beginning with the evolution of the modern system of knowledge and advancing toward contemporary philosophies of rationalism. Besides lecturing worldwide, he has contributed extensively to journals and anthologies, from which I would like to highlight in particular the article The Labour of the Inhuman, published recently by IFLAG's journal. He is the author of the book Cyclonopädie, Complicity with Anonymous Materials, published in 2008. The German translation is forthcoming by Merve. His today's topic will be It is only what it does, Cells, Agents and Artifacts. Welcome, Reza. Why don't I turn you up? Thank you very much. So, instead of directly addressing the question of the inhuman,
today I would like to focus on the question of human or sapience. The question I would like to address is, what does it take to realize a sapient? Or what does human, in the sense of sapient consciousness, consist in? I start with conditions required for the realization of the basic functional item of sapiens, logical-conceptual selves, the kind of selves that can have an inferential awareness or an inferential consciousness. This means I will discuss Kant's account of synthesis of a unity of our perception in conjunction with Hegel's elaboration of the consequences of having this kind of self
or a community of them. I re-examine these concepts in light of the core terminologies of artificial general intelligence and build an argument with the following thesis. To be sapient is essentially to be an artifact, developing and expanding sapient awareness and becomes the question of elaborating the artificial potencies of sapience, including its implementation in other artifacts, i.e. its multiple realization, and treating the history of humanity as a project of collective general intelligence. Now, one of the most fundamental insights of Hegel is the characterization of Geist or spirit,
a community of rational agents as a social model of the mind in terms of function. Geist is only what it does. The functional picture of Geist then becomes a basis for the functional decomposition or analysis of essentially self-conscious creatures. What activities and what sorts of structures are required in order to realize an essentially self-conscious creature or a community of them. It is a functional description of inferential, discursive and historical modes of consciousness. in terms of role-playing activities, co-realizers, that sets forth a project where theoretical and practical desacralization of consciousness
or the mind as something ineffable or God-given coincides with historical emancipation and culminates in the disentrollment of intelligence. Now, what makes Hegel's picture of Geist not only a significant contribution to the history of functionalism, but also intriguingly to the history of artificial general intelligence, is that it presents a social model of general intelligence.
Geist is elaborated as an integrated and generative constellation of multimodal and socially constituted cognitive and practical abilities that defines, enables and alters a community of agents which themselves bring about and instantiate those abilities. Now, this generative complex of abilities that functionally defines, enables, and subsequently alters agents encapsulates the description of general intelligence. Alluded to through the figure of Geist, general intelligence is introduced by way of three principle attributes.
Abilities, intelligence as the language of abilities. Then the second one is the intrinsic social frame of these abilities, the social fabric of intelligence. The third one is their qualitative integration. General intelligence is the question of qualitative integration of abilities into a generative framework. Now, the functional picture of Geist delineates general intelligence in terms of both sociocultural activities, activities, the thesis that general intelligence requires a social model of intelligence rather than a biological one, and modes of integration. The latter, modes of integration, is what qualitatively distinguishes general intelligence
from quantitative intelligence, the fact that general intelligence is not a single ability or an individual function but a qualitative qualitative product of integration between diverse abilities and correspondingly only realizable by a functional integration between different activities in different roles which bring about those abilities the question of functional integration becomes particularly context sensitive and domain specific since it involves realizers with different roles, causal and logical, distributed across distinct structural hierarchies and functional classes. To this extent, realization of general intelligence
is not a matter of finding and developing a special realizer or a special algorithm. It is the problem of dynamic integration of abilities and their realizers in a way that even the criteria of functional integration itself can be modified and upgraded so as to bring about the possibility of new phases of intelligence with different forms of functional integration. Just as there are different models and levels of integration, there are different spectrums of general intelligence. Each mode of intelligence expresses a qualitative shift in the structure of intelligence.
Phases of spirit or epochs of Geist are defined by Geist's mode of integration, i.e. how socially engendered cognitive and practical abilities are systematically integrated through new forms of consciousness, as well as how each mode of integration is represented and established as a normative model for the formation of new attitudes, subjectivities and institutions. What is essential for the qualitative transformation of intelligence is not simply the mechanism of integration, but also how mode of integration is established as a model of conduct and cultivation of abilities for agents.
