Related papers: First Person Singular
Creativity is perhaps what most differentiates humans from other species. It involves the capacity to shift between divergent and convergent modes of thought in response to task demands. Divergent thought has been characterized as the kind…
Can machines think? This is a central question in artificial intelligence research. However, there is a substantial divergence of views on the answer to this question. Why do people have such significant differences of opinion, even when…
General wisdom is, mathematical operation is needed to generate number by numbers. It is pointed out that without any mathematical operation true random numbers can be generated by numbers through algorithmic process. It implies that human…
This paper aims to justify the concept of natural intelligence, the type of intelligence wider than human intelligence and its derivative, AI. I will argue that the process of life is a cognitive process and that organisms, from bacteria to…
Recent progress in artificial intelligence provides the opportunity to ask the question of what is unique about human intelligence, but with a new comparison class. I argue that we can understand human intelligence, and the ways in which it…
Theory of Mind is commonly defined as the ability to attribute mental states (e.g., beliefs, goals) to oneself, and to others. A large body of previous work - from the social sciences to artificial intelligence - has observed that Theory of…
A singular attribute of humankind is our ability to undertake novel, cooperative behavior, or teamwork. This requires that we can communicate goals, plans, and ideas between the brains of individuals to create shared intentionality. Using…
Several philosophical problems arising from the physics of consciousness, including identity, duplication, teleportation, simulation, self-location, and the Boltzmann Brain problem, hinge on one of the most deeply held but unnecessary…
We claim that it is possible to have artificial software agents for which their actions and the world they inhabit have first-person or intrinsic meanings. The first-person or intrinsic meaning of an entity to a system is defined as its…
An origin is often an intriguing issue. It becomes doubly intriguing when the logical form of thinking is considered. In this paper we will investigate exactly that: we will conjecture on the origin of basic instruments of logical thinking.…
Consciousness is the process by which one attributes `meaning' to the world. Considering F$\phi$llesdal's definition of `meaning' as the joint product of all `evidence' that is available to those who `communicate', we conclude that science…
People sometimes worry about the Singularity [Vinge, 1993; Kurzweil, 2005], or about the world being taken over by artificially intelligent robots. I believe the risks of these are very small. However, few people recognize that we already…
The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and…
Physics is so successful today in understanding the nature of matter. What can it say about mind ? Is it possible to have a unified theory of matter and mind within the framework of modern science ? Is Consciousness an accident or is it a…
Artificial intelligence systems exhibit many useful capabilities, but they appear to lack understanding. This essay describes how we could go about constructing a machine capable of understanding. As John Locke (1689) pointed out words are…
The ability to produce and understand an unlimited number of different sentences is a hallmark of human language. Linguists have sought to define the essence of this generative capacity using formal grammars that describe the syntactic…
Large Language Models (LLMs) can simulate person-like things which at least appear to have stable behavioural and psychological dispositions. Call these things characters. Are characters minded and psychologically continuous entities with…
In standard first order predicate logic with identity it is usually taken that $a=a$ is a theorem for any term $a$. It is easily shown that this enables the apparent proof of a theorem stating the existence of any entity whatsoever. This…
The most enigmatic aspect of consciousness is the fact that it is felt, as a subjective sensation. The theory proposed here aims to explain this particular aspect. The theory encompasses both the computation that is presumably involved and…
It is largely believed that complex cognitive phenomena require the perfect orchestrated collaboration of many neurons. However, this is not what converging experimental evidence suggests. Single neurons, the so-called concept cells, may be…