Conscious Agents Research Articles

On emergence, agency, and organization

Ultimately we will only understand biological agency when we have developed a theory of the organization of biological processes, and science is still a long way from attaining that goal. It may be possible nonetheless to develop a list of necessary conditions for the emergence of minimal biological agency. The authors offer a model of molecular autonomous agents which meets the five minimal physical conditions that are necessary (and, we believe, conjointly sufficient) for applying agential language in biology: autocatalytic reproduction; work cycles; boundaries for reproducing individuals; self-propagating work and constraint construc- tion; and choice and action that have evolved to respond to food or poison. When combined with the arguments from preadaptation and multiple realizability, the existence of these agents is sufficient to establish ontological emergence as against what one might call Weinbergian reductionism. Minimal biological agents are emphatically not conscious agents, and accepting their existence does not commit one to any robust theory of human agency. Nor is there anything mystical, dualistic, or non-empirical about the emergence of agency in the biosphere. Hence the emergence of molecular autonomous agents, and indeed ontological emergence in general, is not a negation of or limitation on careful biological study but simply one of its implications.

QUANTUM INTERACTIVE DUALISM: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MATERIALISM

Abstract. René Descartes proposed an interactive dualism that posits an interaction between the mind of a human being and some of the matter in his or her brain. However, the classical physical theories that reigned during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are based exclusively on the material/physical part of Descartes' ontology, and they purport to give, in principle, a completely deterministic account of the physically described properties of nature, expressed exclusively in terms of these physically described properties themselves. Orthodox contemporary physical theory violates this condition in two separate ways. First, it injects random elements into the dynamics. Second, it requires psychophysical events, called Process 1 interventions by John von Neumann. Neither the content nor the timing of these events is determined, even statistically, by any known law. Orthodox quantum mechanics considers these events to be instigated by choices made by conscious agents. This quantum conception of the mind‐brain connection allows many psychological and neuropsychological findings associated with the apparent physical effectiveness of our conscious volitional efforts to be explained in a causal and practically useful way. According to this quantum approach, conscious human beings are invested with degrees of freedom denied to the mechanistic automatons to which classical physics reduced us.

FROM EVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS TO CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION: ARE WE IN CONTROL?

This article discusses implicit assumptions in the conference theme to understand the complexity involved in trying to gain control of globalization, in particular: (1) We, (2) being in control (not only in cybernetic way) and (3) globalization. I introduce distinctions between single conscious agents, systems of conscious agents, and emergent we, as a collective entity understood as a Collective Being (a complex, multidimensional society to be studied with multiple, systemic knowledge) that has collective consciousness. The focus is the issue of being in control. This issue is understood as the ability to design and manage emergent processes of development.

La justificación de la libertad del hombre frente a la omnipotencia divina en la ética de Guillermo de Ockham

The freedom issue has not been systematically considered by Ockham; that is why the author approaches it from the point of view of the methodological principles examined by the Venerabilis Inceptor in order to reach its development. First, the basis for the new gnoseo-ontological justification of the reality proposed by the Ockham's followers is established. That makes it possible to set the limits in which the issue is framed according to a model strongly inspired in the principle of divine omnipotence. Ockham's approach uses the Aristotelian language and doctrine of free will, but from a completely different point of view; since the Aristotelian free will results from a first recognition of a number of possibilities from which the agent opt; then freedom is an intellectual capability. Ockham sets aside this key element of Aristotelianism by changing the approach of study; he supports that will is an active power and its key option -acting or not acting- does not depend on the human intellect but on itself as a causa sui. Metaphysic and Anthropology, which support this belief, have been materially changed as compared to the main trends of the XIII Century: nature lacks a specific direction; it is not determined by truth and good. Only the free and conscious agent acts towards and end established by himself while the physical universe is predictable and perfectly determined. Freedom is shown as a new reality against natural determination, thus shaping the first medieval version for the modern dilemma of freedom versus determinism.

