Intelligence witnessed the Big Bang
Seeing | Philosophy | 2024-10-13
Hans Busstra, MA
Bill Mensch
Could it be a coincidence that two founding fathers of modern day computing, independently from each other, are both coming with theories of consciousness that are idealist in nature? Or does a deep understanding of what computation is—and what it is not—inevitably lead away from physicalist ideas on consciousness?
Previously Essentia Foundation presented the work of Federico Faggin, and now a legendary contemporary of his, computer engineer Bill Mensch, presents his Theory of Embedded Intelligence (TEI) to us. Mensch was a major contributor to the Motorola 6800 and became famous for his work on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU, a chip that, because of it’s efficiency, completely revolutionized computing in the 80’s. From Arcade halls to the Apple II and Nintendo 8 bit consoles, 6502s could be found everywhere. Even to this day the chip is still used in children’s toys and even in pacemakers and satellites.
Looking back at his career, Mensch realizes that building computer chips is in essence a form of ‘embedding’ intelligence in technology, just as nature has embedded intelligence in biological systems, like humans. In his TEI model intelligence is fundamental. This raises the philosophical question of how consciousness relates to intelligence, and for this reason Bernardo Kastrup joined in on the conversation Mensch and Hans Busstra had.
The value of a theory like Mensch’s is perhaps exactly that it is not philosophically fine-tuned to the terminology commonly used in philosophy of mind. By not taking the human mind and phenomenal consciousness as its departure point, but intelligence instead, Mensch arrives at a position in which the distinction between living beings and abiotic systems is less distinct.
Mensch’s slides can be downloaded here.
Essentia Foundation communicates, in an accessible but rigorous manner, the latest results in science and philosophy that point to the mental nature of reality. We are committed to strict, academic-level curation of the material we publish.
Recently published
|
In 2018, Professor Etzel Cardeña, PhD, published a landmark review paper surveying thousands of psi studies in “American Psychologist,” one of psychology’s most respected journals. In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Cardeña explains his main findings and why a dismissal of psi without looking at the data is “as unscientific as you can get.” Cardeña’s conclusion is that the cumulative evidence for psi phenomena is so strong that outright dismissal is no longer scientifically justified.
|
Harry Stolting argues that, while nature automatically excludes all that is unsustainable within its own natural dynamic, the human mind can create and maintain within itself maladaptive ideas that, if expressed in nature, would quickly be driven out. This leads to a mismatch between our inner concepts and the reality whereupon we believe we can apply those concepts. This schism between nature and our mental models, Stolting argues, is not only the origin of evil, but of many other ills.
From the archives
|
Moreira invites us into a long meditation on the meaning of digital spaces, and the possibility of finding another in the endless cacophony of simulacra. When you reach across the screen—he says—you do not know if the figure you address is real or fabricated, friend or phantom. The temptation is to strike first, to treat them as less than a person. But if there is even the chance of an Other on the far side, the only way to preserve meaning is to extend recognition before certainty. In the digital void, kindness is the only bridge that can survive simulation.
|
Dr. Nicolas Rouleau is a neuroscientist, bioengineer, and Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University. He wrote the award-winning essay, ‘An Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death,’ in which he argues that the transmissive theory of consciousness may actually be more consistent with emerging scientific insights than the dominant assumption that the brain generates consciousness. In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Rouleau shares the main arguments from his essay, which touch upon his collaboration with Dr. Michael Persinger, the inventor of the ‘God Helmet,’ and his work with Michael Levin on ‘mind blindness’—the idea that science may be searching for mind in too restricted a place by focusing almost exclusively on neurons.
|
The search for authenticity fails because we conduct it in the wrong place: thought itself. The epistemic gap—the inability of concepts to capture experiential reality—produces the persistent sense that something fundamental about existence is amiss, a tension that underlies much existential questioning. When representations are mistaken for reality, three pervasive forms of suffering follow: fear of death, violence, and pride. Each dissolves when the error is recognized. But recognition alone fades; only sustained disengagement from conceptual identification makes the insight a lived experience, argues Steven Pashko.
