Transhumanist Blogs on Religion and Spirituality

Joseph's Challenge.

James McLean Ledford at christian-transhumanism.blogspot.com — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:27:00 -0700

Joseph's challenge; "All you seem to be doing is redefining terms. Bandwidth = the Grail. Jesus = Simulation Programmer. And none of your redefinitions seems to proceed from a convincing argument. And what "infinite continuum of life" are you talking about? Please, try to make your case without throwing out a cascade of ill-defined terms. Start with a defense of the reality of contemporary Christianity. Because if you're trying to convince that majority of Transhumanists who are Atheists or Agnostics, that's the first hurdle you'll need to overcome. And thusfar, I see no reason to put any more credence in your Christianity than I do in classical Roman paganism.

So I the Christian Transhumanist respond; Thanks Joseph! Let me give that a try. I had better have the Holy Grail for you, and I think I do :) It has everything to do with your concern with ill-defined terms. Synthesis of terms is paramount. But it takes lots of work on both sides...the transmitter and the receiver. A lifetime of work!

Let's proceed with the definition of life, using the most advanced concepts in information theory: Life is an information gathering and utilizing system that maintains order upon itself. Life replicates, and modifies itself through feedback loop of doing-learning-modifying-doing... This definition is directly influenced by Cybernetics and Information Theory. Life learns adapts and changes its behavior. This "circular causal" relationship is necessary and sufficient for a cybernetic perspective. Life is special because of its signaling and self-sustaining processes.

Then imagine a living universe; a vast homeostatic super organism that actively produces the conditions necessary for its survival. It is a closed loop of Creation-Evolution-Creation. Plot this over time like a Stephen Hawking space-time diagram but actually plot information in the Claude Shannon sense, instead of space, because we know that matter and life at its deepest level are information.

What might this living universe look like? This is where Cutting edge Physics, Greek Philosophy, and Early Christianity come in. Using peer reviewed references, I need to model Creation- Evolution-Recapitulation (in the sense of salvation to get us back)- to Creation. I found over the years that this model is best approached using the concept of block time. With block time we must remember General Relativity, where time is a dimension not a dynamic. "The hardest thing to realize about this type of diagram is that they represent the past, present, and future all in one diagram. The evolution of physical systems is represented by looking at successive horizontal slices in the diagram at successive times. Space-time diagrams represent evolution, but they don't evolve themselves."

The central point of this torus is what Christians know as the Rapture, some Transhumanist call it the Singularity, and those on the fringe call it the Rapture of The Nerds :) The central point is where Shannon entropy is at its lowest with information compressed to a SIMPLE phrase like; "I Am". I stress simple because here God is not composed or divisible by any physical or metaphysical means. This is often called the Miracle of Being. btw, Have you ever apprehended the Miracle of Being? anyway, I have called this point The Critical Point of Understanding and the Supreme State of Being. It is singular not plural, not PAGAN..sorry :)

If the central point of this torus is I Am then what proceeds above that point is the answer to the question; Now What? The upper portion of the torus represents the creation; big bang let there be light. There is cosmic inflation and noisy chaos as far as information is concerned. He made a difference.

From the radius of the torus down to the bottom represents the compression of information into the elements and the appearance of life. Here it is critical to define life in terms of information. With life, significant information processing starts at the immanent or local level. The Nobel Prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann defines life in terms of information most elegantly in his book the Quark and The Jaguar. He calls life an Information and gathering and utilizing system.

The bright blue region at the bottom is where we are today growing in understanding. This part of the Torus represents the learning strategies in the evolution of life and the Christian concept of worship. With my model above, life looks for a winning strategy and finds it! Sustained forever as in the "infinite continuum of life". Like anything else you do for fun and as a form of expression...You get to do it again a different way.

From here you can handle the rest if you got an education and pay attention to the world. But here is my challenge to you and any other readers; read the bible, take a quote, or a concept and ask me to reconcile it in terms of Christian Transhumanism. I need the exercise.

Christian Transhumanism A View That Unites Common Ambitions

James McLean Ledford at christian-transhumanism.blogspot.com — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:35:00 -0700

Christian Transhumanism A View That Unites Common Ambitions

We Would Be Creators

Christianity is the religion of the Logos. It is faith in the in the Creator Spirit, from which comes everything that exists, according to Pope Benedict the XVI. Church Fathers see humanity becoming full participators in this through Christ. In the process of theosis, the messiah leads us up to heavenly participation in the creation. Now, secular Transhumanist think of becoming "Posthuman" creators. According to leading Transhumanists like Oxford Philosopher Nick Bostrom, we are most likely living in a world created by super-intelligent Posthumans who will use advanced super-computers to run ancestor-simulations. Posthumans eventually learn to create their own virtual space-time like we would set up an aquarium today. Science supports this possibility. Many physicists believe our universe and the matter in which we are made is at its deepest level, information. Logos is at the heart of physics, just as information is at the heart of a computer. Some go so far as to conclude intelligence controls the information-processing system we call the universe.

For the evangelist, this puts a foot in the secular door. If I am living in a simulation then Jesus is a posthuman programmer capable of all sorts of miracles. You could further argue that Adams fall was a glitch in the beta test of the software, corrected by a Jesus tweak in the program. The New Testament Gospel becomes revised computer code.

If the thought of living in a "simulation" wrecks your notion of freedom, Christianity offers hope. With the Grace of God and by doing the will of God, living not by bread alone, but by every word of God, we will step out of the "simulation" and into new degrees of freedom. (Transhumanists call this a biological uplift.) Learn the code that is used to create. The Christian message is to overcome the world through love and understanding. It is interesting to note that in Genesis, the first thing God said to us was “Bless you. Now go subdue the world!” Later Jesus Christ as the fully developed human aspect of God, said to his disciples; “I have overcome the world.” Then in the book of Revelations close to the end of times it is the same “overcomer” who says he will guide us into our next form in the continuum of life. The gospel teaches Christians to be like Christ; "Whoever does the will of God is my brother, sister and mother".

Redeemed We Would Be Transformed Into Perfect Lovers

Love is important to Christianity, just as connectivity is important to Transhumanism. Aldous Huxley makes the connection beautifully in his book the Perennial Philosophy. Huxley says; "We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge, and when the love is sufficiently disinterested and sufficiently intense, the knowledge becomes unitive knowledge and so takes on the quality of infallibility." A techie would say. For this I need a fast processor with a noiseless fast connection. I need large bandwidth, and many gigabytes of stable memory. This is the geeks holy grail. God bless them. In a spiritual sense the pure attention of selfless love provides this flow-of-word-to-understanding. Worship leads to the Holy Grail.

