Introductory Remarks

The subject of the book, our approach to the problems presented, and the implications of the work

The Work

The subject, scope, and composition of the book.

What It's All About

The content of the book and its objectives.

§1 The present inquiry explores a constructive explanation of consciousness in nature developed from first principles. Our goal is to illustrate how consciousness comes into existence, the role that it plays in nature, and the mechanics of the broad range of behaviors that are its products.

§2 Our theories are founded upon a novel account of experience in nature. By the term experience we refer to the basis of consciousness. It is that which is most familiar. It is the common property of all senses. It is the first thing and the last thing for each of us. Though strictly, according to the model we will present, the first and the last thing for each of us is a sense – the primitive we will propose, characterized by physiology.

§3 From the beginning we take the ontological status of experience seriously. It is something that exists in the world. It exists, we will argue, not only as the basis of all anthropogenic knowledge but also, necessarily, as a primitive aspect of the world that affects physical assembly simply by its presence. It plays a role in the assembly of physical forms. It is the root of all complexity.

§4 We will examine the categories of phenomena associated with consciousness. These are the emergent products of the unfolding world and the evolutionary forces of natural selection. They include the obvious products of experience. They are the variety of sense, the inevitable or intentional behavior of organisms, and the forms of intelligence that underlie them.

§5 We also examine the mechanics and engineering of sentience in the physical world and propose that this mechanics is the product of a natural assembly against^note:1 the previously unconsidered inert primitive that we propose. This new mechanics provides an account of the introduction of complexity into the world, the physical assembly of organisms, the mechanisms of recognition, sensory differentiation and motile function. These mechanics provide a verifiable role for the proposed primitive in the formation of physical structures.

Prevailing Views

We challenge prevailing views.

§7 Our view is naturalistic, we advocate a return to the foundations of scientific philosophy; a logical and natural construction of the world.

§8 Our ideal framework of logical construction will assemble upon clearly stated abductive and inductive foundations an expressive tautology through which new truths can be identified^{(ref.1)(ref.2)}.

§9 To be clear, we advocate the development of a logical construction of the world that approximates the way things are with increasing degrees of accuracy and completeness; that this construction permit logical reduction within its framework that provides consistent and verifiable predictions about the behavior of the world; that the failure of such reduction leads necessarily to reconsideration and ultimately revision of the construction, and not to supernatural conclusions.

§10 This view is contrary to prevailing arguments that rely upon contemporary emergence theory.

§11 Advocates of these views include mathematicians Stephen Wolfram^(ref.3) and Gregory Chaitin^(ref.4), and cognitive theorist Douglas Hofstadter^(ref.5), all of whom have written books on the subject. However, the argument itself is not new^(ref.6). According to these accounts the basis of experience is not universally primitive but is a product of the parts assembled and of fundamental evolutionary forces. Typically, it is manifest in an identity with some observable phenomenon.

§12 Emergence theories of experience echo the philosophy of mind known as identity theory attributed to Ullin T. Place and Herbert Feigl (1950s)^{(ref.7)(ref.8)note:2}. The theory argues that there is not only a one-to-one correspondence between conscious events and physical events, but that the physical events are in fact the conscious events. In these models there is no mystery to the physical events involved, they are simply the product of known mechanics.

§14 An older and frequent alternative argument is that experience is an epiphenomenon^(ref.9); a phenomenon that arises as the extra product of known mechanics and evolutionary theory.

§15 We will treat theories of identity and epiphenomena in the same way. We do so because the two theories are logically indistinguishable. Whether experience is the incidental “extra” product of classical physical events, or the events themselves simply cannot be detected. What is more, if one or the other is in fact the case then the matter here can never be resolved. In both models no aspect of experience is existent prior to the physical assembly that embodies it and experience plays no role in the mechanics of observable events. Experience is simply along for the ride. As long as these theories provide no role for experience in nature they amount to a form of dualism and no real progress on the matter has been made.

§16 The unspoken premise of these models is materialism. We take the view of materialism to imply that our physical models are complete in all important respects. According to materialism contemporary physics captures the essential character of the world. This is justified in a version of emergence theory by taking the position that levels of constructive complexity introduce new phenomena into the world and, to quote Chaitin^(ref.10),

§18 Obviously new properties of nature do emerge and there is an equally obvious correspondence, an identity, between the physical assembly that manifests the property and the property itself. However, from the constructive point of view that we will follow in this work, nothing new is brought into the world except a new assembly of its essential parts.