Reading
Essays
|
Dr. Koch argues that, because AI computers have a feed-forward structure very reminiscent of the human cerebellum—which is empirically known not to be involved in human consciousness—we have no reason to expect AI computers to have a conscious inner life of their own. He further substantiates his argument with the clear, quantified prediction of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) that systems with low integrated information, such as silicon computers implementing Large Language Models, do not feel like anything from the inside.
|
Prof. Karl Friston is the most cited neuroscientist in the world, renowned for pioneering the framework of active inference and for developing the influential Free Energy Principle (FEP). In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Friston touches on the metaphysics of his FEP, which surprisingly points to non-dualism instead of materialism, as widely assumed. According to Friston, space and time, the self, and even the FEP itself are mere stories, useful fictions with real explanatory power, which do not give us direct access to the noumenal reality.
|
Moreira invites us into a long meditation on the meaning of digital spaces, and the possibility of finding another in the endless cacophony of simulacra. When you reach across the screen—he says—you do not know if the figure you address is real or fabricated, friend or phantom. The temptation is to strike first, to treat them as less than a person. But if there is even the chance of an Other on the far side, the only way to preserve meaning is to extend recognition before certainty. In the digital void, kindness is the only bridge that can survive simulation.
|
Dr. Nicolas Rouleau is a neuroscientist, bioengineer, and Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University. He wrote the award-winning essay, ‘An Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death,’ in which he argues that the transmissive theory of consciousness may actually be more consistent with emerging scientific insights than the dominant assumption that the brain generates consciousness. In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Rouleau shares the main arguments from his essay, which touch upon his collaboration with Dr. Michael Persinger, the inventor of the ‘God Helmet,’ and his work with Michael Levin on ‘mind blindness’—the idea that science may be searching for mind in too restricted a place by focusing almost exclusively on neurons.
|
The search for authenticity fails because we conduct it in the wrong place: thought itself. The epistemic gap—the inability of concepts to capture experiential reality—produces the persistent sense that something fundamental about existence is amiss, a tension that underlies much existential questioning. When representations are mistaken for reality, three pervasive forms of suffering follow: fear of death, violence, and pride. Each dissolves when the error is recognized. But recognition alone fades; only sustained disengagement from conceptual identification makes the insight a lived experience, argues Steven Pashko.
Seeing
Videos
|
Anil Seth is a world-leading neuroscientist who has made important contributions to our understanding of reality as a controlled hallucination. According to the concept of active inference, our perception of reality is not a direct reflection of the world but, instead, the most accurate guess that our brain can muster, which it continually checks and updates with incoming sensory information. But strange things happen when neuroscientists play around with sensory input in unexpected ways. Anil Seth and his team at Sussex University created the Dream Machine, a stroboscopic device that syncs flickering light to music to induce vivid, often complex, hallucinatory visuals in the viewer. In group sessions, exactly the same white light and music gives rise to a tremendous diversity in perception.
|
Prof. Larry Nazareth recounts the fundamental difference in perspective that underlies the Cartesian and Bergsonian views of life and world. The former’s dictum states: ‘I compute, algorithmically, therefore I think, symbolically, therefore I am, experientially.’ The latter, however, reverses this dictum: ‘I am, experientially, therefore I think, symbolically, therefore I compute, algorithmically.’ Depending on which of these views we choose to base our understanding of nature and life, we may or may not have a future, Nazareth argues.
|
How is it possible that the cerebellum, which contains roughly 80% of all the neurons in the human brain, can be severely damaged, or even absent, without abolishing consciousness? In this conversation, Jeremiah Hendren, a member of the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) Lab and long-term collaborator of IIT founder Giulio Tononi, joins Hans Busstra to unpack Integrated Information Theory (IIT), a theory that answers this fascinating neuroscience mystery.
Let us build the future of our culture together
Essentia Foundation is a registered non-profit committed to making its content as accessible as possible. Therefore, we depend on non-financial contributions from people like you to continue to do our work.