Counterintuitiveness as the hallmark of religiosity

This article presents empirical evidence for the hypothesis that persons consider counterintuitive representations more likely to be religious than other kinds of beliefs. In three studies the subjects were asked to rate the probable religiousness of various kinds of imaginary beliefs. The results show that counterintuitive representations in general, and counterintuitive representations involving a conscious agent in particular, are considered much more likely to be religious. Counterintuitiveness thus seems to be an important element in a folk-understanding of religion.

A Rising Tide of Demands: India's Public Institutions and the Democratic Revolution

India is experiencing a long democratic revolution. A social and political transformation extending over half a century has made widening circles of its citizens in to politically conscious and active agents who exercise pressures upon the state. This democratic revolution has given rise to a sharp expansion of demands without a correspondingly rapid increase in the capacities of the state. The consequence may be especially observed in the weakening fiscal position of central and state governments in India. The democratic revolution has significant consequences for the future of India's public institutions.

The Concept of a Conscious Agent

The Concept of a Conscious Agent

Purchasing Praise: Women, Dancing, and Patronage in Malawi Party Politics

Political parties in contemporary Malawi organize their female members to dance and sing songs of praise at their public functions. One of the characteristics of the political environment that produces women's praise singing and dancing in Malawi is the unequal relationship between politicians and the people they lead, which can generally be characterized as patron-client. Politicians enact their roles as patrons at public functions by giving material gifts to women performers, giving them an incentive to join the party, dance in its service, and ultimately vote for its politicians. This article explores the institution of women's political praise dancing and singing in Malawi party politics, especially during the campaigning for the second multiparty elections that took place in 1999. I situate this practice within the context of patron-client relationships and question whether women are acting as conscious agents when they dance or whether they are strategically manipulated and exploited by politicians.

Purchasing Praise: Women, Dancing, and Patronage in Malawi Party Politics

Political parties in contemporary Malawi organize their female members to dance and sing songs of praise at their public functions. One of the characteristics of the political environment that produces women's praise singing and dancing in Malawi is the unequal relationship between politicians and the people they lead, which can generally be characterized as patron-client. Politicians enact their roles as patrons at public functions by giving material gifts to women performers, giving them an incentive to join the party, dance in its service, and ultimately vote for its politicians. This article explores the institution of women's political praise dancing and singing in Malawi party politics, especially during the campaigning for the second multiparty elections that took place in 1999. I situate this practice within the context of patron-client relationships and question whether women are acting as conscious agents when they dance or whether they are strategically manipulated and exploited by politicians.

Persons and their underpinnings

I defend a conception of the relationship between the personal and sub‐personal levels as interaction withoutreduction.There are downward inferences from the personal to the sub‐personal level but we find upward explanatory gaps when we try to construct illuminating accounts of personal level conditions using just sub‐personal level notions. This conception faces several serious challenges but the objection that I consider in this paper says that, when theories support downward inferences from the personal to the sub‐personal level, this is the product of an unacceptably • mechanistic view of persons. According to this objection, if we were to focus on persons as conscious rational thinkers and agents then the support for putative downward inferences would be undermined. I consider and reject developments of this objection in response to two arguments for downward inferences.

Using One's Head: Were Jurists "Unconscious" Socio-Economic Ciphers or Conscious Agents? A Response to Friedman: [Commentary

Using One's Head: Were Jurists "Unconscious" Socio-Economic Ciphers or Conscious Agents? A Response to Friedman: [Commentary

Using One's Head: Were Jurists “Unconscious” Socio-Economic Ciphers or Conscious Agents? A Response to Friedman

Professor Friedman's lively review of my recent book Heart versus Head raises a number of questions, not all of which need be addressed in the pages of this journal. I welcome the opportunity to comment on it, because I think it possible to define more clearly our differences as well as those matters on which we agree, and because I think such an exchange can be of use to those planning further forays into the world of nineteenth-century American law. But first:

Veblen's critique of Marx's philosophical preconceptions of political economy

This paper explores some of the theoretical linkages between Thorstein Veblen and Karl Marx. Special reference is placed Veblen's criticisms of Marx and the Marxist tradition for adhering to the preconceptions of (a) the natural right of labour to the full product, and (b) the teleology of conscious agents directing action towards change. Veblen was incorrect to believe that Marx adhered to the natural right of labour thesis, but he was correct to assert that Marx utilized undesirable teleologies. Overall, however, Veblen was attempting to reformulate and modernise the materialistic conception of history through an evolutionary analysis of institutions. The two thinkers complement each other in important ways, although Veblen's analysis is more evolutionary, collectivist and holistic.