§19 For us emergent properties are functionally dependent upon primitive nature. The world is a natural construction according to the laws of this primitive (a priori determinants) and the principles (posterior determinants) of their combination. These laws and principles can be apprehended, or inferred from our apprehension.

§20 According to the laws of thermodynamics these emergent properties translate into other forms, and these forms play a continuing role in the development and operation of the physical systems in which they appear.

§21 Yet, according to contemporary emergence theory, experience has none of these features.

§22 Identity theory and the supernatural notions of emergence are the product of a failed reduction. They are the logical consequence of an adherence to a strict materialist construction; of limiting our physical models. To escape this necessity we are required to expand our conception of physical theory, to expand our current logical construction of the world as Rudolf Carnap (as we will hear shortly), and later Roger Penrose^{(ref.11)(ref.12)}, argue.

§24 If dualism^(ref.13) is rejected and experience is not to be dismissed, then there is some necessity that in this new construction an element of the phenomena we liberally label consciousness is a primitive aspect of the world. This new primitive must adhere to the laws of thermodynamics. It must be conserved and its character must be transformed by entropy.

§25 Like the curvature of space-time, that is merely a way of speaking about the laws that characterize the affects of mass-energy upon the gravitational field (also primitive aspects of the world), the effects of this new primitive do not become manifest until later in the development of the universe. Since these effects appear much later in the evolving cosmology than the effects of the gravitational field, it can be considered a much “weaker force” than the gravitational field.

§26 So, to summarize, in the model of natural law that we will follow here the properties of the world derive ontological status, states of being, from their functional dependence (cause). Ultimately that dependence reduces to aspects of primitive nature. These properties are ontologically distinct; reflecting the uniformity of laws. Two diamonds, for example, are ontologically distinct, as are a cabbage and a diamond. Each molecule of water is ontologically distinct. They have distinct individual states of being; distinct constructive ontologies. Natural properties are functionally dependent upon their individual construction from primitive nature but functionally independent of each other, quantum phenomena not withstanding.^note:3

§28 In our model, relations are solely the product of apprehension. They are present only as the result of the biophysical mechanics of sentience that we will present. Thus relations can be apprehended (they have epistemological status) but they do not, in fact, exist in the world. They have no ontological status beyond their apprehension in the proposed mechanics. We will discuss this distinction in more detail later.

§29 In the meantime, consider the following examples.

§30 A product of invention, a television for example, emerges from the assembly of its parts. There is clearly an identity between the property of television-ness (that which defines a television) and the physical assembly of a television (what it is to be a television). Television-ness is an essential property of the assembly alone, it is not a property of the world as a whole. Television-ness has epistemological status but a television has no ontological status. A television can be apprehended but it is not actually existent in the world beyond this apprehension. The physical assembly of a television corresponds merely to an assembly of parts.

§31 Properties like television-ness and experience are in different categories. Television-ness, in particular, is a property dependent upon the existence of experience not only in that one has to possess experience for it to have any relevance in the world, but also in that it is the product of conscious intelligence.

§32 As we have previously noted, emergent properties of natural form are the common effects of the primitive aspects of the world. They are the common products of essential construction and not merely the simple composition of forms, like televisions. The elements, gold and mercury for example, are the common product of natural construction and they possess an ontological status derived from it.

§33 New properties of form, such as fluids and solids, do come into the world. Though these properties occur widely, demonstrating some uniformity in the effects of combining essence. These too are properties of the assemblies alone. This uniformity is evidence of ontological independence and the inevitable outcome of natural processes.

§34 These properties also have no dependence upon experience and they derive from forces and mechanics determined by laws and principles that we have come to approximate relatively well. Like the elements, we infer that they exist without our participation in the world because we infer that they are the product of a construction by nature. This is what distinguishes them ontologically from television-ness. They exist as the constructive product of essential forces and they are entirely dependent upon them. We confer upon them ontological status in deference to this fact alone, they are properties that belong to constructive forms of the substantive essence.

§35 Chaitin and others argue that experience may arise similarly, that it too (like fluids and solids) is an essential property of the assembly alone and not a property of the world as a whole.