So, while the mode of integration affects a qualitative transformation in the structure of intelligence, its conception as a model provides agents with access to the intelligibility of this structural transformation that also encompasses their own structure. This condition of intelligibility in turn serves as a basis for the elaboration of new abilities, developing organizations based on such abilities and consequently the possibility of further transformation. So to summarize, integration of abilities has two consequences, two outcomes. On the one hand, it generates a qualitative index of intelligence qua a system of abilities.
and on the other hand it occasions the possibility of bringing this qualitative index into a conception that is forming a concept of it by which agents can recognize or become aware of it in their own structure tracking its transformations within their own collective structure this integral conception serves as a cognitive and practical model by which agents can format their abilities and act on conditions required for their realization, modifying or reconstituting them. In this sense, integration sets up a dynamic link between intelligence and intelligibility, conditions required for the realization of intelligence and realization or awareness of
such conditions. By gaining access to and acting on the intelligibility of their structural transformations agents become able to develop normative recipes for developing and combining new abilities and thus contributing to a qualitative transformation in the structure of intelligence the intelligibility of those abilities which constitute the structure of agency and those activities which have brought them about becomes a premise for functional change and additional structural transformation. Now, this circular constructive process between intelligence and intelligibility expresses the logic of self-reference as the auto-constructive kernel
of general intelligence. Defining self-reference as a disequilibrial and defeasible constructive process is the starting point of this presentation. As I am going to argue, this logic is specific to a distinct kind of selves, selves endowed with sapient consciousness. Through the logic of self-reference, the rational self, or self furnished with inferential awareness becomes able to treat itself as an artifact and elaborates its artificial potencies. In other words, through self-reference, it becomes able to investigate conditions required for its realization, adapt itself to ends and purposes which are not given in advance,
and explore the possibility of its realization in different types of structures than those which naturally constitute it. The history of this kind of self, then, strictly speaking, is a project in artificialization in the sense I just outlined. self-reference is a defeasible and disequilibrial constructive process it is a process whereby general intelligence utilizes the intelligibility of its structural transformation, its history for conceiving the intelligibility of its actions this is because the intelligibility of its actions resides in the practical elaboration of this structural transformation in functional terms,
which are more suited to the maximization of its positive freedoms and the exercise of autonomy, both of which are basically necessary for intelligence to organize its own structural transformation, or in other words, constitute its own history. History in this sense can be understood as a sequence of self-constituted transformations. Self-reference defines the principal activity of general intelligence as acting on the objective intelligibility of conditions required for the realization of intelligence. Intelligence is then distinguished by its increasing capacity for purposive action on the intelligible.
But here the intelligible first and foremost pertains to the structure of intelligence itself as a locus of functional integration and mobilization of abilities. Therefore, intelligence reflects the practical attitude toward intelligibility of its own structure as a normative matter, how it ought to be, rather than a natural or given topic, how it is. Instead of punctuating the structural transformation of intelligence with an immutable identity, self-reference defines the action of pointing to self, an act of pointing that simultaneously articulates the intelligibility of its point of reference and transforms it.
This is precisely the logic of self-referentiality as a dynamic process where the identity of both what refers and what is referred to, what acts and what is acted upon, is expressed by the unity of their transformations. Identity, in self-referential terms, is no longer defined in terms of fixed identity or even a structural invariance, but in terms of forms or structures of transformation. The identity of a spirit or Geist is identity through transformations, which are qualitative and have the quality of its concept. Now, here identity is expressed through instantiations of types or instances which can be converted
to one another by a particular form or quality of transformation. Identity is the path or the transformation map between these types qua instantiations of Geist. In short, identity is the unity of a group of transformations. For anyone who is interested in elaboration of identity in terms of a group of transformation, I highly suggest the work of Andrei Rodin. a philosopher and logician who has meticulously elaborated identity in terms of in terms of the
vocabulary of transformation in fact this and this is by no means a weak interpretation of identity but rather the strict notion of identity that does not entail fixity. And in fact, there is no incompatibility between having a precise or strict notion of identity required for reasoning or incorporation in an inferential web and an expression of identity through change and transformations. The combination of both is necessary to distinguish and track the change of the concept in an inferential framework.