In the way of the Holy Spirit, I want to understand you and to share your experience. I want to fully apprehend the world. And, I want to be all that I can be. No one on earth today has the capacity to do this perfectly, but we have the potential. What hope do we have of ever understanding each other with the limited time we have? Or what hope do we have of ever understanding the infinite, extra dimensions, or timelessness if our minds are just not able to grasp these concepts? We are living in a time when it is becoming more and more apparent that technologies are converging on the wish of the Holy Spirit. Christian Transhumanists would use transformative technologies in the way of the Holy Spirit. They look at love this way: Technically, love can be seen as the process of connecting. The product of the love process is understanding. If the process is efficient and sustained, understanding increases exponentially. Peace allows unwavering attention so that the love process can establish a clear connection. At the heart of the process; symbols, words, and feelings are ordered into meaning. Forgiveness is important to spiritual growth because it establishes an exhaust for misunderstanding and disorder. Put this all together and you have The Perfect State of Mind.

A broader understanding of love can unite secular and religious social capital upon the same ambition. When these great efforts converge you can expect accelerating returns. The Lifeboat Foundation explains; "An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns", such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity; technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light."

Paul Tillich; "Early in the Christian movement Irenaeus of Lyons called salvation recapitulation. He was pointing to Ephesians 1.10 which speaks of all things in heaven and earth being gathered up in Christ." "It means that the development which was broken in Adam is resumed by Christ and fulfilled in him. In Christ the new mankind has started. That which mankind was to become... However, not only mankind but the whole cosmos finds its fulfillment in Christ." Paul Tillich calls this idea "The profound doctrine of a transcendent humanism, a humanism which says that Christ is the fulfillment of essential man, of the Adamic nature." "And we can become fully human through participation in this full humanity which has appeared in Christ. This includes eternal life, and similitude with God with respect to participation in infinity." Then Tillich says, "I am always surprised how much better the theology of the ancient church was than the popular theology which developed in the nineteenth century, how much profounder and more adequate to the paradox of Christianity, without becoming irrationalistic, nonsensical, or absurd." Rather than a pointless existence, we are inspired to consciously continue the path of evolution that transhumanists aspire to. We overcome the world with "technos" to the point of Christ. Christ becomes a Critical Point of Understanding in communion with the infinite continuum of life. This is where life creates and sustains itself through communion with God The Father. Life becomes "I Am" like our own mind is an I Am. This is the all encompassing Douglass Hofstadter strange loop which arises by moving up or down through a universal hierarchical system of (creation, evolution, and rapture) and finding our self back where we started. Stepping out of this aquarium of living water space-time we can see that faith and works necessarily coexist...The end is the means.

In God and Technology We Trust

James McLean Ledford at christian-transhumanism.blogspot.com — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:21:00 -0700

Where is the American Spirit? The Space Race is over. Our unrivaled military invades overmatched third world countries chasing bands of terrorists. Other countries are taking the industrial and technological lead. The economic recession reveals there is no safe place to put money. There is talk all over the world that America is in decline and will eventually collapse like all the empires in the past. Without a vision a people will perish, says Proverbs. Why? Howard Bloom says it well; "Because a vision of a goal, a destination, a promised land, a view of a destiny that can uplift all of human kind, opens a vast reserve of energies. Not the energies that come from solar panels, wind farms, nuclear plants, coal, or oil. The energies of the human spirit. The energies of your spirit and mine. It is a matter of Biology". We are weak without inspiration.

A crisis is looming packed with danger and opportunity. A new race is on akin to the nuclear era and the space race. The new race is for the cognitive high ground where intelligence will rule all aspects of life. Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Mathematician Vernor Vinge predicts that superhuman intelligences, however created, will be able to enhance their own minds faster than the humans that created them. "When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress," Vinge writes, "that progress will be much more rapid." This feedback loop of self-improving intelligence, he predicts, will cause large amounts of technological progress within a short period.

Early signs of the crisis are emerging today. The Internet security company McAfee stated in their 2007 annual report that approximately 120 countries have been developing ways to use the Internet as a weapon and target financial markets, government computer systems and utilities. In activities reminiscent of the Cold War, which caused countries to engage in clandestine activities, intelligence agencies are routinely testing networks looking for weaknesses. These techniques for probing weaknesses in the internet and global networks are growing more sophisticated every year.

Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs, was quoted as saying "Cybercrime is now a global issue. It has evolved significantly and is no longer just a threat to industry and individuals but increasingly to national security." They predicted that future attacks will be even more sophisticated. "Attacks have progressed from initial curiosity probes to well-funded and well-organized operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage,"

The danger will come suddenly but so will opportunities. The Lifeboat Foundation explains; "An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns", such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity; technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light."

We need a leader to rally us to a goal of conscious evolution as Kennedy did with the space race in the sixties. Here is an excerpt from JFKs Moon Speech; "If we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. Now it is time to take longer strides-time for a great new American enterprise-time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth." 50 YEARS LATER... manned space flight is suffering from lack of tangible returns on investment. It seems space is no place for flesh and blood. But can and we will evolve.

How should we evolve? Yes we can evolve consciously..It seems that Mind Space is the new land of opportunity. How would Christians treat this Transhuman opportunity? In the way of the Holy Spirit, I want to understand you and to share your experience. I want to fully apprehend the world. And, I want to be all that I can be. No one on earth today has the capacity to do this perfectly, but we have the potential. What hope do we have of ever understanding each other with the limited time we have? Or what hope do we have of ever understanding the infinite, extra dimensions, or timelessness if our minds are just not able to grasp these concepts? We are living in a time when it is becoming more and more apparent that technologies are converging on the wish of the Holy Spirit. Christian Transhumanists would use transformative technologies in the way of the Holy Spirit. They look at love this way: Technically, love can be seen as the process of connecting. The product of the love process is understanding. If the process is efficient and sustained, understanding increases exponentially. Peace allows unwavering attention so that the love process can establish a clear connection. At the heart of the process; symbols, words, and feelings are ordered into meaning. Forgiveness is important to spiritual growth because it establishes an exhaust for misunderstanding and disorder. Put this all together and you have The Perfect State of Mind.