§36 But this position appears logically inadequate and it amounts to a direct appeal to magic. There is nothing that leads us, logically and constructively, to experience as a property arising from some assembly. Further, fluids and solids have a continuing role to play in the world – their form has a further effect in the thermodynamic cycle of physical structure^note:4. Yet experience in these models has no such role. It is merely present. The transformation of forms, of fluids and solids can be described by a continually refined scientific approximation of physical dynamics that can be confirmed by others: in a construction of the world from essential essence.

§38 In contemporary emergence models there is no transformation from experience to any other form. There is no constructive route to experience and no role given to experience. It is merely a magical side effect. Whereas, the appearance of fluids and solids, while picturesque, is clearly not magical and these forms continue to play a role in the physics of the world.

§39 There appears to be something logically distinct about experience. And while we will argue here that the various forms of sense are in fact characterized by physical forms, we find a clear distinction for the essence from which those senses arise. It is this clear distinction in the apparent nature of experience that leads Chaitin to suggest that “When you go to a higher level, the lower level may be irrelevant.” Chaitin and the other contemporary emergence theorists, suggest that, by this failure of reduction within the materialist construction, we break the rigorous and natural chain of functional dependence to produce a supernatural account.

§40 Consider a final example: an apple. Clearly an apple is not a product of intelligence. Apple-ness is not at all like television-ness, but nor is its form readily explained by a material ontology like that which produces the elements or fluid forms of them. Oh, we have some inductive expectation that apples are constructed from the same mechanics as the elements, but this expectation has no real foundation. We understand many of the mechanisms involved in the assembly of an apple and we know that it is a product, at least in part, of the substantive essence. Its essential presence, how it came to be here, is not readily explained by the properties of existing chemical mechanics – there is something going on, a different kind of mechanics, that we don't see in the formation of the elements that are merely the product of nature's brute force.

§41 At the root of this simple question lies a larger and much harder question. Where does all the complexity of all the things we call life come from? How are we to describe the mechanics of life that enables it to produce the variety of sense in living forms?

§42 It is frustration over hard questions like these that have led Chaitin and others to consider the possibility of magic. But, from our point of view, to consider such magic viable is to undermine the principles of good science. It is an act of desperation.

§43 All of science relies upon the nature of logic and apprehension. Indeed, understanding of any kind, be it philosophic, religious, or scientific, relies upon our base assumptions of what it means to apprehend the world. It relies upon our assumptions about what is really going when we sense the world. In addition we make natural inferences; we predict. Those predictions lead us to action, to response. Conventions of all kinds shape the nature of this prediction and action to form the foundation of our individual understanding and behavior. The foundations of logic are built upon our understanding of apprehension, the essential existence of experience and what we consider to be its place in the world. This foundation is fundamental to our navigation and survival in the world. It is the basis of any epistemology.

§44 Yet experience itself cannot logically possess epistemological status. Simply, we cannot experience experience. Experience cannot be the subject of experience. We simply experience.

§45 For all of this, contemporary logic, and most especially its manifestation in computer science, has no place or role for experience. It has reduced to the pragmatics of nominalism^note:5 and simplistic symbolic mechanics. It has disregarded the original foundations of logic from George Boole to Rudolf Carnap – a reduction to experience.

§47 Rudolf Carnap's comments, first published in 1928^(ref.14), reflect our basic position as it continues today.

Narrative

A summary of our narrative.

§51 This brings us to the narrative that we will present in this book, that is briefly as follows.

§52 Before the 1950's the existence of experience was taken seriously by logicians and scientists. For the mathematicians interested in questions of apprehension in the foundations of geometry, such as Henri Poincaré^(ref.15), for pragmatists, influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce^(ref.16), for the logical positivists and empiricists of the renowned Vienna Circle and Berlin Schools, and for physicists concerned with interpretations of quantum theory, the existence of experience was a central and dominant concern. Positivism^note:6 and empiricism necessarily imply a reduction to experience, though the nature of that final reduction has never been clear.

§54 In particular, the advocacy of physicalism by logical positivists rested upon a pragmatic and fundamental understanding. It is an understanding that appealed to the scientific method and that reduced to characterized experience (sense). Physicalism is not materialism. As noted earlier, materialism assumes that we have determined all the essential things of the world. The physicalism advocated by Rudolf Carnap clearly sought a naturalistic basis and anticipated extensions to our physical models as we made new discoveries about perception, these discoveries would allow an explanation of experience in nature.

