Sweet Indifference Some Thoughts About Value

Marieke RohdeE-Intentionality

26.5.04

Structure

• Introduction• Value Conceptually

– in Weber’s Biosemiotic Theory– In Di Paolo’s Adaptivity Theory

• Value Systems – Theoretically– in AI – (in Biology)

• Conclusion• (A little note on machine consciousness)

What is Value?

• Value is the basis of all judgements

• Judgements by a subject– On an object– On itself– On another subject

• Today, we are interested in the values guiding intelligent or cognitive behaviour

1.) Value

in Weber‘s and Di Paolo‘s Theories

Weber‘s Biosemiotic Theory

• „Postmodern Biology“: – Life as semiotic process– Biological subject theory instead of

causal machinery and genetic code: „Apriori [...] is only the semiotic mediation.”

– Autopoiesis and enaction– Life is extatic, aesthetic expression,

understood empathetically through shared conditio vitae

– Meaning is existential, Experience is synaesthetic

Weber on Value

• Value is primordial: – „Against negation, the living manifests as concern.

This concern is the primordial value.“ (p. 55)• Value is one-dimensional

– „Because not modalities are perceived, but effects in a single dimension, world is synaesthetic. Its essence is value along a single dimension.“ (p. 139)

• Value is spatial and a priori– „There is an interior spatial relationship, apriori to the

spaces of the world. [...] It is the space of organic existence, the absolute space of existential value“ (p.145)

Ezequiel on Value• Adaptivity is defined as: “a system’s capacity, in some

circumstances, to regulate its states and its relation to the environment with the result that, if the states are sufficiently close to the boundary of viability,

1. Tendencies are distinguished and acted upon depending on whether the states will approach or recede from the boundary and, as a consequence,

2. Tendencies of the first kind are moved closer to or transformed into tendencies of the second and so future states are prevented from reaching the boundary with an outward velocity.”

(p. 8, “Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency”, forthcoming)

Autopoiesis + Adaptivity Sense Making

Boundary of viability ~ a priori, primordial, existential valueWe will talk about this value as METABOLIC VALUE

What About Other Values?

• A priori metabolic value as common and constitutive value in all living beings seems intuitive and reasonable

• However, not all our judgments or all our actions seem to be measurable against metabolic value.

Weber on Value (II)

• Organisms, even humans, experience world as value.

• “The body is offered a cosmos of signs. In this cosmos, it first experiences the value of a stimulus, and then, mediated through it, its specific form” (p. 138)

• Value comes before qualia, primary experience is synaesthetic, modalities are secondary, a contribution by the organism

Weber on Values (III)

• „From the encounters with the world that the system evaluates as good or bad, preferences are formed. Those serve as „values“ according to which the brain self-organises. [...] Only several vital behaviour emphases are built into the neuronal architecture from birth. They work as basal orientation values. [...] only very few fixed values exist (like e.g. „food is good“, „light is good“).“ (p. 60)

• Ergo:– There are no real non-metabolic values – Some built in apriori values analogous to metabolic value– Other values are deduced

Ezequiel on Values (II)

• Adaptive mechanisms can respond ex post facto to the significance of an encounter, assimilating and accommodating novel value to the internal form of the organism’s normativity.

• Signs, like snowprints, can then become the reliable bearers of meaning.

These are like Weber’s deduced values.

Ezequiel on Values (III)

• The development of the dimension of concern from metabolism to human projects is marked by transitions where the freedom gained by the primordial processes of life is occupied with novel ways of generating value.

• This is enabled by metabolism but need not subserve it: habits may work against organismic viability.

There are genuine values that are non-metabolic.

Weber on Values IV

• I would try to keep an existential liaison of values and body as long as possible, and I think for valuing, the concerning perturbation must not be a death or life situation. It is only necessary that it has some consequences for the ongoing homeodynamics which are translated into embodied form.

• It is important to remember that "meshwork" of selves: the fact, that the centre of agency in an organism is never substantial, but has to be negotiated in every instant between "swarms" of autopoietic atoms and something becoming "outside" in this process.