Moreover, in this schema, identity becomes an expression of an activity rather than an entity. If Geist or general intelligence has an identity, that does not imply that it should be an entity. It is the activity of the Geist that defines its identity through a series of transformations which are its historical instantiations. The function of Geist is at its base self-referential. Geist recognizes itself as the condition of its realization and transformation. Its ability to transform itself rests on its capacity for self-recognition. Its structural transformation, both in the sense of attributes and its scope,
is determined by how it recognizes itself. in order to maintain the intelligibility of its reality, which is the ability to constitute its own transformation or history, Geist has to recognize the intelligibility of conditions required for its realization. But this recognition involves acting on the reality of such conditions and the process transforming itself. So one of the more curious aspects of a spirit is that it treats itself as an artifact. Examination of an artifact's conditions of realizability is tantamount to the elaboration of its artificial capacities.
The functional picture of the artifact is in reality a blueprint for its further artificialization in the sense of functional modification and adaptation to new purposes. Geist self-referential activity is a constructive process in the same way that the act of pointing should be regarded not as a relation but strictly as a transformation. The task of self-reference is to establish the intelligibility of Geist as that which is able to constitute its own transformation or have a history rather than just a nature. But the articulation of this intelligibility is in reality equal to the transformation of Geist and vice versa.
By pointing to itself, Geist acts on itself and by acting on itself, it navigates the space of its concept. If Geist's act of self-reference is imagined as a pointer, the pointer can be treated as a navigable map comprised of concatenation of different pointers and addresses, each representing a specific course or setup for realization. By pointing to its concept, by navigating the space of this concept further away from appearances, or what is locally the case or the given, Geist can explore the possibilities of its realization. To articulate its intelligibility as the agent of its own transformation,
Geist must first render conditions necessary for its realization intelligible. since only by acting on the objective intelligibility of these conditions can Geist reconstitute or realize itself according to a concept, a reason and not a cause. Geist's self-referential act therefore does not imply an immediate relation, a path that is limited to what is given or a privileged access to imminence. Just as a pointer that can be decompressed into other pointers or ramifying addresses to yield a more comprehensive picture, the intelligibility of Geist can be established by passing through and acting on different orders of intelligibility associated with conditions of its realization.
In fact, in order to maintain its intelligibility, Geist must adapt to and act on a new order of intelligibility beyond the level of appearances or the given. This is the order of intelligibility concerning the non-manifest and mind-independent as excavated by modern sciences. Self-reference or self-recognition through this order of intelligibility engenders a different form of transformation and signals a new epoch for Geist. The ongoing labor of science in deepening the order of intelligibility as pertaining to the mind independent and the non-manifest introduces a qualitative shift in the structure of intelligence.
This is because in order to act on this order of intelligibility and unbind its transformational capacities for intelligence, the structure of intelligence itself in the sense of how it conceives itself and how it changes itself by acting on the intelligibility of constraints and conditions for its realization must also undergo transformation. What is meant by conceiving here is the act of bringing into conception, forming a concept. As the goal of a spirit is, according to Hegel, to attain its own concept, to form a normative conception of itself and realize itself according to this conception, rather than a given nature or a meaning.
This is a passage from Hegel. The spirit produces its concept out of itself, objectifies it, and thus becomes the being of its own concept. It becomes conscious of itself in the objective world so that it may attain its salvation. For as soon as the objective world conforms to its internal requirements, it has realized its freedom. when it has determined its own, and in this way, progress takes on a more definite character, in that it no longer consists of a mere increase in quantity. It may also be added that even on the evidence of our own ordinary consciousness,
we must acknowledge that the consciousness must undergo various stages of development before it becomes aware of its own essential nature. Now, the intelligibility of Geist resides in its freedom, a freedom that is not simply freedom from constraints, but a freedom to do something. It's a freedom that translates into intelligence. This freedom is expressed in the ability of Geist to constitute a history for itself rather than just a past. But the ability to constitute a history, as the expression of Geist's intelligibility, can only be brought about by the ability to develop a concept and then transforming in accordance with it.