§55 Carnap took the first thesis of physicalism to be simply that claims about the world can be confirmed by others. He rejected the idea that you can have private knowledge, gifts from God, that cannot ultimately be shared, articulated in some well defined language, and confirmed. He took the second thesis of physicalism to be that the laws of nature, including those for organisms and their behaviors, are logical consequences of natural physical laws. He clarified this by saying:

§58 He goes on to affirm my own rejection of claims in emergence theory^(ref.17):

§60 It should be clear then that the physicalism expressed by the Vienna Circle reflects a monist view that there are no fundamental divisions and a positive view that all is open to a unified scientific explanation. That explanation is one that can be verified by observation.

§61 However, in the 1950s a ruthless and supernatural objectivism took hold in which, despite the mandate of empiricism, experience as a phenomenon is marginalize and eliminated from the agenda of science and logical debate. This is primarily because objective techniques provided immediate benefits that enabled the revolution in computing devices and associated high technology.

§62 The advantages of the effective techniques established in the work of Alan Turing^(ref.18), Alfred Tarski^(ref.19), and Claude Shannon^(ref.20) seemed so powerful and productive that they appeared to be able to solve everything. Alan Turing offered a useful notion of computation and took a first step toward reasoning about intelligence without recourse to sense or experience^(ref.21). Alfred Tarski offered a notion of truth, eliminating experience in his definitions^(ref.22). Claude Shannon developed a mathematical theory of communication that led to the foundation of information theory^(ref.23). None ever found, or in Shannon's case needed, a place for experience in their developments. And perhaps all of them are victims of subsequent over simplification and a generalization that neglects the goals and boundaries of their original inquiry.

§63 Alan Turing's influence is the most profound. He gave broad consideration to the questions of consciousness and is widely misrepresented^(ref.24). Turing's objectives are practical and more modest than are widely reported. He was challenged by the presence of experience and recognized the limits of his proposals, seeking to take clear and rigorous first steps toward understanding the problem of the mind. Subsequent advocates have conveniently ignored Turing's own separation of issues and acknowledgment that questions remained unanswered.

§64 Turing felt that certain mysteries related to consciousness did not need to be explained before the question he sought to address, the question of whether a machine could be as intelligent as you or I, could be answered. We will argue that this was, in fact, a fundamental mistake that is unmitigated by the practical success of his models. As a result, we will argue that there are fundamental limits to Turing's model of computation.

§65 The central point of this narrative is that while the practical contributions had clear and immediate benefits – after all, they lay the ground for the technological developments of the twentieth century – a consideration that had been of principal concern in science was subsequently neglected. That consideration had simply been put aside by Turing for purely practical reasons, in the interest of more immediate progress.

§66 Before 1950 science took experience seriously as existent in the world. Led by the influential Vienna Circle and its advocacy of a logical positivism, the sentences of science were viewed as marks that could be mapped directly to an individual's experience of the world. This strict solipsism, the view that one's own sense is all that can ultimately be relied upon, was later rejected. But it was not rejected because solipsism is fundamentally wrong, but simply because inference is more powerful than at first considered; intuitive inference arising from genetic disposition, inductive inference arising from what we have sensed before, and deductive inference arising from formal methods, allows us to expand beyond a dependence on direct experience. It allows us to anticipate and identify that which lies beyond our direct experience. We will show later that there is nothing magical about prediction, inference in all its forms is a natural product of the mechanics we propose.

§67 The techniques of Shannon, Tarski, and Turing proved useful. They have allowed us to apply the effective techniques of thinking in symbolic systems. But this usefulness has distracted us from the fundamental issue. We appear to have forgotten that empiricism fundamentally relies upon the existence of experience, and that existence warrants explanation.

§68 For a generation of logicians experience has become an inconvenient and embarrassing fact. It is difficult to deal with or to identify any role that it may play. Contemporary optimism (in the computer practice of Artificial Intelligence for example) is founded upon the premise that our physical models are complete. These expectations, based on the premises of emergence already discussed, cannot be met for reasons that are fundamental to the world.

§69 The technological “Singularity” of Ray Kurzweil is merely a technologist's dream^(ref.25). If we are right, there is no imminent artificial intelligence comparable to the capabilities of our species, quite simply because this intelligence is not merely heuristics or recursive self-reference. Human-level intelligence requires that we first understand the basis of intelligence: the deeply connected mechanisms of sense, motility and recognition in biology.