Summary1. Existential Value is a priori (objective)2. Metabolic value is a prerequisite for being a sense-maker.3. Therefore, you have to have objective metabolic value as a

subjective value to be an adaptive sense maker.4. We can more or less well define what it is to have metabolic valueQuestions:• If it is the only real value you can have (Weber), what do we make

of behaviours like substance abuse, altruism etc.?• If there are other subjective values (Di Paolo), what characterises

them? Can we properly define them?• If there can be subjective non-metabolic values, do they really need

a metabolism to reside on?• What do we make of maladaptations? (Discrepancy between value

in the eye of the observer and in the eye of the acting subject?)

Sketch of an Opinion

• Two criteria are necessary to be able to talk about something as value:1. A self sustaining, (self-generating?) precarious process.2. It needs to be protected by a subject (i.e. sensemaker) the way

it is described by Ezequiel for metabolic value and adaptivity.

• Adaptivity + autopoiesis accomplish this for metabolic value

• It is through action, that value is expressed, experienced and created.

• Metabolic value and sense-making are two sides of the same coin and only enable value-following.

Sketch of an Opinion II

• There are other, non-metabolic values – they “parasite”– Selfish gene values– Social values– Other organismic? (Substance abuse, tidyness, ...)

• Real values without metabolism?– Self sustaining, self generating process in principle possible?– Even if, they do lack subjects to pursue them– Is there still a possibility for value in the eye of the observer, if a

process sustains and generates itself through the actions of an artificial agent? Can we still call this cognition?

• Problems:– Discrepancy between observer and subject and the possibility to

err.– A priori semantics for values

Value Systems

A little comparison

Weber on Value and the Brain

• Only several vital behaviour emphases are built into the neuronal architecture from birth. They work as basal orientation values. [...] only very few fixed values exist (like e.g. „food is good“, „light is good“).“ (p. 60)

• „Value, from this perspective, is on a neuronal level coded as „good“ or „bad“, because it is analoguous to the flourishing of the individual. [...] In the nervous system, both, experience and analogy, appear in the same currency of APs, which does not distinguish the sharpness of a punchline from the actual twinkling of a blade“ (p. 136)

• He directly refers to Edelman‘s work.

Sporns and Edelman on Value

• Sporns and Edelmann (theory of neuronal group selection): – “Value systems already specified during embryogenesis as

result of evolutionary selection upon the phenotype […] Due to their evolved anatomical structure, the level of response of such value systems is related to simple criteria of saliency or adaptiveness. For example a reaching movement establishing tactile contact with an object may result in increased neuronal firing in the value system, thus signalling the adaptiveness of the movement.”

– “We would expect that different value systems are activated for a variety of functionally interrelated tasks, that different value systems interact, or that hierarchies of specificity might exist.”

Building blocks for “neuronal fitness functions”

Rutkowska

• Pragmatic problems with value systems:

• “Do [value systems] constitute a vestigial ‘ghost in the machine’?”– Inbuilt goals/stop criteria

Predetermination– Buck passing to Evolution– Acquisition or tuning?– Sensorimotor flexibility– Restrictive Semantics

• “[increased] flexibility requires some more general purpose style of value”

Value Systems Pragmatically

• Values do not come in boxes, they are generated during interaction.

• There are certainly homuncular problems to a compositional value system approach.

• What about other AI Models?– Same with termination criteria for search, feedback

channels in ML, utility functions and other value systems in boxes.

– Tony’s EDA: Value system = bumper– Evolutionary Robotics?

Evolutionary Robotics• Fitness function: Supposed to measure value of behaviour in the

eye of the observer.• A value system to maximise it should be featured by the evolved

agent architecture• Form the value system could take is principally unbiased.• The design of the experiment has the potential to crucially bias

against the establishment of a richer value system than those mentioned.