In the Christian Transhumanist's view, the cognitive high ground could be no other than Christ. His love is the winning strategy. Where ignorance is a disconnection that weakens and love empowers because it provides the highest form of understanding. Could this be God's Plan? If it is, America would be in the best position to gain the high ground because of its curious mix of God and Technology. In God and Technology we trust.

What Is Cosmism?

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:00:00 -0800

Cosmism: a practical philosophy focused on exploring, understanding and enjoying the cosmos, in its inner, outer and social aspects

Cosmism advocates

pursuing joy, growth and freedom for oneself and all beings
ongoingly, actively seeking to better understand the universe in its multiple aspects, from a variety of perspectives
taking nothing as axiomatic and accepting all ideas, beliefs and habits as open to revision based on thought, dialogue and experience

The word "Cosmism" has been used by others in the past in various ways, all of them related to and fairly harmonious with the sense in which I mean it here ... but in this Manifesto I'm largely ignoring the particulars of these prior uses.

My goal in this Manifesto is to clearly and simply articulate my own take on Cosmism -- that is: the particular flavor of Cosmism that I find most sympathetic.

I've said Cosmism is a practical philosophy. What I mean by a "practical philosophy" is, in essence, a world-view and value-system -- but one that, in addition to containing abstract understanding, provides concrete guidance to the issues we face in our lives.

Like any other world-view and/or value system, Cosmism is not something that can be scientifically or mathematically proven to be "correct"; it is something that an individual or group may adopt, or not. Obviously I think Cosmism worthy of adoption, or I wouldn't be writing a Manifesto about it.

Not only do I think Cosmism is a Good Thing in a general sense -- I think it will become increasingly relevant in the next years, decades and centuries as technology advances, as the "human world" we take for granted is replaced with a succession of radically different realities.

The currently standard world-views and value-systems will, I suggest, not only fail to survive this transition, but -- worse yet -- fail terribly as guides as we pass through it. Cosmism is far better suited to guide us as these changes unfold.

Dedication: to Valentin Turchin

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:05:00 -0800

This Manifesto is dedicated to Valentin Turchin (1931 – 2010), a great Soviet-American scientist and futurist visionary who died the year it was completed.

I'm sorry Val never got to read this Manifesto, as I'm sure he would have enjoyed it. He would have agreed with most of it, and had insightful and entertaining arguments to make about the rest. While I never explicitly discussed "Cosmism" with him, I have rarely met anyone more Cosmist in their attitudes, through and through.

As a cybernetician and computer scientist, Val's contributions were numerous, including the Refal programming language, the theory of metasystem transitions and the notion of supercompilation. He was a pioneer of Artificial Intelligence and one of the visionaries at the basis of the Global brain idea.

And his book The Phenomenon of Science, written in the 1960s, is one of the most elegant statements of Cosmist scientific philosophy ever written.

I was privileged to know Val in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when we both lived in North Jersey, in the context of collaborating with him on the commercialization of his supercompilation technology. Our discussions on supercompilation, immortality, AI, the philosophy of mathematics and other topics were among the most memorable I've had with anyone.

The death of great minds like Val is one of the absurd horrors that Cosmist philosophy hopes to abolish via scientific and technological advance.

The Phenomenon of Science closes with the following words:

“We have constructed a beautiful and majestic edifice of science. Its fine-laced linguistic constructions soar high into the sky. But direct your gaze to the space between the pillars, arches, and floors, beyond them, off into the void. Look more carefully, and there in the distance, in the black depth, you will see someone's green eyes staring. It is the Secret, looking at you.”

Singularity, Transcension and All That

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:00:00 -0800

It appears likely to many knowledgeable people -- including me -- that advanced science and technology will soon allow our minds to expand far beyond the limitations of the human brain architecture that has historically supported them.

I won't take up space repeating the evidence for this assertion here: Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near and Broderick's The Spike are good places to start if somehow you've found this Manifesto without first being familiar with the canon of modern futurism.

Cosmism would be an interesting and relevant philosophy even without this dawning technological Singularity/Transcension.

However, these probable impending events make Cosmism more appealing -- for the reason that the alternative philosophies more prevalent among the human race at the current time, are deeply incompatible with the changes are coming.

Cosmism provides a world-view and value-system that makes sense in the human world now, and will continue to make sense as the practical world advances, even as some of us leave our human bodies and brains behind and explore new ways of existing and interacting.

Quite possibly once we become advanced enough, Cosmism will appear to us roughly equally silly as all other "legacy human" philosophies. If so, then I doubt I will be shedding any tears for it at that stage! But quite possibly I will be happy that it proved adequate to help nurse us through the transition to our next phase of being. (Although, even if some continuous evolute of mine is around at that time, it's unclear whether it will still identify itself as being the same "self" or mind as Ben Goertzel circa 2010!)

If your main interest is in Cosmist views of future technologies may wish to skip toward the middle of the Manifesto where they're explicitly treated. But eventually you'll probably want to look back at the earlier parts which outline the philosophical foundation on which the later more tech-focused discussions are based.

Every one of the radical future technologies dawning has profound philosophical implications, going beyond what is explored in SF movies and all but the most profound SF books. Understanding these technologies and what they will do and what they will mean requires taking a deep look at the nature of the mind and the universe.

Just as the Internet is about people as much as it is about wires and bits and protocols, the new technologies dawning are about mind and reality as much as they are about AI algorithms, engineered gene sequences and nanodevices.

Understanding artificial intelligence -- and the sense in which it may be sentient -- requires us to look deeply into the nature of mind and awareness.

Understanding brain-computer interfacing requires us to deeply understand the mind and the self, and their relation to other minds and to physical reality.

Understanding the emerging global brain requires us to understand the nature of mind and society in a way that goes beyond the models we conventionally use, which are based on current biological brains and societies that will soon be dramatically augmented or transcended.

Understanding immortality and the issues associated with it requires an understanding of self and identity -- of what is a "self" that it might be immortal.

Exploring the various possible means to immortality -- including uploading and other forms of cyberimmortality -- requires an understanding of the relations between minds and bodies.

Understanding what advanced unified physics might mean requires deeply understanding the nature of physical reality, including subtle issues like the relation between reality and simulation.

Understanding what virtual realities or inexpensive molecular assemblers would mean for human or more advanced forms of life and mind, again requires a profound understanding of the interrelation of mind, reality and society.

Understanding what sorts of alien minds we might discover -- elsewhere in the physical universe, in other "dimensions" or potentially right here on Earth -- requires a deep understanding of mind, reality and their relationship.