Having the ability to develop a concept and then becoming the object of it defines what freedom or intelligibility of the mind consists in. But the consequence or the ramification of establishing a reinforcing link between conception and transformation, that is developing a concept and then becoming the object of the concept, treating oneself as an artifact of its own ends, is what demarcates the domain of intelligence. If thinking is engaging in conceptual activities, forming concepts, applying and tracking them, then informing the concept of itself and becoming its own concept, Geist strives to elaborate thinking as a doing
whose understanding and social realization of its potencies outline the project of collective general intelligence. Hegel is the archenemy of the given in that he takes the battle against the given from the realm of thought to the realm of action. In defining the progress of Geist in conformity with the quality of its own concept, Hegel gives concept of progress a paramount significance in fighting the given. Geist must go beyond the given and develop its own concept, but only to further elaborate the meaning of this move
against the given in action, by transforming itself according to a concept that is not given and cannot be produced by anything other than its own rules. Guy's so-called progress is the manifestation of the dynamic between these positive and negative conceptions. Positively, a spirit conceives itself as that which has freedom to constitute its own transformation, but only by conceiving itself negatively as a hindrance to the realization of such freedom that undergirds the intelligibility of its concept. In other words, only by acknowledging conditions required for its realization in terms of both negative and positive constraints can a spirit overcome itself as an impediment to its own progress and exercise the freedom
of its realization. This dynamic between positive and negative constraint signifies one of the primary aspects of intelligence. In order to expand its capacity to modify itself so as to maximize its functional autonomy, intelligence must treat conditions required for its realization, be them natural or normative, as both negative and positive constraints. Negative insofar as they must be overcome in order to increase the autonomy over conditions of realization. Positive insofar as the autonomy of intelligence cannot be increased unless constraints related to its realization
are identified and exploited in order to affect transformation. it is within this twofold approach to the conditions of realizability that the attitude of intelligence to its natural history is revealed in order for intelligence to become an object of its own concept and to progress or transform itself qualitatively according to this concept it must regard its natural conditions of realization as impediments that ought to be overcome. But to overcome them, it must first identify its natural constraints
in order to modify or replace them with alternative realizers more in accord with its concept of itself. Even though intelligence has a natural history, history short of reorienting repurposing and re-engineering its natural history it ceases to be intelligent it remains highly improbable that a robust conception of intelligence can execute its own transformation or exercise its own functional autonomy without looking into its natural history and working out exigencies related to it but an intelligence that does not develop its own normative conception as to how it ought to be, a move which inevitably culminates in
re-engineering and revising its natural constitution, its multiple realization, is even more implausible. Reconstituting our natural constitution demands us not to forget our natural history or conditions of embodiment, since how we ought to be cannot disregard the structural material constraints of realization. But not forgetting the natural history does not entail foregoing with reconstitution of natural constitution, unless we are subscribing to a regime of final causes in nature, where causes of how things are and reasons for how things ought to be are seamlessly sutured. The history of intelligence commandeers its natural history
by the history of its obligations and demands. For the history of intelligence only begins in earnest with the reconstitutions of its natural constitution, progressively breaking away from the given in all its manifestations. The reconstitution of natural history does not violate natural laws, nor does it detach and isolate the normative from the causal. It is an adaptation to new regimes of design purposes or ends that are themselves open to assessment and revision. In fact, the fallibility of such ends impels the self-correcting attitude of intelligence. Now, let's step back and examine the relation between integration necessary for the realization
of general intelligence and the process of self-reference. the functional picture of Geist entails an account of integration not only to produce a general mode of functioning from distinct particular activities but also to form an integral conception required for recognizing and acting on both negative and positive constraints of realization. But what is exactly the nature of this integration? What is the locus? What is the site of this integration? In other words, what is the minimum condition required for the realization of Geist qua collective general intelligence?
