired you to go to the gym. What could that thought be ? Perhaps, visions of a shapely body. Perhaps the sight of some your secret competitors going to the gym and leaving you behind ?The thought of being surrounded by beautiful bodies at the gym or the possibility of running into someone you admire. Any of these could have triggered the motivation. Motivation need not have come from rational thoughts of the health benefits of exercising exclusively. Motivation draws you into life with ease and delight. How wonderful it would be to be inspired and motivated to accomplish the goals we set for our selves. Being inspired and motivated in all our efforts would make life such a joy. When inspired, we live in the moment with enthusiasm and joy. Does it not seem worthwhile to design motivational and inspirational triggers into all of our activities! There must be ways to generate inspiration at will. I have noticed that it is easier to be motivated when my physical state is good - not hungry or thirsty, well rested, peaceful rather than agitated, comfortable rather than hot or cold or in pain. Perhaps, we should be mindful of physical well being in order to receive motivation and inspiration. Visualizing the consequence of achieving a goal also encourages motivation. Finding thought solutions for obstacles to achieving a goal clears the way for motivation to manifest.

Feeling

04/09/2016

Feeling is the ultimate mystery. We have machines that can compute, sense, move, play back memories. But the ability to experience feeling has not been artificially produced, problem solved by evolution. We can program a machine to make precise movements to follow a path and reach a destination. The path will have to broken down to a sequence of basic steps that the machine can do. The basic steps will then have to be stored in the machines memory and executed in the correct order. We can also make a machine that is just give it's objective as to reach a destination.. The machine can then move at every point of time to reduce the distance to destination. Now it does not have to store the entire path in memory. But, just the algorithm to move towards it's goal. This is done in Artificial Intelligence systems. In a  being that can experience feeling, the algorithm can be further simplified - move, when you move you will feel good if moving towards goal, feel bad when moving away from goal. Now the machine does not have to be hard wired to a predefined algorithm. It can try random things. It will repeat moves that makes it feel good. So, computationally a machine with feeling looks to be the most versatile in coping with unknown environments. So, I see why clusters of molecules that can feel won in the game of natural selection.

 Yet, the mechanism that produces feeling remains a mystery. If that is solved, then machines that are self aware and conscious will follow.

Consider sleep. To me sleep is a state with no content, perhaps my understanding is limited. When we go to sleep, contexts of our waking moments are stored in memory. When we wake up, we recognize the contextual world by way of memory. The self that is awake connects periods remembered and imagination fills the voids. Is that not plausible for the nature of self? Can we not think of X going to sleep as her death. Coming out of sleep, as the birth of a new person Y. But Y is equipped with and no more than the biographical memory of X. Thoughts of Y are framed by the biographical memory of X and all others that similarly preceded X. Now Y experiences a stream of biographical memories of all her predecessors, giving her the illusion of an atomic continuous self.

Posted Mar/2013

What is I?
A sense of a collection of molecules that they are unified and are separate from the rest of the universe. This is necessary for what? For the processes in the collection of molecules to continue as long as possible. The purpose of I is the survival of the bio-chemical processes present in an individual. I can see the utility of this "I" sense from an evolutionary perspective. There is is no preexisting plan for the synthesis of I. It just came about and happens to be a process equipped and with a desire to carry on uninterrupted. Recognize the fear of death! Without I, organisms would not survive to the extant they have. Can we think of another device that can do a better or even as good a job as the sense of I? 

Our connection to any other is merely through memory -we form memories and we replay them in our heads and experience connection. So, to have a connected life with depth, purpose and passion, create memories!

Self Awareness

Self awareness can be thought of as phenomenon that came about by gradual accumulation of cognitive abilities and sentience.

Think of object is a simulated world. The object can be designed to work a certain way with all other objects that make it's external world. Suppose the situated world is modeled to obey Newton's laws of motion. We can have a ball that can be bounced, tossed and rolled in any direction. The balls motion is prescribed by physical laws of dynamics. Suppose the ball is now given the properties such as it suffers damage it came into contact with sharp things in the simulated world. Say we attach an actuator controlled by electronic intelligence to one of the balls. The electronic brain has the capacity to direct the ballls movement. But it has no sentience and thus no desire to prevent damage to itself. It just does not experience pain or pleasure and has no goal setting agenda' Now if sensors were added to the ball to if it is given artificial intelligence, it has the capacity to avoid damage by means of computing the oncoming events.