§70 We appear to have missed the obvious and simple fact that an explanation of the existence of experience requires that we identify a role for it in the formation of the world – and, in particular, in the formation of organisms. For if we cannot identify such a role then it is simply beyond scientific explanation. And this is a position we stubbornly refuse to accept.

Semeiotics

The field of study.

§71 When consideration of logic goes beyond the effective techniques of syntax and the mechanical transformation of symbolic systems to include the essential basis of apprehension and operation of the mind, it is more rightly called semeiotics; the study of signs. Semeiotics is a field that develops general theories of signs and we develop such a theory here. The theory is built constructively upon the natural mechanics of sentience and motility that we propose.

§72 There is some diversity and ambiguity in the literature concerning the exact definition of a sign. We adopt the simplest and least ambiguous definition: a sign is simply an individuated experience. We explain signs in some detail in following chapters. First let us place semeiotics in context.

§73 In his essay concerning human understanding the English philosopher John Locke divides the objects of our understanding into three distinct areas of intellectual consideration: Physics, Ethics, and Semeiotics^note:7.

§75 He puts it this way ^(ref.26):

§77 Locke saw these as three distinct areas of study.

§79 We will show, however, that these three are not distinct. An intellectual understanding of one is intrinsically dependent upon an intellectual understanding of the others. Put another way, we will show that there exists a continuum from elementary physics through biology, covariant with the embodiment of signs, and the inevitable and volitional behaviors that arise.

§80 We will attempt to show, in what we will call Natural Ethics, that the inevitable and volitional behaviors of organisms are the natural product of genetic disposition in its environment, mitigated by the embodiment of convention in organisms that are capable of apprehending them; and more generally by the primitive embodiment of signs.

§81 Thus, for us, Semeiotic is naturally first among sciences. It is through Semeiotics that we infer the physical basis of nature as well as the right and inevitable behavior of individuals. It is Semeiotic that leads us to a sense that captures an understanding of the world. The product of this semeiosis, the semeiotic process embodied by an individual, are the marks (the subjects of signs) that represent our communication and analysis of that sense.^note:8

The Approach

Our method of attack.

A Constructive Approach

An essential statement of our approach.

§83 Our approach to the explanation of the world is constructive. That is, we develop a model of the world inductively, from observation, and abductively, from intuition, by inferring first principles and then proceed in a logical manner to explore the implications of those principles to predict the formation and operation of physiological structures that embody sense and ultimately “the mind.”

§84 This approach is compatible with the objectives of the constructive epistemology advocated by Rudolf Carnap and presented in his work “The Logical Structure of the World” (known widely as the “Aufbau”^note:9) published in 1928, and the subsequent work published in 1938 of Hans Reichenbach in “Experience and Prediction”^(ref.27). Though we have an obvious affinity with the work of Rudolf Carnap.

§86 We identify “sense data” as the physical characterization of a primitive aspect of the world, introduced by us, and give a role to this natural characterization (the formation of sense) in the development of organisms and, indeed, in the development of all complexity.

§87 Conveniently the model allows us to eliminate magic from emergence theories since transcendent properties of the world are described constructively by our model and remain functionally dependent. These properties include the variety of sensual modality, recognition, the predictive functions, emotion and motility. They include the things we collectively refer to as “intelligence”, “love” and “beauty”. These are the emergent products of a latent potential in the world described by our model. Each are formed by, and are subject to, exactly the same mechanics. They are functionally dependent upon these mechanics.

§88 In these terms our view is classical; there is nothing that escapes primitive nature. Yet there is clearly a transcendence in phenomena that emerge from primitive nature. These things rise above the primitive nature of the world and are entirely unexpected. The entities in the universe are unanticipated, a surprise to any creator.^note:10

§90 Our solution derives simply from asking what would be required to enable a formal explanation of experience. That is, we begin with the assumption that not only is the explanatory formalization of phenomena involving experience desirable but that it is both scientifically necessary and logically possible. Simply put, this approach is born of a stubborn refusal to accept that an explanation of the psychophysical (mind/body) problem is beyond science. We then set about the task of identifying the necessary and sufficient basis for such a formalization such that it describes the molecular biophysical models that engineer sentience and is compatible with known thermodynamics^(ref.28).