If Geist must maintain its intelligibility by normatively acting on its conditions of realization, then what is required to establish a necessary, which doesn't mean sufficient, link between Geist's conception and Geist's transformation? The answer to this question should be found in Hegel's Kant's influence characterization of the first constitutive gesture in the rise of a spirit, the formation of self-consciousness from mere consciousness. the production of an awareness distinguished by a unity of consciousness and capable of having one experience exercising authority assuming responsibility or commitment becoming responsible
for something and being responsible to do something through synthesis of a unity of a perception namely constructing a self or a cognitive practical subject a rational self the movement or progress of Geist represents the construction of complex rational agents through normatively rather than naturally evolving forms of self-consciousness. The community of rational agents can draw on a model or form of self-awareness to exercise its freedom by first developing a conception of itself and then transforming itself in accordance with such a conception. In building upon its conception and instituting its own transformative practices, Geist, who are a community of rational agents,
can then construct superior models of self-consciousness and therefore structure different kinds of self-conscious selves. It can be said that the movement of a spirit projects competing models of self and their corresponding awareness. Now, the formation of a self with logical consciousness is the minimum requirement for the realization of Geist. The perceiving self is exactly that basic locus, basic site of integration, that enables the realization of a general function from particular and qualitatively distinct activities. For example, general intelligence from intelligent algorithms
or intelligent behaviors. Moreover, the formation of self is a prerequisite for the intelligibility of Geist as encapsulated in the necessary link and correspondence between conception and transformation. Earlier I argued that this necessary link is the key to the freedom of a spirit, producing its concept out of itself and becoming the being of its own concept. That is to say, constituting a history for itself rather than just a nature. It is an account of self in terms of the unity of apperception that makes it possible for a spirit called collective general intelligence to develop a concept of itself and transform itself or act on conditions of its realization in accordance with such a concept.
The consciousness of the perceiving self differs from mere consciousness in that its unity is endowed with semantic integrity, and that it has a cognitive import. It is capable of performing synthesis of recognition through concepts. In other words, the awareness of the perceiving self is judgment, the ability to use concepts whose application both requires and serves as reasons which are formed by the application of other concepts. To be aware of anything, including the conditions required for its realization, Geist must have concepts. But it cannot have concepts unless it is constituted by a perceiving self,
whose activity is to judge or execute the basic integrating function of cognition to which relations between ideas and representations can be mentally expressed and inferred. Here, selves should be regarded as basic functional items whose logical integrating roles allow acts or episodes to have cognitive import of judgings. Geist's more complex abilities and superior modes of integration are built out of these functional items and their logical roles for example by how these selves are collectively organized how the discursive context of their activities can be enriched how their cognitive significance can be socially elaborated and so on
as a process required for the production and development of selves or cognitive practical subjects The synthesis of an original unity of apperception is a functional integration that entails a change in the functional class or type of activities. It involves the introduction of a higher-order integration into different lower-level representations and activities of basic consciousness, bringing the latter under a rational unity of consciousness, or an inferential awareness. In this sense, the process of synthesizing a unity of apperception simultaneously executes a systematic and controlled combinatorial integration and constructs a new functional class for the cognitive practical subject.
This new functional level provides the subject with a holistic or integrated global framework through which it is possible to recognize differences between various experiences, track their consequences, examine their coherence in light of their inferential material relations to one another, and resolve their incompatibilities. From a computational standpoint, the integral framework established by the synthesis of a unity of a perception organizes a strong combinatorial framework in which contents of experience, the threefold of perception, thinking, and intention, can be globally combined, contrasted, and determined.
But what is required for determining and elaborating relations between differences at the level of their contents is a new class of functions capable of regulation, stabilization, and qualitative organization of data associated with lower-level representations. More specifically, the functions should not belong to the same class of elements it seeks to stabilize and combine. In other words, determination of differences between various representations at the level of content cannot be accomplished by representational functions. Instead, it entails the introduction of a different class of functions with their own internally autonomous organization or coherency conditions.
This can be described in terms of computational complexity theory. Values generated by a global combination of elements belonging to a specific computational class are computationally intractable to computational functions belonging to that class. Similarly, computational functions sufficient for computing these values are also incomputable for antecedent computational classes the synthesis of a unity of our perception is integration on the base of logical rules and relations it marks the ingression of logical functions as a new class of functions into sentient consciousness it is the ingression of logical or more precisely conceptual functions
that provides the necessary context for determination and elaboration of relations at the level of content conceptual functions act as a class of functions adequate for computation of values generated by the global combinatorial framework which were otherwise intractable to functions of a more rudimentary and biologically constituted consciousness but if functions belonging to the rudimentary consciousness are incapable of forming and operating on a global combinatorial framework, then where does this higher computational class come from? How does sapient awareness is constructed out of sentient consciousness if functions of the latter are inadequate to set up a strong, as in contrast to weak, a strong global
inferential framework that is necessary for the kind of qualitative organization of information that results in content awareness, i.e. determination, combination, differentiation, elaboration at the level of content. Rather than being merely an account of neurobiological evolution or the phenomenal self as an embodied simulation for the effective survival and alertness of the organism, the answer to these questions is the story of how concepts evolved in the context of a particular kind of social practices as new forms of compression or encoding, a stabilization of information required for communal sharing and discursive interaction.