Thinking about these possibilities from a purely technological perspective is inadequate and may perhaps be dangerously misleading. These possibilities must be considered very deeply from a perspective of pragmatic philosophy, if one is to have any real hope of understanding and approaching them in a useful way. That is one of the key things that Cosmism, as I interpret and pursue it here, attempts to do.

So, in the first N sections of this Manifesto I'm going to delve fairly deep into what will seem like abstract philosophical considerations. But it all will get pulled back into the practical by the end.

Ten Cosmist Convictions (Mostly by Giulio Prisco)

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:05:00 -0800

Giulio Prisco, on the mailing list of a group called the "Order of Cosmic Engineers", posted a wonderful "mini-manifesto" listing principles of the OCE.

I have edited and extended his list slightly, without altering its spirit, to obtain the following, which may serve as a reasonable preface to this Manifesto:

Ten Cosmist Convictions

1) Humans will merge with technology, to a rapidly increasing extent. This is a new phase of the evolution of our species, just picking up speed about now. The divide between natural and artificial will blur, then disappear. Some of us will continue to be humans, but with a radically expanded and always growing range of available options, and radically increased diversity and complexity. Others will grow into new forms of intelligence far beyond the human domain.

2) We will develop sentient AI and mind uploading technology. Mind uploading technology will permit an indefinite lifespan to those who choose to leave biology behind and upload. Some uploaded humans will choose to merge with each other and with AIs. This will require reformulations of current notions of self, but we will be able to cope.

3) We will spread to the stars and roam the universe. We will meet and merge with other species out there. We may roam to other dimensions of existence as well, beyond the ones of which we're currently aware.

4) We will develop interoperable synthetic realities (virtual worlds) able to support sentience. Some uploads will choose to live in virtual worlds. The divide between physical and synthetic realities will blur, then disappear.

5) We will develop spacetime engineering and scientific "future magic" much beyond our current understanding and imagination.

6) Spacetime engineering and future magic will permit achieving, by scientific means, most of the promises of religions -- and many amazing things that no human religion ever dreamed. Eventually we will be able to resurrect the dead by "copying them to the future".

7) Intelligent life will become the main factor in the evolution of the cosmos, and steer it toward an intended path.

8) Radical technological advances will reduce material scarcity drastically, so that abundances of wealth, growth and experience will be available to all minds who so desire. New systems of self-regulation will emerge to mitigate the possibility of mind-creation running amok and exhausting the ample resources of the cosmos.

9) New ethical systems will emerge, based on principles including the spread of joy, growth and freedom through the universe, as well as new principles we cannot yet imagine

10) All these changes will fundamentally improve the subjective and social experience of humans and our creations and successors, leading to states of individual and shared awareness possessing depth, breadth and wonder far beyond that accessible to "legacy humans"

P.S.
Giulio made the following comment on the use of the word "will" in the above principles:

" ... 'will' is not used in the sense of inevitability, but in the sense of intention: we want to do this, we are confident that we can do it, and we will do our f**king best to do it."

Who Is This Book For?

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:00:00 -0800

The book is for everyone who likes thinking and understanding -- of course. For everyone who wants to understand their world, their mind, or their future.

But it will go down most easily for the reader who's already absorbed a bit of technofuturism -- perhaps from reading modern SF writers like Vinge or Stephenson or Stross; or perhaps from the nonfiction works of Kurzweil or Drexler or other futurist pundits.

There is a lot to say about Cosmism, but in writing this Manifesto I've aimed for compactness over completeness -- not only because I have a lot of other things to do than write manifestos, but also because I want to make sure the focus is on the essentials.

As a result of its compactness, this brief work is probably not too "novice-friendly" -- if you've not plunged into the early 21st century techno-futurist literature at all before, you may find it perplexing and opaque, and you may want to do some other reading first and come back to this a little later. Or not -- sometimes it's best to just plunge in!

No References!

In fact, the vast majority of ideas presented here are things I've written down before in one book, article, essay or another, over the years, often in much more depth than is done here. But most of those prior writings have been aimed at an academic audience; and I've sometimes felt that in those writings some of the core ideas have been expressed with inadequate clarity due to the various connections and complications elaborated therein. Sometimes there is power in simplicity.

There are many, many details pertaining to all the points raised here, and exploring them is critical -- but it's also critical to be clear on the fundamentals and not to get lost in the particulars.

In this spirit, you'll notice an absence of references and citations in this text. I know how to write in a fully-referenced academic style all too bloody well -- and this is intentionally not that kind of work. I'm not representing that every idea presented here is original. Some are original; many are not! Sometimes I mention another historical or contemporary thinker by name, when it seems particularly appropriate -- but these mentions are not particularly systematic and don't necessarily reflect the biggest influences or sources of the ideas given here.

My Hope

My hope is that you'll find the practical philosophy I articulate here not only interesting but also compelling. Cosmism isn't just about cool ideas that are fun to think, talk and write about. It's about actively trying to understand more, actively trying to grow and improve and collectively create a better cosmos, and all that good stuff...

As will become clear to you if you read the rest of this Manifesto, one aspect of Cosmism is, that, roughly speaking: the more sentient beings adopt Cosmist values, the better will Cosmist values be served.

Of course, I don't expect anyone to fully agree with everything I say here -- I myself, in a decade or a year or maybe even a month, may not agree with all of it!

However, if you agree with a substantial percentage of Cosmism as I articulate it here -- and more importantly, if you agree with the spirit in which these thoughts are offered -- then you are a Cosmist in the sense in which I mean the term.

A Brief History of "Cosmism"

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:00:00 -0800

The term "cosmism" seems to have originated with the Russian Cosmists, in the mid-1800's.

The most famous Russian Cosmist was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who according to Wikipedia

believed that colonizing space would lead to the perfection of the human race, with immortality and a carefree existence. He also developed ideas of the "animated atom" (panpsychism), and "radiant mankind".

All this is generally conceptually harmonious with my use of the term here, though not precisely identical.

My friend and colleague Hugo de Garis has used the term Cosmist to refer to (again quoting the mighty Wikipedia)

a moral philosophy that favours building or growing strong artificial intelligence and ultimately leaving the planet Earth.... Cosmists will foresee the massive, truly astronomical potential of substrate-independent cognition, and will therefore advocate unlimited growth in the designated fields, in the hopes that "super intelligent" machines might one day colonise the universe. It is this "cosmic" view of history, in which the fate of one single species, on one single planet, is seen as insignificant next to the fate of the known universe, that gives the Cosmists their name.

