The revolution is back
by Reza Negarestani
!
"
Turing, functional realization and computational description"
I philosophically endorse computationalism and even more so I am an ardent
proponent of functionalism. I think--and I am fully prepared to defend this
controversial claim--that a philosopher cannot intellectually survive without
endorsing functionalism, at least one of its many varieties (strongly normative
[Hegel, Brandom], normative-materially constrained [Sellars] or strongly
mechanistic [Bechtel]). To this extent, what I would like to briefly address is the
significance of the functionalist account of the human mind, or more broadly
speaking, the functionalist account of the rational agency. In this respect, I take
side with Alan Turing's response to Arguments from Various Disabilities (AVD)
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where he challenges the common forms of rejecting the possibility of the
functional realization of the human mind in different substrates--for instance, in
machines."
Machines cannot think, machines cannot have emotions, machines cannot be
purposeful, they cannot be proactive and so forth: Turing enumerates these
under what he calls arguments from various disabilities, it is sort of straw machine
argument that is baseless and precarious. It is more a fruit of our psychological
fears and residual theological approaches to the universe and ourselves than the
result of sound arguments."
The mind-preservationist is a person who believes that the mind cannot be
functionally realized and implemented in different substrates. He is a person
who not only rejects the functionalist realization of the mind but also as a result
yields to a form of vitalism or ineffability of the human mind. The mindpreservationist always attempts to see the machine's capacities from the
perspective of an endemic disability. But if what the mind-preservationist really
dismisses is not the machine as such but is the functional realization of the mind
implemented in the machine, then what he actually denies is not the machine per
se but the mind itself. Or more accurately, what the mind-preservationist ends up
rejecting is the possibility of mapping the mind's functions, the possibility of
modeling it, defining and objectifying it. In this sense, machine-denialism is
simply an excuse for denying what the mind is and what it can be.
Correspondingly, disavowing the pursuit of understanding the mind coincides
with acting against the evolution of the mind, since from a pragmatic-functional
viewpoint the understanding of the meaning of the mind is inseparable from
how the mind can be defined, reconstructed and modified in different contexts.
Therefore, if we lack the definition of the mind which is itself a map for its
realization and objectification, then how can we so readily rule out the possibility
of a machine furnished with a mind? The mind-preservationist, accordingly, has
a double standard when it comes to recognizing the mind as both the measure
and the object of his critique. He says the machine cannot engage in mental
activities as if he possesses the map of the mind. However, if he does not know
what constitutes activities of the mind, which is to say, if he does not possess the
functional map of the mind, then he cannot approach the functional account of
the mind (that is, a mind realized by a different set of realizers and implemented
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in an environment different from its natural-biological habitat) from the
perspective of an intrinsic disability."
If you don't know what the mind is then how can you claim the machine cannot
possibly have a mind? With the understanding that the 'what' posed in this
question is the very map of the mind's functional realizability that can be
implemented in machines. Here 'what' can be described functionally as those
activities which define what the mind is. The mind is therefore described as a
functional item, in terms of its capacities for mentation (i.e. engaging in mental
activities). From a functionalist perspective, what makes a thing a thing is not
what a thing is but what a thing does. In other words, the functional item is not
independent of its activity."
The activities of the mind are indeed special in the sense that they are not
ubiquitous. But as William Bechtel suggests it is not in spite of being comprised
of mechanisms but in virtue of the right kind of mechanisms that the mind is
special and its set of activities has distinctive characteristics."
For this reason, if the attack or the argument from the perspective of disabilities
is adopted as a standard strategy toward machines or what Daniel Dennett calls
"machine mentation" or if it is exercised as a pre-determined reaction to the
possibility of the realization of the mind in different substrates, then it no longer
enjoys a genuine critical attitude. Why? Because such a critical strategy then has
implicitly subscribed itself to a preservationist view of the mind as something
inherently foreclosed to mapping and (re)construction. The mind it safeguards
has a special status because it is unique at the level of mapping and
constructability. It cannot be constructed, because it cannot be fully mapped. It
cannot be mapped because it cannot be defined. It cannot be defined because it is
somewhere ineffable. If it is somewhere ineffable, then it is everywhere ineffable.
Therefore, the singularity of the mind is the effect of its ineffability. If we buy into
one ineffable thing and if that thing happens to be central to how we perceive the
world, then we are also prepared to regard many other things in the universe as
ineffable. Consequently, we have committed ourselves to full-blown mysticism."
Turing's AVD signals one of the most consequential phases in the historical
development of the human and defining the project of humanity in the sense of
both determining the meaning of being human and updating its definition. Its
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importance lies in how it grapples with the most fundamental question posed by
Kant, "what is Man?", or what does it mean to be human?"
