BICA à rebours

Abstract

Most authors in this volume focus on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA). We propose BICA a rebours, an AI inspired take on human cognitive architecture. Both strategies share the BICA method – a spectrum approach between animal cognitive architecture and AI. We focus on the BICA-Mary argument [1], which is a response to the classical ‘knowledge argument’ posed by Jackson, [2]. Philosophers tend to think that phenomenal qualia cannot be learned by description; this is supposed to show non-reductive character of consciousness. But when we look at it with a bioengineering eye, all this argument demonstrates is the lack of an inborn connection from qualities of experience to conceptual knowledge. This is due to the specificity of human cognitive architecture (originating from evolutionary history) and not due to some deep epistemological truth. The connections from symbols to qualitative experience could be bioengineered in animal brains, which would deflate the example. This is one way to demonstrate that the example has no bearing on non-reductive consciousness. More broadly, arguments that follow the BICA a rebours structure, and view human cognition as an engineering system, help us reexamine misconceptions about human psychology, epistemology and related domains.