in computational terms the synthesis of a unity of a perception as a higher order integration signifies a compression that triggers a structural transformation and a change in functional class while compression is often associated with intelligence and emergence of intelligent behaviors for resource-bounded agents Here, compression brings about a qualitative change in consciousness from sentient consciousness to sapient awareness. The significance of this compression is that it generates the basic functional item of collective general intelligence, the aperceiving or rational self.
The integration of consciousness on the basis of logical conceptual roles results in a kind of content awareness that admits the language of the cognitive practical subject, i.e. the language of responsibility, authority, and intentional action. The compression does not simply produce a different quality of consciousness, but also produces an integral framework that assumes the language of judgment, responsibility, authority, or rational selfhood. The constructive principle of subjectivity or rational selfhood
represents a qualitative compression of consciousness that can, in principle, be put into effect in varieties of ways and expressed in different modes of organization. By re-implementing this principle, it is then possible to form a community of rational agents or cognitive practical subjects, forming a socially discursive self-consciousness that is a collection of discursive practitioners of rules who can also articulate and renegotiate the contents of rules a rational integration with a higher semantic complexity i.e. expansion or shift in the level of content awareness and more adequate for bringing broader ranges of intelligibilities
within the normative language of the agency can in turn institute a different model of selves, bringing about the opportunities for the social realization of a different cognitive practical paradigm. So, to end this presentation, I would like to kind of discuss the consequences of having sapient awareness and its connection with the topic of the symposium, the inhuman. Rather than representing a new rank
in the order of beings, sapient awareness articulates a constructive principle that discontinues the supremacy of human species. By reformatting sentient consciousness with logical-conceptual functions, it weakens the governing role of its biological substrate, progressively liberating its conditions of realization from its natural constitution. By synthesizing a framework in which it is possible to be at once responsible for something and responsible to do something, it increases its cognitive and practical freedom. By developing a self capable of treating itself as an artifact,
approaching itself as the object of its own concept, it puts forward a concept of sapient agency amenable to the possibility of realization in other artifacts. In doing so, it presents sapience as a functional designation that breaks its attachment with any special ontological status or given meaning. Acting as sapient becomes a matter of cognitive exploration into the meaning of human as that which is neither set a priori nor given naturally. And the cognitive examination of what to be human means or what sapience consists in takes shape as a systematic exercise in developing the object of an evolving concept.
Succinctly speaking, sapient awareness is a cognitive practical enterprise through which the realization of human is rigorously subjected to change in the content of the concept of human Yet insofar as the structure of this concept is semantically constituted rather than naturally and since it describes the human not by recourse to essences but in terms of abilities that can be brought about by different sets of realizers, it expands the prospects of realization of sapience, extending it to the realm of artifacts. However, in no way does this mean turning artifacts into a repository for the conservation and reproduction of the canonical portrait of the human.
Sapient awareness is a constructive principle for the production of a self endowed with content awareness. Neither the identity of the self nor the boundary and the quality of this content awareness, according to which the self conceives and transforms itself, are fixed. Sapience is a constructive mode of identity rather than a structurally fixed one. It is identity as a group of transformations having the quality of a content-aware consciousness. Being sapient is assuming the identity in the latter. To be human is the only way out of being human.
An alternative exit, either by unbinding sentience from sapience or circumventing sapience in favor of a direct engagement with the technological artifact, does not go beyond human. Rather, it leads to a culture of cognitive pettiness and self-deception that is a daily fodder for the most parochial and utilitarian political systems existing on the planet. In delivering sentience from its so-called sapient yoke, one does not simply become post-human or even animal, but falls back on an ideologically charged biological chauvinism that sapient ought to overcome.
In discarding the human in the hope of an immediate contact with superintelligence or self-realization of the technological artifact, one either surreptitiously subjects the future to humanly formulated predetermined goals, or subscribes to a future that is simply the teleological actualization of final causes and thus a resurrection of the well-worn Aristotelian fusion of reasons and causes. The human is the only project of exit. Thank you.