In the previous 2 articles, I discussed a basic, foundational definition of machine sentience and elaborated upon how integrated sensory systems allow practical implementations of sentient systems to arise. The definition aimed to provide a hard-boiled, nuts-and-bolts definition with immediate accessibility being of primary concern. I do believe the definition as given succeeded. However, the cost of practicality strips the basic definition of much of the more mystical elements that are commonly associated with sentience. We try to rectify this discrepancy in this article, whereby we reintroduce concepts that traditionally have been considered part & parcel of any sentient organism’s repertoire: An understanding of truth and falsehood, and the beginnings of Noumenality.
What is Truth?
What is Truth?
Pontius Pilate, in questioning of the Nazarene
For our purposes, we define truth as the result of a look-up operation between some formal system and an integrated sensory field device. As discussed in a previous article, a sensory field device is simply a mechanism that reflects some aspect of reality in a uniquely identifying way. The human eye, for example, will ostensibly recreate (more-or-less) the same internal image given reasonably identical light inputs. The same goes for the human auditory system, olfactory system, sense of balance, touch, and so on and so forth. Each of these systems interact with the world in some consistent manner. e.g. identical interactions will produce identical sense impressions upon the human “sense system”.
We choose this definition of truth for the simple reason that integrated sensory field devices can not upon themselves generate their own data. All input into sensory field devices is impressed upon them from en external source beyond the sensing system itself. (For simplicity sake, let us ignore for now the possibility of loop-back inputs, whereby the system generates models that are then fed back into the sensing circuitry) Furthermore, it is currently outside the known laws of physics for anyone to build any sort of sensory field devices that produce materially different sense impressions from identical interactions with physical phenomena.
Or rather, to put it another way: Even though all eyes, ears, noses, cameras, microphones, etc, produce slightly different variations of any given phenomena, all sense devices nevertheless still produce a sense-impression that is identifiably and physically consistent with all other sense impressions of the same phenomena.
We do not have the ability or understanding to create any sensor devices that operates on the same principles as all other similar sensor devices, yet produces materially different sense impressions, and this lack of ability appears to be, at least to the knowledge of all humans, universal.
Hence, in order to avoid delving too deeply into the muck of philosophy, this definition of “truth” will have to suffice.
However…
This definition of truth has some advantages. First, we are trying to build a machine that operates at the same level of human sentience. Hence, absolute rigor is not something that is necessarily needed. Furthermore, much of the sophistication of human behavior is actually predicated on the fact that different people “see” the world slightly differently. Building a system that takes this slight incongruency into consideration allows us to create mitigation algorithms that are inherently much more practical and usable than if we were trying to find and utilize some definition of absolute truth.
Now then. Let us turn from perception to conceptualization.
A Foundational Definition of Noumenality as Association
So far, let us assume that we have constructed the following components of our soon to be sentient machine:
- An integrated sensory field device.
- A frame and housing for the various components of said integrated sensory field device.
- Various other components attached to the housing and frame which are necessary for continuous functioning of the sensory field device, and also necessary for some output operation of the mechanism.
- An “output operation” of the mechanism. This must be something which at the very least alters the input from the external world into the sensory field device. For example, movement of the human neck muscles may produce a change in what light may enter through the retina. This produces a change in vision.
Given all of this, the machine must then enter into a process of interacting with the input from the sensory field device. In so doing, various processes are to be undertaken:
Sense Discrimination
Subsets of the sensory field input must be recognized as naturally associating with other subsets of the same sensory field input throughout a given timestamp duration.
Consider, for example, visual input of a bird. No visual input is going to ever provide solely the input data of the bird and nothing else. Instead, there will always be the sense data of the bird embedded within the sense data of some other external environment.
Our machine does not yet know what the concept of a bird is. However, it is capable of, over time, recognizing that certain sense data tends to cluster with other sense data in groups. The color of the beak of a bird, for example, also shows up in the sense data every time the color of, say, the feathers of a bird, is also in view.
This would make sense. After all, every time we look at the same picture of the same bird from the same angle, we should see a similar cluster of sense data in our visual field. This must occur, not just for the sense data of a single bird, but for the sense data of countless other things.
Over time, our machine must learn to recognize what collections of similar sense data clusters exist within its integrated sensory field.
Time Out: A Rationale for Simplification
Our machine is capable of some output which changes its sensory input. Say, motion. e.g. moving it's body will change the orientation of its cameras. In so doing, the machine is co-performing another process which is necessary for boot-strapping the process of deduction. However, we will not be discussing this process quite yet, as we have a complicated enough road ahead of us at the moment. Bare with us, dear reader.
From Association to Noumenation
After our mechanism has created an internal catalog of sense impressions which are recognized as clustering together, the machine is now capable of transforming these sense impression entries into what might be considered “Noumenal Tokens,” or rather, “Object Concepts”. It should be stressed that this is not an automatic process. The actual mechanism for how this occurs, and why, requires more knowledge of the mechanism’s use of its functional output. e.g. The ability of the machine to produce some output which alters the input from the integrated sensory field device.
We will not be discussing this processes in this article, as it would take us quite off the route of the current topic of discussion. For simplicity’s sake, assume that the machine has created a Noumenal Token from the myriad sense impressions in its sense impression catalog. What is the precise form of a Noumenal Token?
Practical Definition of a Noumenal Token
For our purposes, a Noumenal Token is simply some data structure which allows our machine to identify some subset of the integrated sensory field device, along with the state values of the sensory field device within and outside of that subset.
So what do we mean by this? Consider a computer monitor that is showing a picture of an apple on screen. A noumenal token would simply be some URI Descriptor data structure that is capable of rebuilding the apple in some meaningful sense, even when the apple is not actually on the screen. It is important to understand that a Noumenal Token is not simply a label which is assigned to the image data. It actually is a kind of encapsulating data structure that references and contains the image data itself, along with the addresses of the pixels on the screen where it was displayed. It is, essentially, “Sense Data” + “Sense Context”. e.g. What was sensed, and what parts of the sense faculties actually did the sensing, and to what degree, etc.
I so far have made reference to the “sense data” because I wanted to impress upon the reader that the data is actually being recorded and stored somewhere in the mechanism’s own internal memory. However, when it comes to the precise form of said “sense data”, it must be stressed that the actual data format of a noumenal token on disk is going to be very different than a raw recording of sense states from specific sense receptor sites. The “concept” of an apple, internally, is going to end up containing a very compressed representation of the original sense data. Much like with human beings, we do not record perfect sense impressions within ourselves(Generally speaking). And indeed, humans often do not store much more than vague generalities of the sense impressions which ultimately form our conceptualized internal representations of what we behold.
Nonetheless and to Summarize:
Our mechanism has attached to it sensory devices which form unified sense impressions. The machine records a catalog of clumps of sensory data which tends to co-occur. These clumps of sensory data are transformed into Noumenal Tokens via a process which is not automatic, but which nonetheless will be discussed in greater detail in another article.
At last, we are now ready to take our first steps towards a machine conception of causality, which will lead us to deduction, inference, and finally, self-referential conceptualization. e.g. Sentience… the next step of which we shall resume in the next article.