Artificial consciousness - Will Art replace the Artist?
This was a lecture during the panel
KUENSTLICHE KUNST - ART AND AESTHETICS IN TIMES OF THE ARTIFICIAL organized by Martin Sperka at ISEA96, Sept 18-20, 1996 in Rotterdam. The other panel-members have been Peter Beyls, Raymond Lauzzana, and Frieder Nake.
AUTHOR: Dr. Gerd Döben-Henisch
FIRST DATE: Sept-18, 1996
DATE of LAST CHANGE: Oct-15, 1996
Background
The background of my talk is a philosophical research project at the Institute for New Media in Frankfurt (Germany). The project is called the Knowbotic Interface Project and its main target is the development of a formal philosophical theory of the structures of human experience paralleled by a computer simulation based on this theory.
As an abbreviation I am calling this computer simulation an Artificial Consciousness [AC]. Other names used for this simulation are Knowbot or Semiotic Machine. The concept of an Artificial Consciousness is part of the more wider paradigm od Computer Aided Philosophy [CAP] which has sharply to be distinguished from Artificial Intelligence [AI], from Software Agents, and from the Artificial Life [AL] paradigm. In what follows I want to communicate to you some philosophical reflections centered around the subject of an artificial consciousness.
Why should we speak about AC?
Well, what are the reasons why we should speak about Artificial Consciousness in the context of this panel? Let me explain my point by considering some of the possible consequences which would be induced by the existence of an Artificial Consciousness. The Artificial Consciousness as a concrete example of the artificial in general has the potential to destroy art in an intriguing way: (i) first it could substitute the artist as the originator of art-objects and art-events; (ii) then, second, for a possible observer it would more and more be impossible to classify events with regard to their origination. Thus, art-events would become un-recognizable.
Loosing the specific Human Identity
Perhaps someone could think, that the un-recognizability of art would not pose a problem. I don't think so! In the contrary, it could pose a very serious problem to us. If the artificial would substitute the artist we would not have a problem with art alone, but we would also have a problem with the specific identity of human persons. The human identity is triggered by the experiences which arouse mainly through bodily processes and through interactions with the surrounding world. If we would more and more substitute specific human activities through human-like artificial devices we would eliminate all elements from the stream of possible experiences which are typical for human persons. As a result of socialization processes whose contents consist solely of artificially generated events we would have human persons with completely dehumanized world-views.
The Particularity of the human Nature - a Deception?
Of course one could doubt, whether the presupposition is true, that there really exists something which constitutes a specific human nature. There is a strong tradition in science -and meanwhile also in philosophy- which is operating under the assumption that it is possible to naturalize the human mind completely. This means for example that the consciousness of humans can adequately be described as an assemblage of emergent phenomena resulting from physiological processes only. And because the human physiology is not exhibiting something really special compared to other living organisms, the concept called 'human nature' -which includes art- boils down to a minor variation of common biological structures.
The biggest Challenge in History
Compared to the main traditions of philosophy, art, and religion in Europe, India, and Asia during the last 5000 years appears this mechanistic view of the human race as a big challenge; perhaps it is the biggest challenge in the history of ideas ever. Clearly, the mechanistic approach in the research of nature and men has enabled lots of valuable insights into the functioning of the human body, especially also into the functioning of the neuronal system. But what prevents me to accept such an approach as a complete description of human reality is the fact, that this approach excludes to much.
Consciousness revisited
Let me explain this a bit more. In the empirical sciences is an observer operating in an environment, where the question, what has to be counted as facts, has to be answered by the introduction of certain methods of measurement. It is a tacit convention that the ability of the observer to perceive and to interpret these perceptions lays outside of the scope of the scientific procedure. This ability is considered to be a kind of an invariant structure with regard to all possible measurements. This holds also for the measuring procedures itself. But these tacit assumptions have never been proved and it is impossible to prove them in any direct way. In Kantian terminology one would say that these presupposed invariant structures are belonging to the transcendental structures of our world view. They enable our understanding of reality, but they are not an explicit part of it like perceivable objects or events. Evolutionary Epistemology and Radical Constructivism have in the past tried to attack the problem to analyze these invariant structures with new methods, but they have missed the point. If someone wants to investigate the structures which determines the manner how an observer is perceiving and interpreting, it is not enough to look from the outside of an observer onto his overt or covert behavior. Even the measurement of energy patterns in cell assemblies of the brain does not tell us anything about the way how an observer is experiencing reality from the inside of his neuronal machinery. There is a real difference between the perspective of subjective experience and the perspective of observable behavior including neuronal processes. I do not know from any working bridge between these two perspectives today. The only thing we know is that the so-called objective experience is presupposing a subjective dimension whose internal structures are yet mostly unknown. It is this problem context that has lead us in the INM to start our research project with the target to explore the still repressed structures of the subjective human experience. We see this research not in opposition to the empirical research of the body and the brain, but as a necessary complementary strategy, which will in the future -hopefully- allow us to relate both perspectives, the subjective one and the objective one, in a more explicit way than today.
Epilogue
In my opinion is this the only possible strategy to answer in the future the question whether humans are able to experience and to act in a human specific way which cannot be mimicked by any conceivable artificial structure. In this case would the artificial not be able to substitute an artist and therefore the artificial would not be able to replace art in all its characterizing aspects. But the real outcome of this scientific endeavor is open! Today it can not definitely be excluded that everything which characterizes a human person can indeed be mimicked by some artificial structure. In this case would the artificial be able to substitute the artist and the borderline between nature and art would vanish. And gradually would the specific human point of view loose its importance. Confronted with the limited natural resources it would be conceivable in such a context that it would be better to reduce the human race almost to nothing. The evolution of systems would have reached a qualitative new level of development. In this kind of future -without human persons- would art perhaps be understood as the mastery of a creative combinatorics and such an art could also become the main science of the future.
Comments are welcomed to doeb@inm.de
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