Networks and consciousness

Donald Steiny

Overall

• Won’t even try to solve AI• More about problems than solutions• Introduce the idea of networks and how they

relate to some of the problems in this area

Today

• Review of behaviorism• Review of cognitive psychology • Review of systems and the AI paradigm• Discussion of relational thinking and networks• Examples of how networks lead to new

descriptions• Some potential applications

Basic behavioral model

The idea

• No such thing as cause and effect – Hume– Not a property of things.– Just a consequence of repeated observations– A matter of faith – the fallacy of induction

• The solution?– Scientific laws are based on repeated observation– Psychology could become “scientific.”

But …

• It is not possible to recognize a balanced set of symbols without memory.AaabbbbaaaIt is, however, possible to precisely describe the

memory required by push down store automata, which lead to computer languages like C and Pascal.

This lead to “mental processes” and cognitive psychology

Meanwhile

• Shannon and Weaver– Formulation of information and redundancy

• Norbert Weiner – Cybernetics– Feedback– Control

• Representation of everything as symbols and a complete science of symbols

And in economics

• Revealed preferences• Failure of micro explanations– Coase and Williamson

• Behavioral explanations– Bounded rationality (Simon)– Heuristics and biases (Kahneman)

• Still at dyad level• Macro structures are epiphenomena

Systems

• Systems– Have inputs and outputs– They transform their inputs– They have a boundary– They have subsystems– They are part of a larger systems– Inputs/Outputs can be viewed as symbols

But …

• Symbols are always dependent on context. What Bateson called a frame was extensively developed by Erving Goffman. – He’s a student– ASCII interpreted as EBCDIC

Over in sociology land

• Harvard Department of Social Relations– Talcott Parsons• Functionalist sociology• The dream of a unified paradigm

– Harrison White • Network sociology• Methods that assume heterogeneity • The middle range of action

Atomic Actors

• Where is action located?– What is space?– Cartesian space locates action at a point• Minds• Consciousness• Etc

• Atomic theories– Rational action – Systems theory

Relational View – boys and girls

Networks as spaces

• Analogy: each of are members of multiple networks.

• This is similar to an n-dimensional space, the difference being that any point can be in an arbitrary intersection of dimensions.

• Over time the configuration of dimensions switches so points are generally not in a fixed set of dimensions.

Identity

• Each network provides a frame of reference• Different things are salient in each network.

Structural equivalence

Advice leaders

Expressive leader

Is the dot at the front or back?

What is a person?

• When you talk to me who are you talking to?– My immortal soul?– My lips?– A story you tell yourself?– Folk psychology is key

• Is an action mine or your interpretation of it? How could we know? How could we remember?

• “a god” existing at the confluence of networks.

Style

• Holds us together across identities• Helps choose our stories or actions• Persons are styles– Napoleon– Bill Clinton

• War/fashion• Sets the tone for our actions

What about a company?

• Or a country or “big business” or anything that causes things.

• Back to the old problem that behaviorism had• These live in our heads so the same problem

of making repeated observations about people applies to larger structures

Social roles

• Preexisting (structure)• Fairly fixed • Live in everyone’s heads• Held in place by control.

Stories and accountings

• We account for, explain what we observe– The swinging rope experiement– Hume’s cause – Wittgenstein’s intention

• Standard sets of stories are both guides for action explanations – Durkheim/Heddigger

• We are tied together into networks by these rhetorics

• Common sense is an underlying accounting

Our location

• Is point of view• Determines what we can access as

accountings.• Is affected by control pressures from others

(our interpretations are in the light of others)

Social networking

• New security models use networks: Granovetter diagrams

• We have multiple identities, seeing it on line makes it salient

• Facebook security model problem– Assumes single identity

Culture and meaning

• Culture is the set of available accountings and the control effort to adopt it.

• Meaning is carried across network domains as we go from pointing.

A source of - disciplines

• Like situated cognition (Hutchens)• The way we work together• Very hard to see, no ties • Influenced by style– Chinese making a company– Finns making a company– Silicon Valley making a company

• Source of stories and accountings (ties)

The problem of action

• Magical thinking• Fundamental Attribution Error• The great man hypothesis• Creativity and innovation as combinations of

borrowing and salience• Accountings and stories • Beliefs and values are explanations, not causes

How does this relate to AI

• The problem is more complex than it is made out to be

• Reducing reality to symbols won’t work