Robert K. Logan

What Is Information?: Why Is It Relativistic and What Is Its Relationship to Materiality, Meaning and Organization

We review the historic development of concept of information including the relationship of Shannon information and entropy and the criticism of Shannon information because of its lack of a connection to meaning. We review the work of Kauffman, Logan et al. that shows that Shannon information fails to describe biotic information. We introduce the notion of the relativity of information and show that the concept of information depends on the context of where and how it is being used. We examine the relationship of information to meaning and materiality within information theory, cybernetics and systems biology. We show there exists a link between information and organization in biotic systems and in the various aspects of human culture including language, technology, science, economics and governance.

The extended mind model of the origin of language and culture

A model based on the evolution of notated language and chaotics is presented to explain the emergence of language. Language emerges as the bifurcation from percept-based to concept-based thought. Our first words are our first concepts and act as strange attractors for the percepts associated with that concept. The mind is shown to be the brain acting as a percept processor plus language.

Designing for Emergence and Innovation: Redesigning Design

Abstract This paper reveals the surprising and counterintuitive truth that design is not always at the forefront of innovation; it is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the success of products and services. The authors argue that design must harness emergence, for it is only through this bottom-up and massively iterative, unfolding process that new and improved products and services are successfully refined, introduced and diffused into the marketplace. They articulate the similarities and differences of design and emergence, developing the hypotheses that an innovative design is an emergent design, and that a homeostatic relationship between design and emergence is a required condition for innovation. Examples of how design and emergence have interacted and led to innovation include the tool making of early man; the evolutionary chain of the six languages: speech, writing, mathematics, science, computing and the Internet; Gutenbergs printing press, and the contemporary techniques of collabor...

The symbolosphere, conceptualization, language, and neo-dualism

Abstract It is shown that Schumann’s notion of the Symbolosphere, the non-physical world of symbolic relationships and Logan’s (2000a) Extended Mind model in which the mind is defined as the brain plus language entail a form of dualism. A distinction is made between the symbolosphere, which includes the human mind and all its thoughts and communication processes such as language and the physiosphere, which is simply the physical world and includes the human brain. No distinction is made between substance and property dualism, hence the use of the term neo-dualism. The neo-dualistic approach is justified on the basis that at our current understanding of neuroscience is unable to connect the functions of the mind with the actions of the brain and hence it makes sense from a practical point of view to distinguish between these two levels of phenomena. The neo-dualism formulated here is also used to critique strong AI and deconstructionism.

The Emperor of Strong AI Has No Clothes: Limits to Artificial Intelligence

Making use of the techniques of media ecology we argue that the premise of the technological Singularity based on the notion computers will one day be smarter that their human creators is false. We also analyze the comments of other critics of the Singularity, as well supporters of this notion. The notion of intelligence that advocates of the technological singularity promote does not take into account the full dimension of human intelligence. They treat artificial intelligence as a figure without a ground. Human intelligence as we will show is not based solely on logical operations and computation, but also includes a long list of other characteristics that are unique to humans, which is the ground that supporters of the Singularity ignore. The list includes curiosity, imagination, intuition, emotions, passion, desires, pleasure, aesthetics, joy, purpose, objectives, goals, telos, values, morality, experience, wisdom, judgment, and even humor.

Review and Précis of Terrence Deacon's Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter

We review and summarize Terrence Deacon’s book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter.

Can Computers Become Conscious, an Essential Condition for the Singularity?

Given that consciousness is an essential ingredient for achieving Singularity, the notion that an Artificial General Intelligence device can exceed the intelligence of a human, namely, the question of whether a computer can achieve consciousness, is explored. Given that consciousness is being aware of one’s perceptions and/or of one’s thoughts, it is claimed that computers cannot experience consciousness. Given that it has no sensorium, it cannot have perceptions. In terms of being aware of its thoughts it is argued that being aware of one’s thoughts is basically listening to one’s own internal speech. A computer has no emotions, and hence, no desire to communicate, and without the ability, and/or desire to communicate, it has no internal voice to listen to and hence cannot be aware of its thoughts. In fact, it has no thoughts, because it has no sense of self and thinking is about preserving one’s self. Emotions have a positive effect on the reasoning powers of humans, and therefore, the computer’s lack of emotions is another reason for why computers could never achieve the level of intelligence that a human can, at least, at the current level of the development of computer technology.

Thinking in Patterns and the Pattern of Human Thought as Contrasted with AI Data Processing

We propose that the ability of humans to identify and create patterns led to the unique aspects of human cognition and culture as a complex emergent dynamic system consisting of the following human traits: patterning, social organization beyond that of the nuclear family that emerged with the control of fire, rudimentary set theory or categorization and spoken language that co-emerged, the ability to deal with information overload, conceptualization, imagination, abductive reasoning, invention, art, religion, mathematics and science. These traits are interrelated as they all involve the ability to flexibly manipulate information from our environments via pattern restructuring. We argue that the human mind is the emergent product of a shift from external percept-based processing to a concept and language-based form of cognition based on patterning. In this article, we describe the evolution of human cognition and culture, describing the unique patterns of human thought and how we, humans, think in terms of patterns.

The Teleodynamics of Language, Culture, Technology and Science (LCT&S)

Logan [1] in his book The Extended Mind developed the hypothesis that language, culture, technology and science can be treated as organisms that evolve and reproduce themselves. This idea is extended by making use of the notion of teleodynamics that Deacon [2] introduced and developed in his book Incomplete Nature to explain the nature of life, sentience, mind and a self that acts in its own interest. It is suggested that language, culture, technology and science (LCT&S) like living organisms also act in their own self-interest, are self-correcting and are to a certain degree autonomous even though they are obligate symbionts with their human hosts. Specifically, it will be argued that LCT&S are essentially teleodynamic systems, which Deacon defines as “self-creating, self-maintaining, self-reproducing, individuated systems [2] (p. 325)”.

Neo-dualism and the bifurcation of the symbolosphere into the mediasphere and the human mind

Abstract An extension is made of the neo-dualist model of Logan and Schumann (2005) where a distinction is made between the symbolosphere, which includes the human mind and all its thoughts and communication processes such as language and the physiosphere, which is simply the physical world and includes the human brain. The notion that the symbolosphere can be thought of as consisting of two separate subdomains, the Mind, and the mediasphere is examined. The first non-physical subdomain, Mind, consists of the human mind and its abstract symbolic thoughts, language, culture, concepts, and memes. The second subdomain consists of the products of the human mind instantiated in the physiosphere, which we define as the mediasphere. Examples of the mediasphere in the domains of science, mathematics, technology, music, and the fine arts are made. A correspondence of this approach with Poppers notion of three worlds is made.