Unlike the Copernican Revolution, the Darwinian Revolution, the Newtonian
Revolution, and the Einsteinian Revolution in which we witness the
consequences of the radical theoretical reorientation immediately manifesting
themselves in the present world view, the site of the Turingian Revolution is
always in the future. In short, the Turingian Revolution does not happen here
and now, and for this reason, the conception of revolution it exercises
fundamentally deviates from the trajectory of the Copernican Revolution."
The Turingian Revolution suggests that the future won't be a varied extension of
the present condition. It won't be continuous to the present. Whatever arrives
back from the future--which is in this case, both the mind implemented in a
machine and a machine equipped with the mind--will be discontinuous to our
historical anticipations regarding what the mind is and what the machine looks
like."
But why is the Turingian Revolution in cognitive sciences and artificial
intelligence the only revolution that is instantly conceived in and takes place in
the future? Because what Turing proposes is a schema or a general program for a
thoroughgoing reconstruction and revision of what it means to be human and by
extension, the humanity as a collective and historical constellation. The
underlying assumption of Turing is that the significance of human can be
functionally abstracted and realized. This significance is the mind as a set of
activities spanning perception, thinking, reasoning and the ability to engage in
purposive action."
The adequate functional abstraction and realization of this account of human
significance means 'what makes the human significant' can be realized by
different individuating properties or realizers. But also what constitutes the
human significance can be implemented in different modes of organization,
material or otherwise. The contexts or the environments of the implementation
have the ability to modify and update this functional schema drastically. In other
words, the meaning of the mind will be changed through how it is used or how it
is re-implemented, since implementation is not simply the relocation of a
function or an abstract protocol from one supporting structure to another. It is the
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execution of a conceptual-functional schema in a new context and in a new
environment with its specific sets of organizational demands. Accordingly, reimplementation is the repurposing and refashioning of a function that diversifies
its pragmatic content."
Realizing the mind through the artificial by swapping its natural constitution or
biological organization with other material or even social organizations is a
central aspect of the mind. Being artificial, or more precisely, expressing itself via
the artifactual is the very meaning of the mind as that which has a history rather
than an essential nature. To have a history is to have the possibility of being
artificial--that is to say, expressing yourself not by way of what is naturally given
to you but by way of what you yourself can make and organize. Denouncing this
history is the same as rejecting freedom in all its forms. Denying the artificial
truth of the mind and refusing to take this truth to its ultimate conclusions is to
antagonize the history of the mind, and therefore to be an enemy of thought."
The pragmatic functionalist understanding of the mind is a historical moment in
the functional evolution of the mind. But evolution in what sense? In the sense
that the pragmatic functionalist realization of the mind (the understanding of its
meaning) coincides with the artificial realization of the mind (or the construction
of its functional space by entirely different sets of realizers)."
Once the real content of human significance is functionally abstracted, realized
and implemented outside of its natural habitat, the link between the structure in
which this function is embedded and the significance qua function is weakened.
Up to now the influence of the structure (whether as a specific biological
structure or a specific social stratum) over the function has been that of a
constitution determining the behaviors or activities of the system. But with the
abstraction and realization of those functions that distinguish the human--that is
to say, by furnishing the real significance of the human with a functional
autonomy--the link between the structure (or manifest humanity) and the
function (all activities that make the human human) loses its determining power.
The human significance qua function evolves despite the conditions under which
it has been constituted."
If the determining influence of the constituting structure (in this case, the specific
biological substrate) over the function is sufficiently weakened, the image of the
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functional evolution can no longer be seen and recognized in the structure that
supports it. The evolution at the level of function--here the expansion of the
schema of the mind--is asymmetrical to the evolution of the structure, be it the
evolution of the biological structure that once supported it or a new artificial
habitat in which it is implemented. It is akin to a shadow that grows to the extent
that it eclipses the body that once cast it."
In this fashion, what constituted or presently constitute the human no longer
determines the consequences of what it means to be human. Why? Because, the
functional realization of the meaning of being human implies the departure of
this meaning from the present condition or the image with which we identify the
human. To put it in more technical terms, the function is able to reconstitute itself
by perpetually reconstructing and revising itself, by evolving asymmetrically
with regard to the structure and by revising its meaning through reimplementation in new substrates. By being re-implemented, the function is able
to change the schema of the mind.
Turing's gesture toward the possibility of functional realization of the human--or
more precisely, the activities which make the human human--means that human
is always rewritten, redefined, reshaped from the future. If the functional
realization of the mind suggests the modification and expansion of the schema of
the mind irrespective of its present constitution (which is a basis for our manifest
self-identification), then a program committed to the multiple realizability of
human mind can no longer be characterized by recourse to the conditions of the
past and the present.[1] It genuinely belongs to the future."