Again this is generally harmonious with my use of the term here, though not precisely identical.

Different people have used the term Cosmism with different shades of meaning, but we're all pushing in the same general direction!

Cosmism as Old-Style Philosophy

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:30:00 -0800

While this Manifesto focuses on some highly modern (post-modern? post-postmodern?) ideas, in some ways it's quite old-fashioned.

It reflects an approach to philosophy that was more common before 1950, before philosophy become so academic and formal.

My methodology here is much like that of Nietzsche, or Schopenhauer, or Plato -- I'm presenting my overall understanding of life and the world, with a view toward practical guidance as well as conceptual understanding. Greatly inspired by the prior ideas of others, but also with a strong personal slant.

Robert Pirsig and Paul Feyerabend are two fairly recent philosophers who inspired me with their direct, "old fashioned" approach to philosophy -- writing simply rather than technically, and giving their holistic understanding rather than focusing on painstaking disection of micro-issues. I think we need more philosophy of their sort, which is one of the reasons I wrote this book.

Cosmism versus Academic Philosophy

Most of the "philosophy" done by professional philosophers today involves complex, abstract and refined approaches to deeply understanding particular aspects of the world, in a highly precise and intellectual way.

Cosmism does have this aspect -- but it's not the aspect I'm going to emphasize here. I will touch on abstract topics as necessary (especially in the first third of the text, in which I strive to articulate the deep conceptual foundations of Cosmism), but by and large I'll move past them fairly quickly to get on to more concrete stuff.

I'm going to mostly focus on Cosmism as a practical philosophy for living ... both now, and (especially) in the radically different future that we are creating with advanced science and technology.

Cosmism versus Religion

I have a lot of issues with the institution of "religion," but I have to give it one thing: unlike academic philosophy, it excels at providing people with practical guidance on how to approach their lives and themselves.

But none of the religions around today are going to be of much use as advanced technology unfolds. Heaven above and hell below are going to seem increasingly irrelevant as uploading, human-level AI, brain-computer interfaces and molecular assemblers unfold.

Cosmism is the practical philosophy I try to use to approach my own life and self -- and intend to use to face the very different situations that I may confront in the future -- and my point in writing this Manifesto is to share this practical philosophy with others, in a simple and explicit way.

Cosmism may seem an eccentric bundle of ideas right now -- but the relevance of the Cosmist perspective will become evident to more and more individuals as the next years, decades and centuries unfold.

Some Cosmist Principles

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:02:00 -0800

If my take on Cosmism could be fully summarized in a list of bullet points, I wouldn't write a whole manifesto about it -- I'd just write a few bullet points.

But, even so, it seems worthwhile to start with a few bullet points, just to whet your appetite for the more thorough and useful exposition to come.

Some of these bullets are rather abstract and may come across as gobbledygook. That is the risk of compressing things into bullet-point form. Read the full text of the Manifesto, think on it a bit, and hopefully you will see that all these things have simple, practical, everyday meanings.

The ten basic "Prisco Principles" I listed above are almost obvious to anyone of the "right" cast of mind. The principles I will list below are meatier, and not everyone who considers themselves a Cosmist will accept all of them! Maybe nobody except "early 21st century Ben Goertzel" accepts all of them!

There is no litmus test for Cosmism. These are no more and no less than some principles that are interesting and important to me, and seem close to the heart of Cosmism.

And so, without further ado, some Cosmist principles:

Panpsychism: There is a meaningful sense in which everything that exists has a form of "awareness" -- or at least "proto-awareness", as some would have it. In Peirce's terms, "Matter is mind hide-bound with habit."
The Universal Mind: Rhere is quite likely some meaningful sense in which the "universe as a whole" (an unclear concept!) has a form of awareness, though we humans likely cannot appreciate the nature of this awareness very thoroughly, any more than a bacterium can fully appreciate the nature of human awareness even as it resides in the human body
Patternism: One often-useful way to model the universe is as a collection of patterns, wherein each entity that exists is recognized by some agent as a pattern in some other entity (or set of entities)
Polyphonic reality: The notion of an "objective reality" is sometimes useful, but very often a more useful model of the universe is as a collection of overlapping, interpenetrating and intercreating subjective realities
Tendency to Take Habits: The universe appears to possess the property that, when patterns exist, they tend to continue ... much more than would be expected in a hypothetical random universe
Compassion is a critical principle of the universe, and is fundamentally an aspect of the Tendency to Take Habits (it's the spread of love and feeling from one mind to the next). Caring for other sentient beings (and if panpsychism is accepted, everything has a little bit of sentience!) is a critical aspect of evolving to the next levels beyond current human awareness and reality
Feeling and displaying compassion is important to the inner health and balance of a mind, as well as to the health and balance of the portion of the universe that mind is embedded in
Causation is not a fundamental aspect of the universe, but rather a tool used by minds to model portions of the universe
Deliberative, reflective consciousness is the specific form of "universal awareness" that arises in certain complex systems capable of advanced cognition
Goals are generally best understood, not as things that systems "have", but as tools for modeling what systems do. So, what goals a mind explicitly adopts is one question, but what goals the person is actually implicitly pursuing is often a more interesting question.
"Free will" is not "free" in the sense that people often consider it to be, yet there is a meaningful sense of agency and "natural autonomy" attached to entities in the universe, going beyond scientific distinctions of randomness versus determinism
Science is a powerful but limited tool: it is based on finite sets of finite-precision observations, and hence cannot be expected to explain the whole universe, at least not with out the help of auxiliary non-scientific assumptions.
Mathematics is a powerful but limited tool: it helps explicate your assumptions but doesn't tell you what these assumptions should be
Language is a powerful but limited tool: by its nature, consisting of finite combinations of tokens drawn from a finite alphabet, it may not be powerful enough to convey everything that exists in the mind of the communicator
The human "self" is a cognitive construct lacking the sort of fundamental reality that it habitually ascribes to itself
Society and culture provide us with most of what makes up our selves and our knowledge and our creativity -- but they also constrain us, often forcing a stultifying conformity. Ongoingly struggling with this dialectic is a critical aspect of the modern variant of the "self" construct.
There is no ideal human society given the constraints and habits of human brains. But as technology develops further, along with it will come the means to avoid many of the "discontents" that have arisen with civilization
Humans are more generally intelligent and more diversely and richly experience-capable than the animals from which they evolved; but it seems likely that we will create other sorts of minds whose intelligence and experience goes vastly beyond ours
It seems likely that any real-world general intelligence is going to have some form of emotions. But the human emotions are particularly primitive and difficult to control, compared to the emotions that future minds are likely to have. Gaining greater control over emotions is an important step in moving toward transhuman stages of evolution.
It is not necessary to abandon family, sex, money, work, raspberry-flavored dark chocolate and all the other rewarding aspects of human life in order to move effectively toward transhumanity. However, it is desirable to engage in these things reflectively, carefully making a conscious as well as unconscious balance between one's need to be human and one's need to transcend humanity
Various tools like meditation and psychedelic drugs may be helpful in transcending habitual thought patterns, bringing novel insights, and palliating problems connected with the limitations of constructs like self, will and reflective awareness. But they do not fully liberate the human mind from the restrictions imposed by human brain architecture. Future technologies may have the power to do so.
Whether the "laws" and nature of the universe can ever be comprehensively understood is unknown. But it seems wildly improbably that we humans are now anywhere remotely near a complete understanding
Whether or not transhuman minds now exist in the universe, or have ever existed in the universe in the past, current evidence suggests it will be possible to create them -- in effect to build "gods"
As well as building gods, it may be possible to become "gods." But this raises deep questions regarding how much, or how fast, a human mind can evolve without losing its fundamental sense of humanity or its individual identity
As we set about transforming ourselves and our world using advanced technology, many basic values are worth keeping in mind. Three of the more critical ones are Joy, Growth and Choice ... interpreted not only as personal goals, but also as goals for other sentient beings and for the cosmos.
When confronted with difficult situations in which the right path is unclear, a powerful approach is to obsolete the dilemma: use a change in technology or perspective to redefine the reality within which the dilemma exists. This may lead to new and different dilemmas, which is a natural aspect of the universe's growth process.
Battles with the "enemies" of Cosmism are probably not the best path to achieve Cosmist goals. The universe is richly interconnected and "Us versus Them" is often more realistically considered as "We versus Us." Struggles, including violent ones, are part of the natural order and can't be violated entirely ... but there are often other ways, sometimes less obvious to the human mind; and part of the Cosmist quest is to find mutually beneficial ways of moving forward.