• Fitness Criteria– Bodily:

• Surface sensory (Maximise light sensors)• Internal sensory (Maximise battery level)

– Interactive:• Environmental (Reduce distance to target)• Social (Cooperative/Competitive Coevolution)

Evolutionary Robotics II

• Moving away from the periphery allows reinterpretation of sensors/motors/physical state A posteriori semantics

• Decentralisation allows robustness• Ezequiel’s homeostatic robots robust against sensor

switching: the way these robots “judge” on the direction of light does not rely on the activation of individual light sensors, but on a more abstract and distributed system judging whether the behaviour is “successful”.

• But: also the tasks should feature the necessary complexity: Moving to the light does not support a self-sustaining process.

A Priori Semantics

• Translation of complex values to simple variables, e.g. „Light is good“, „food is good“

• Seems like selling everything gained so far - where did the synaesthetic nature of experience go?

• At the same time– The boundary of viability is not directly „magically“

perceptible to the organism – BUT: we never wanted organisms to adapt to everything.

– This makes error possible: The organisms mistakenly seeks the warm, but then the warm is where the predator is...

A Priori Semantics II• The truth is in the middle ground:

– Remember: Adaptivity is a graded concept.– Does a built in value like „light is good“ imply a mechanism striving to

maximise light sensor stimulation? No!– A sense maker is only a sense maker in suitable circumstances– Historical aspect: maladaptation meaningless in a non-adaptive context

• Weber: The brain as sense organ– „Decoupling“ from metabolism + „neural currency“ is a step back (if

value = metabolic value).– Transitions in value systems (Ezequiel):

• An oak-tree might have some concern for his own being, but it cannot be afraid, nor can an ant be embarrassed.

• Merleau-Ponty’s concept of motor intentionality is the most direct account of the self-affirming property of the body in activity.

– The brain as action organ?

3.) Conclusion

Values

• Values are arising from self-sustaining processes, when they are promoted by a sense-maker

• They certainly do not come in boxes. • Values in AI:

– In the eye of the observer.– Pushing values out of the boxes is the way to

go.– Also: modelling self-sustaining processes.

Things That Still Bother Me:

• Value in the world/ in the eye of the subject/ in the eye of the observer

• A priori/a posteriori semantics, translation of values

• Self sustaining processes without metabolism

• Transitions in values, action as self-sustaining process

• Biological reality of value systems

Any Questions?

Appendix

A little Note on Machine Consciousness

A little note on “Machine Consiousness”

• "With respect to the living, the crucial criterion is not conscious behaviour, but  meaningful behaviour. The meaningful can occur unconsciously. Meaningful is every autopoietic regulation. Therefore, the question "What may he experience?", if asked about unconscious humans or animals is a wrong question. We cannot know it. The right question would be rather: What does it mean for him as a subject? Only this can be interpreted as an embodied sign. …

A little note on “Machine Consiousness”

• …Here, my own knowledge as a living organism, to who other life presents itself as from the same substance, helps: the ill person that cannot express himself anymore, animals, yes, even a paramecium that cramps before it is killed by the picric acid dribbled under the cover slip, the saddening look of a limp plant, the foetus that defends itself with hands and feet against the instruments of the doctor - they all present the meaning of that what happens to them. The meaning is explicitly evident in the gestures.“

• Value can only be articulated in the outside (p. 149)

References• Di Paolo, E.: Organismically-inspired robotics: Homeostatic

adaptation and natural teleology beyond the closed sensorimotor loop. In: K. Murase and T. Asakura (eds.): Dynamical systems approach to embodiment and sociality. Adelaide, Australia: Advanced Knowledge International 2003. 19-42.

• Di Paolo, E. A.: Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency. in: Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. (Forthcoming).

• Rutkowska, J.: “What's value worth? Constraining Unsupervised Behaviour Acquisition.” In: “Proc. of the Fourth European Conference on Artificial Life” 1997. 290-298.

• Sporns, O., and G.M. Edelman (1993): Solving Bernstein's problem: A proposal for the development of coordinated movement by selection. Child Dev. 64:960-981.

• Weber, A.: „Natur als Bedeutung. Versuch einer semiotischen Theorie des Lebendigen.“ Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003.