But the future--generally and specifically in terms of construction and revision--is
discontinuous to the past and the present. Therefore, the constructive and
revisionary dimension of Turing's functional realization of the human cannot be
seen from the perspective of the present because the implications of construction
and revision as the forces of reconstitution and reconception unfold from the
future. In short, what Turing does is providing the blueprint of a program
through which the consequences of being distinguished as human are
discontinuous and irreconcilable with what we currently identify as the human."
Turning's functional realizability of human is a thesis about constructability. It
suggests there is no essentialist limit to the reconstructability of the human or
what really human significance consists in. However, it goes even further by
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proposing that the consequences of constructing the mind outside of its natural
habitat, reconstruction becomes tantamount to reconstitution. It is in this sense that
Turing's project highlights a rupture in the truth of humanity, between the
meaning of being human and its ramifications. It practically elaborates that to be
human does not entail the understanding of the consequences of what it means
to be human or coming to terms with such consequences. Indeed these two
couldn't be further apart. To be human is neither sufficient condition for
understanding what is happening to human nor is it a sufficient condition for
recognizing what the human is becoming. It can neither fathom the consequences
of revising the meaning of the human nor the scope of constructing the human
according to this revisionary wave."
By functionally realizing the human, Turing draws a new link between
emancipation (here the emancipation of human significance at the level of
activities or functions) and the liberation of intelligence as a vector of selfrealization. Both Turing's computationalism and functionalism are significant
because the ramifications of these programs--no matter what their current state is
and what setbacks they have suffered--cannot be thought by their present
implications. In this sense, by definition humanity as we identify it in the present
cannot grapple with and realize the scope of Turing's project."
In continuation of the project of the enlightenment, rather than being an
argument for anti-humanism, Turing's Arguments from Various Disabilities (as
appeared in his revolutionary 1950 essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence) is
actually an argument for enlightened humanism insofar it fully conforms to the
following principle: The consequentiality of the human and the human
significance is not in its given meaning or a conserved and already decided
definition, but in its ability to bootstrap complex abilities and intricate
obligations out of primitive abilities and simple duties. These bootstrapping
abilities that signify the human are precisely the expression of a fully updatable
definition of the human as a constructible and revisable mode of being."
This is the underlying significance of Turing's project: The fact that the
significance of the human lies not in its uniqueness or over-particularized mode
of being but in its constructibility that allows for the updating of its definition,
the upgrading of its abilities and its historical transformation from primitive
forms to increasingly complex forms. This is nothing but the passage of Spirit as
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a functional constellation of rational agencies. In other words, Turing's
computational project contributes to the project of enlightened humanism by
dethroning human and ejecting it from the center while acknowledging the
significance of the human in functionalist terms. For what is the expandable
domain of computers if not the strongest assault upon the ratiocentricity of the
human mind in favor of a view that the ratiocinating capacities of the human
mind can be reconstructed and upgraded in the guise of machines?"
It is the understanding of the meaning of human in functional terms that is but a
blueprint for the reconstruction of human and the functional evolution of its
significance beyond its present image. The knowledge of the mind as a functional
entity develops into the exploration of possibilities of its reconstruction. While
the exploration of functional realization by different realizers and for different
purposes shapes the history of the mind as that which has no nature but only
histories and possibilities of multiple realization."
What used to be called the human has now evolved beyond recognition.
Narcissus can no longer see or anticipate his own image in the mirror. The
recognition of the blank mirror is the sign that we have finally left our narcissistic
phase behind. Indeed, we are undergoing a stage in which if humanity looks into
the mirror it only sees an empty surface gawking back.
!
[1] According to the multiple realizability thesis, the realization of a function can be
satisfied by different sets of realizing properties, individuating powers and
activities. Therefore, the function can be realized in different environments
outside of its natural habitat by different realizers. Multiple realizability usually
comes in strong and constrained varieties. The strong version does not impose
any material or organizational constraints on the realizability of a specific
function, therefore the function is taken to be realizable in infinite ways or
implementable in numerous substrates. The constrained variety, however, sees
the conditions required for the realizability of a function through a deep or
hierarchical model comprised of different explanatory levels and qualitatively
different realizer properties which impose their respective constraints on the
realization of the function. Each mechanism that explains an activity (qua
explanandum) is a realist constraint upon that activity. But since mechanisms
responsible for an activity are not uniformly or contiguously distributed, the
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constraints they impose are dimensionally varied. Accordingly, the criteria for
the realization of a function are characterized as dimensionally varied and
multiply constrained.
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