Pattern Space and the Big Questions

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:00:00 -0800

Now, the preliminaries done with, we begin our journey into the particulars of Cosmism.

I will begin at a very abstract level -- giving Cosmist answers to some of the good old Big Questions about life, the universe and everything. But if such philosophical explorations are not to your taste, don't worry -- this is a short work, so in just a few pages, we'll be on to sex, drugs, uploading, superhuman AI, the future of society and a bunch of other juicy specifics. This Manifesto actually started out dealing only with those more specific topics, but I found that in order to discuss them in a coherent and unified way, it was necessary to give some deeper conceptual foundations first.

Let's get started with some small issues like

Where do we live? What are we made of?

Is there some sort of underlying, universal Cosmos in which both our minds and our bodies, and the various things we see and experience, reside?

Is the physical world we move around in "real" in any absolute sense? Or is it "just" some sort of simulation -- could we be living in a video game written by an alien computer programmer? (perhaps an amateurish, botched job produced by a young programming student just learning his chops?)

Of course questions like these are useful more for stimulating thought than for attracting definitive and final answers. These are issues minds will likely be exploring for as long as minds exist.

One interesting way of addressing the Big Questions is to begin from the perspective that: we live in a world of patterns.

There are disorganized, teeming stimuli or entities of various sorts ... and then there are patterns organizing these entities.

A pattern, most generically, is something that brings simplicity to a complex collection of entities ... it's a "representation as something simpler"

The physical world presents itself to the mind, in large part, as a collection of patterns.

The mind presents itself to itself, in large part, as a collection of patterns.

One often-useful way to model the world we live and exist in is as a pattern space.

Of course, there is nothing "objective" about a pattern though ... whether a given entity is a pattern in some set of other entities is really a matter that's up to the perceiving mind.

In other words: a pattern is a representation as something simpler ... but who or what judges the simplicity?

The cosmos is a space of interrelating entities, and individual minds are distinguished in large part by which entities they perceive as simpler than others, which largely determines which entities it sees as being patterns in which others.

This may seem a very abstract perspective, but it actually sheds a lot of light on various situations we encounter in our practical lives. Approach the various things you encounter and experience, in the world and in yourself, as if they're patterns of organization -- because that is largely what they are.

Many of the difficulties we have in life arise from unconsciously assuming that various things we encounter have some fictitious sort of absolute reality, going beyond the reality of pattern space.

"Everything is pattern" is not a panacea for cosmic understanding -- I will introduce some further dimensions a little later -- but it's a powerful perspective.

The Tendency to Take Habits

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:50:00 -0800

David Hume was the first Western philosopher to point out really clearly what is now called the "problem of induction" -- i.e. how is it we can assume that, just because the sun has risen every morning for the last thousand (or million) days, it will do so again tomorrow?

We can say it will continue because we have an intuition that patterns tend to continue -- but then how do we know that patterns tend to continue? We know because in the past we have observed that patterns tend to continue. But then how do we know that this past observation, which is itself a sort of pattern, will tend to continue?

Charles Peirce used the term "the tendency to take habits" to refer to the assumption that, in the universe we live in, patterns do tend to continue.

An implication is that our ability to predict the future is predicated on our ability to identify patterns.

And, digging a little deeper -- remember that pattern, in the view I've suggested above, is defined in terms of an assumed simplicity measure. This suggests that: For a mind to operate effectively, it needs to assume a simplicity measure for which, in its experience, the tendency to take habits holds true ...

We have the largely happy circumstance of living in a world where there are simplifications apparent from considering the past and the future together. We take this for granted but it's an important observation: without that, experience would be a lot of noise....

First, Second, Third

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:45:00 -0800

Viewing the world as a system of patterns yields copious insights -- but patterns aren't the whole story.

Patterns are relationships of a particular sort: a pattern is a relationship between one entity and a set of others, where the first is judged to represent and simplify the others.

The American philosopher Charles Peirce placed the "universe as a web of patternment relationships" perspective in a broader context by introducing the basic philosophical categories called First, Second and Third.

First = pure, unprocessed Being

Second = reaction ... the raw feeling of one thing having impact on another

Third = relationship (the raw material for pattern: patternment is a particular, critical kind of relationship)

One can also push further than Peirce did, following other thinkers like Jung and Buckminster Fuller, and posit categories like

Fourth = synergy ... networks of relationships spawning new relationships

In this perspective the view of Cosmos as pattern-space is the perspective of Thirdness.