Coping with transition: Insights from Kyrgyzstan

The devastating effects of food crises and famine in Africa and Asia in the 1980s have stimulated a spate of research into the strategies that households adopt in order to survive.' This work has not only served to strengthen the theoretical claims of an entitlements approach to famine,2 but also provided important insights into the changing objectives of households, their diverse responses to food crises and the variable significance of apparently similar responses in pastoral and farming communities. It has proved particularly useful to policy makers in designing early warning systems and famine relief programmes. However, the application of this approach has been limited not only geographically to famine-struck countries in the South but also situationally to cases of acute food crisis. It is the purpose of this article to demonstrate the theoretical and practical usefulness of extending the application of such micro-level research both to post-communist transitional economies, which fit comfortably neither into the so-called developing nor developed worlds, and to situations of severe economic crisis, which are not yet characterised by acute food shortages or famine. We focus on the case of Kyrgyzstan, a former Central Asian Republic of the Soviet Union, which gained formal political independence in 1990. We begin by first defining some of our key terms. Throughout the article the term 'household' is used to refer to a unit of co-residence where individual members, who may or may not be kin, 'eat from the same pot'. While most of the research on household coping strategies in famine situations has treated the household as an undifferentiated, harmonious aggregate which is the lowest level of decision making, this article takes note of more recent work on the complexity of intra-household relations, which questions the underlying assumption that individual members subordinate their particular interests for the general good of the household and underlines the importance of relationships of power and subordination along age and gender lines.3 Interviewees were thus asked to relate how they and other residents of the household had responded to the economic crisis. Their accounts are interpreted as reflective of their own particular understanding of the situation and not as somehow representative of how the 'household' as a unified, conscious agent acts. The second conceptual point relates to the notion of 'strategy'. In her seminal piece on household coping strategies Corbett argues for using the term 'strategy' rather than 'mechanism' as 'it most readily implies the careful forward planning that has been observed'.4 I would argue that the term strategy and its implied

Computationalism and the problem of other minds

Abstract In this paper I discuss Searle's claim that the computational properties of a system could never cause a system to be conscious. In the first section of the paper I argue that Searle is correct that, even if a system both behaves in a way that is characteristic of conscious agents (like ourselves) and has a computational structure similar to those agents, one cannot be certain that that system is conscious. On the other hand, I suggest that Searle's intuition that it is “empirically absurd” that such a system could be conscious is unfounded. In the second section I show that Searle's attempt to show that a system's computational states could not possibly cause it to be conscious is based upon an erroneous distinction between computational and physical properties. On the basis of these two arguments, I conclude that, supposing that the behavior of conscious agents can be explained in terms of their computational properties, we have good reason to suppose that a system having computational properti...

Consciousness, Intentionality and Function. What Is the Right Order of Explanation?

I ewamine and criticize two views held by John Searle, i.e., that the assignment of biological functions is relative to a conscious agent with beliefs and desires and that consciousness has priority over intentionality.

Has Culture Theory Lost Its Minds?

For most cultural anthropologists, the point of remains the paramount object of ethnographic research. Nevertheless, interpretive and psychological anthropologists have come to envision the object differently. Positions on both sides of this blurry divide are varied and complex, but a sketch of ideal types is a useful point of departure.1 By and large, interpretive, or symbolic, anthropologists tend to look at the human situation from the top down, or outside in. Culture makes people: the native's point of view is overwhelmingly a cultural product, the subjective imprint of a collective symbol system. A revisionist wing of interpretive anthropology, sometimes associated with postmodernism or poststructuralism, asserts that public discourses constitute multiple subjectivities, or subjective fragments, within native society. In contrast, psychological anthropologists are more likely to take a bottom up or inside out perspective. The focus shifts to personal experience. A native's point of view, the ideational precipitate of a singular life trajectory, is a compound of culture-ideas and feelings shared with others-and idiosyncratic elements. That is, people (notjust anthropologists) inhabit subjective worlds that are in some ways similar and in others incredibly diverse. To varying degrees, psychological anthropologists also emphasize that people are conscious agents who continually rework personal meanings