Isn't This Just a Bunch of Abstract Nonsense?

This sort of abstract categorization of Cosmos doesn't do much in itself ... but it provides a general perspective that can be useful for addressing concrete issues.

We will use this categorial perspective to approach the topics of awareness and consciousness ... which are critical to various issues that will confront us as technology develops, such as immortality, AI and uploading.

Philosophy pursued in the absence of practical issues tends to become verbal or intellectual gamesmanship.

Practical issues pursued in the absence of appropriate philosophy tend to lead to various sorts of confusion -- which can be fine; but given the sensitivity of the point in human history we're approaching, serious attempts at confusion-minimization seem indicated!

Awareness is Everywhere

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:00:00 -0800

The idea that some form of "awareness" is everywhere, pervading everything, was considered obvious by the preponderance of pre-civilized cultures, and is now considered obvious by most practitioners of Buddhist meditation and many other wisdom traditions.

However, modern Western culture has led to a world-view in which most of the universe is viewed as somehow "dead" while only certain particular systems are viewed as having "awareness."

This new view of awareness has led to all manner of conceptual problems which philosophers enjoy debating. But, panpsychism -- the old view that acknowledges awareness everywhere -- remains the only view of awareness that is not plagued by complex contradictions ... as well as being an obvious truth to intelligences in appropriate states of consciousness.

Clearly, there are differences between the manifestations of awareness in a rock, a human, a society, an ecosystem and a universe -- and these differences are worth attention and study. But we mustn't lose track of the universality and commonality of awareness.

Awareness as First

In Peircean terms, "raw awareness" is First. Saying that everything is aware is saying that everything can be viewed from the perspective of First.

When we view things from the perspective of Thirdness, relationship, then the difference between humans and rocks seems dramatic and significant. We humans host far more complex pattern-networks than rocks.

Yet from the First perspective, we're all just sparks of raw awareness -- people, rocks, equations, aliens from the 9th dimension... whatever.

Universal Mind

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0800

If awareness is immanent in everything, is it not immanent in the cosmos as a whole, as well?

Have we then reconstructed "God" within Cosmism?

This is a trick question, of course. "God" means many things to many people.

Some might say that I have found a strange path to "God," by way of Cosmism. Others would disagree, considering these philosophical thoughts unrelated to God or religious truth.

One thing is clear: The nature of the awareness of the cosmos remains largely unknown to us measly humans. Just as, in many religions, the nature of the "mind of God" is considered beyond human ken.

We may feel we have a sense of it, in certain states of awareness -- but then how can we truly know if we are connecting with the awareness of the whole, or just the awareness of a region of the cosmos much larger and more powerful than ourselves, yet miniscule compared with the whole thing?

Fortunately we don't need to answer this question. It is enough to expand our boundaries, to connect with mind that goes beyond us and to become more than we could previously understand or imagine.

We may approach the awareness of the cosmos incrementally through our ongoing growth, whether or not we ever get there (or whether "getting there" means anything).

Patterns All the Way Down!

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:00:00 -0800

You've probably heard the story...

The Eastern guru, holy lice in his beard and all, affirms that the earth is supported on the back of a tiger.

When asked what supports the tiger, he says it stands upon an elephant.

When asked what supports the elephant he says it is a giant turtle.

When asked, finally, what supports the giant turtle, he is briefly taken aback ... but quickly replies "Ah, after that it's turtles all the way down."

(According my son Zebulon, after a few billion turtles, one comes to an enchilada, and after that it's enchiladas all the way down -- but that's the same basic idea.)

The Peircean view of the universe as Third is much like this amusing parable.

In the realm of Third, it's patterns all the way down!

There are patterns ... but these patterns must be patterns of arrangement of something, of some "substrate."

But of what does this substrate consist? This substrate only enters into the realm of Third insofar as it presents itself as a set of observed patterns.

But, patterns in what?

These must be patterns in some substrate.

Or is it patterns all the way down?!

In the realm of science, the recursion ends with observations that are commonly accepted within some community. Some Master Dataset is accepted by a community as constituting valid observations, and then patterns are recognized in this dataset.

But the recognition of these commonly accepted observations as patterns in individual sense-data -- this is where the "patterns all the way down" bottomless recursion is pushed, in the case of science.

You never reach a solid reality whose existence is just known ... not in the realm of Third. Because the only thing that is known is relationship, and a relationship must be a relationship among some entities. But if these entities are part of the realm of Third, then ... etc.

First and Second, in a sense, might seem to bottom out the recursion -- but they don't really, because they are a different order of being.

The nature of life is that we just keep discovering relations among relations among relations ... and relations beneath relations beneath relations ... and never get to a fundamental reality underneath. We may get to things that seem fundamental -- but how can we ever really know?

This fundamental bottomlessness of the realm of pattern and relationship underlies a lot of other issues that will occur a little later in these pages, including the possibility that our reality is in some sense a "simulation", and the notion of the universe as a multiverse or multi-multi-...-multiverse.

Turtles on turtles on ... turtles on turtles; patterns in patterns ... in patterns in patterns.

Mathematically one can only model this kind of recursion using obscure constructs like hypersets.

But experientially they are not hard to appreciate, if one avoids being caught up in "naive realist" perspectives that hold there is some absolute reality bottoming out the hierarchy/heterarchy of relationships.

Is Our World a "Simulation"?

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:45:00 -0800

Now let us shift, step by step, from general Cosmist philosophy to Cosmist views of coming technologies....

Anyone exposed to modern science fiction movies or novels must have asked themselves: Could we be living in a "simulation" world, like the world in the film The Matrix?

Of course we could be.

But one thing to notice about the situation in that movie is: the only reason it made any difference to the characters that their world was a simulation, was that there was a way out ... into some other reality beyond the simulation, in which the simulation could be viewed as a simulation.

In fact, the concept of "simulation" is too limiting.... A "simulation" is a copy of something else, and that's not really what we're worried about when we talk about our world being a simulation. What is really at issue is whether our universe is a pliable, manipulable, adjustable external system from someone else's perspective. Whether its apparently fundamental properties could be changed by some entity who lives outside it. In the rest of this chapter I will use "simulation" to mean "pliable, manipulable, adjustable external system for someone."

To say our world is a "simulation" in the commonly-used sense is, in essence, to say: there is another perspective from which the patterns that we observe as invariably true (that constitute our "objective world") are in fact pliable and manipulable, able to be changed around in various ways. And this must not be a purely theoretical perspective; it must be possible for some intelligent being to make use of this manipulability by changing around the nature of our world or some similar world, causing it to become a different sort of world.

In principle, there is no way for us to know whether our world is a simulation or not. And, estimating the odds is mainly an exercise in futility, given our current level of knowledge.

But, it is not unreasonable to expect that becoming more intelligent and/or exploring more and more of our universe, could enable us to understand this possibility better -- and maybe, to perform some Matrix-like "level-jump" into some perspective from which our world is a manipulable, pliable simulation.

But what are the odds that the perspective from which our world is a simulation is very similar to our own world? This is also hard to answer. Maybe the perspective or "universe" from which our world is a simulation is wholly different from our own perspectives as residents of this universe. We might not even recognize it as a "world" at all, if we were to encounter it.

Just as the realm of Third is patterns all the way down, the universe may well be simulations all the way down ... but this is only interesting if there is some practical way to access the simulations/realities at levels below ours in the posited hierarchy....

The Pattern of the Individual Intelligent Mind

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:43:00 -0800

If one views the world as patterns among patterns among patterns ... then each of us, as individual minds, must be viewed as a pattern as well!

What kinds of patterns are we?

There are many ways to answer this question; here I'll give one answer that has proved useful to me in my science and engineering work designing AI systems and analyzing human mind/brains -- and that seems to also tie in with what various wisdom traditions have said about the individual mind.

What is an Individual Mind?

An individual "mind", from the view of Third, can be thought of as the set of patterns associated with some intelligent system.

And what is an intelligent system?

An intelligent system can be thought of as: A system that is capable of achieving complex goals.

The broader the collection of goals the system can deal with, the more general its intelligence.

Subjectivity of Intelligence

"Achievement of complex goals" might seem a profoundly limited conceptualization of intelligence, given the limited role that explicit goal-achievement plays in real intelligences.

But if one thinks in terms of implicit goals -- the goals that a system looks to be working towards, based on what it is actually doing, regardless of how it conceptualized itself -- the perspective starts to seem more broadly applicable.

One arrives at the notion of an intelligent system as one that can sensibly viewed or modeled as seeking to achieve complex (implicit) goals in complex environments, using limited resources.

This emphasizes that intelligence is in the eye of the beholder -- because it takes some beholder to assess what are a system's implicit goals.

What looks intelligent to A may not look intelligent to B, depending on what implicit goals A and B respectively are able to recognize.

This characterization of intelligence highlights the vast variety of intelligent systems that are possible -- which derives from the vast variety of goals that may be pursued by different systems, in a vast variety of possible environments.

Generality of Intelligence

We humans have a certain degree of general intelligence -- but we are not wholly general minds. We are a wild mixture of general and specialized capability.

Our brain has limited capacity, so there are many things our brains -- in their current forms, or anything similar -- can never understand or do.

It seems unlikely that any absolutely general intelligence can ever be created using a finite amount of (computational or energetic) resources. Any finite system is going to have some biases to its intelligence -- some goals and environments it does better on.

Much of human intelligence may be understood as adaptation to the specific bodies, goals and environments in which our minds evolved to operate -- though as we advance culturally, psychologically and technologically we are progressively generalizing our intelligence.

But our brain also has the capability to expand itself by augmenting its "hardware" infrastructure -- which means that, transhumanistically speaking, it's not so limited after all.

Given that we have the capability to flexibly self-modify, there are no clear limits to what we may become. Limits may be discovered as we progress. And, even if there are no limits to what we can become -- there may well be limits on how generally intelligent we may be come and still be considered human.

No Known Limits

Our individual minds may appear strictly limited -- if we view them from certain limited perspectives (the "consensus" perspective of modern Western society, for example.)

But such a perspective is itself a construct of the individual mind: it is something the individual mind learns and builds for itself, just as the individual mind builds its understanding of the "external world."

The wisest perspective is one in which individual mind and external reality create each other. This is the only view that reconciles the inner experience of existing, with the apparent presence of entities like rocks and snowstorms that are difficult to morph via mere power of thought.

As John Lilly eloquently put it:

"In the province of the mind,
in the inside reality,
what one believes to be true,
either is true or becomes true
within certain limits.
These limits are to be discovered
experimentally and experientially.
When so determined these limits are found to be
further beliefs to be transcended."

Mind, Body and World

Ben Goertzel at cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:40:00 -0800

The specific patterns that we are, as human minds, are intimately bound up with our human bodies, and with our ways of remembering and interacting with the world these bodies live in.

We are Embodied Minds

As minds that are associated with particular physical systems, we are closely tied to the sensors and actuators of these systems.

Jack Kerouac described himself as "just another soul trapped in a body" -- and I've often felt that way -- but it's not the whole story.

We think with our hearts, lungs, digestive systems and genitals and so forth -- not just with our brains. If you took a human brain and connected it to a different sort of body -- or left it to cognize in a void with no body -- it would fairly quickly self-organize into something radically different that would only marginally qualify as "human" or as "the same mind" that came before.

Varieties of Memory and Cognition

We are also minds devoted to sensing and acting in environments. In order to do this we remember the environments we've experienced. And importantly, we remember them in multiple ways:

sensorially
episodically: remembering the essence of experiences, even if we forget the sensory details
declaratively: abstracting general facts, beliefs and ideas from masses of (largely forgotten) experiences
procedurally: remembering how to do things, even if we don't exactly remember the why of all the steps we take
intentionally: we remember how we broke our goals into subgoals in various situations
attentionally: we remember what sorts of things merited our attention

Each of these kinds of memory constitutes a different kind of pattern, and is associated with different kinds of dynamics for pattern recognition, formation, and combination. For example,

declarative memory naturally ties in with reasoning
procedural memory naturally ties in with what the psychologists and engineers call "reinforcement learning" -- learning via getting reward and punishment signals, and automatically adjusting one's behavior accordingly
sensory memory (especially visual memory) naturally ties in with hierarchical structures for pattern recognition.

The human brain contains particular intelligent pattern manipulation dynamics corresponding to each memory type -- and AI systems may contain different dynamics serving similar purposes, with different strengths and/or weaknesses.

How much of this sort of humanlike brain architecture is specific to humanlike minds, and how much is characteristic of minds-in-general, is something we are still discovering.

Other sorts of minds, like those of cetaceans or distributed Internet intelligences, will likely still have memory and processing functions corresponding to the categories mentioned above -- but will likely carry out each of these functions very differently!