Objectivity, Subjectivity and Beyond: an Exchange With W. C. Smith

Part of the problem in interpreting Smith within the framework of the subject-object polarity is that the term objective is used in various senses which are not always carefully discriminated. Thus objective knowledge may be, in the first place, knowledge of objects construed as external facts or things. As such, Smith argues, it is an inappropriate category for the knowledge of persons who are not things but conscious agents who assign meaning to facts. In this sense, Smith's argument seems to be almost trivial—but only because his own contribution to the study of religion has made it commonplace. Respecting this first sense of objectivity as knowledge of external objects arrived at by an epistemologica! approach that looks upon them as neutral, impersonal things, I believe Smith's critique is in the main incontestable. As early as 1968 in What is Comparative Religion Comparing?2 I was a convert to Smith's view that the proper study of humankind's religiousness is the meanings ascribed to religious facts, meanings that are at the same time the meanings ascribed to gods, human, history, and nature. I feel sometimes that in Towards a World Theology (hereafter, TWT) Smith is still fighting a battle which he long ago won, namely, the

Humanism revisited: A review of Kate Soper's humanism and anti-humanism

Professor Soper traces the development of humanism as well as its demise. She resurrects its authentic meaning by situating its roots in the philosophical tradition beginning with Hegel and followed by Marx, Husserl, Heidegger, and Existentialism. Treatment of the Marxist turn in Existentialism and its penchant to relate its own thinking to the political realities and contexts in which it was born, viz., the Cold War and the crisis for Marxism presented by Stalinism, leads her to the practical and political arena of the humanist and anti-humanist debate. She then reconstructs the growth of the anti-humanistic tradition beginning with the French structuralist L6viStrauss and continuing with the work of Althusser, Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida. This historical and philosophical setting frames the debate between humanists and anti-humanists in terms of the status of history itself and the question of who, if anyone, 'makes' it. At the end of her work she recasts the issues permeating the text by reformulating the essential question: "In what sense, if any, is it valid for persons to conceive of themselves as conscious political agents whose decisions and actions have decisive effect on the course of history?" (p. 146). The author identifies three lines of response. The structuralist, antihumanist, reply is that the question is not valid since the meaning of our conscious life is inaccessible to us. The existentialist reply is that we are entirely responsible for what we make of our situation. Finally, the socialist response is that people are conscious agents whose political options could be other than they are and whose actions have real impact upon their conditions of existence. Yet these conditions are not themselves freely chosen. The consequences of our actions are often unforeseen and unintended.

Sensory cortex and the mind-brain problem

AbstractOne of the implicit, and sometimes explicit, objectives of modern neuroscience is to find neural correlates of subjective experience so that different qualities of that experience might be explained in detail by reference to the physical structure and processes of the brain. It is generally assumed that such explanations will make unnecessary or rule out any reference to conscious mental agents. This is the classic mind-brain reductivist program. We have chosen to challenge the optimism underlying such an approach in the context of sensory neurophysiology and sensory experience. Specifically, we ask if it is possible to explain the subjective differences among seeing, hearing, and feeling something by inspecting the structure and function of primary visual, auditory, and somesthetic cortex.After reviewing the progress in localization of sensory functions over the past two centuries and examining some aspects of the structure and function of somesthetic, auditory, and visual cortex, we infer that one cannot explain the subjective differences between sensory modalities in terms of present day neuroscientific knowledge. Nor do present trends in research provide grounds for optimism.At this point we turn to three philosophical theories to see what promise they hold of explaining these differences. A brief discussion of each – identity theory, functionalism, and eliminative materialism – suggests that none adequately accounts for the facts of the situation, and we tentatively conclude that some form of dualism is still a tenable hypothesis.