§91 The principal distinction then between our approach to logical construction, and the one proposed by Carnap, is that we provide the naturalistic basis that Carnap could not identify. We are not concerned with epistemology alone. We extend physical models to include the necessary primitive basis of experience. This primitive aspect of the world is seen not merely as the basis of anthropogenic knowledge but is given a role in the physical assembly and mechanics of all complexity, including sentience, not found in earlier work.

§92 We think that Carnap would approve. The basis of his epistemology he described as a methodological solipsism. In our terms, he asserted that the differentiation of characterized experience (sense) is the basis of all apprehension. The entire embodied characterization of experience has epistemic primacy,anthropogenic knowledge is derived by differentiation from the whole, not assembled from the parts. He anticipated that this characterization has a naturalistic foundation.

§93 Our approach is also solipsist in the sense that all anthropogenic knowledge and speculation is necessarily the product of inferences from experience characterized by physiology (sense) in the individual. We extend this anthropic view of epistemology first to a general model of sentience and then further generalize the notion so that the term “knowledge” can be defined simply as that which determines subsequent action. We take one further step and assert that the mechanisms of apprehension are observable in the physical engineering that we propose. In particular, this means the physical mechanisms of the familiar mind can be identified.

§94 We give a constructive account of this new mechanics and eliminate any separation of epistemology and ontology. As a result our final epistemology is not anthropic; anthropic knowledge is simply a subset of a more generalized notion. Our conception of knowledge is intrinsic to our view of how the world is constructed and traditional metaphysics is eliminated^note:11. Our generalized conception of knowledge is similar to that proposed by Francisco Valera and Humberto Maturana. This and the associated notion that information is that which contributes to knowledge and identifies cause, in-formation, are points of conceptual intersection with the work of Valera and Maturana on autopoiesis^(ref.29). However, unlike Maturana and Valera, we reject purely emergent explanations of experience by the materialist computational view.

§96 Our methodology relies upon primitive nature, the simple composition of nature's primitive aspects and the natural laws and principles that evolve structure. It focuses upon and extends constructively through the assembly of organisms, senses and motile structures to the inevitable and intentional behavior of individuals such as you and me.

§97 Such a method illustrates how physical assemblies in a world otherwise constructed by classical mechanics eventually form to characterize sense and assemble into the range of forms that are familiar to us. These are the forms that we call “complex” or “living” and they manifest behaviors that transcend their substantive basis without loosing their functional dependence. Thus we provide a constructive progression from the mechanics of physical primitives to nature's transcendent properties (such as intelligence and compassion).

Our View Of Science

What we mean when we speak of science.

§98 We view science as the transcendent and noble act of our species. It equips us uniquely to play roles in the world not open to other species.

§99 In our discussion of prevailing views we have already advocated a post-modern return to constructive empirical science that eliminates the supernatural and, in particular, rejects supernatural emergentism.

§100 Science provides explanations that are (or should be) ever closer approximations to the way things are. We maintain many explanations because they are useful. They are place holders, maintained only until better explanations are found. Many explanations are simply explorations, not at all concerned with the usefulness of predictions that are “adequate” or “good enough.” They seek a closer approximation to the way things are that lies beyond current explanations. Ultimately the latter tend to inform the former, so that we will often find the two together. However, a frequent problem arises in science when useful explanations are mistaken for absolute explanations. We grow so familiar with the useful application of the explanation that we actually come to see all the world in its light. This is the syndrome that afflicts the man with a hammer for whom all problems are nails. We have considered such a situation here.

§101 A religion is a philosophy, a framework of ideas, that one cannot look upon the world without consideration of. By this definition, these explanations are a religion of science. We cannot look upon the world without consideration of them. But this is contrary to the tenets of science to allow false prophets; central ideas that blind us to logical necessity.

§102 The science of the current era enables a manifestly rare opportunity in nature. Our new understanding of biophysics enables the opportunity for one species, through deliberate and considered action, to execute the intelligent design of future life and to place that new species of life in locations (through space exploration, for example) where there was previously none. If God is that which produces and designs intelligent creatures and places those creatures into the world where there was previously none, then we can become such a God. The objects of our creation will justly be able to make an appeal to a notion of intelligent design that we cannot. They will be assembled by our own hands; by systems and processes that we have put into place. They will be sentient and yet functionally dependent upon our presence in the world; upon the fact that our species exists or existed.

§103 We are clearly optimistic. Our scientific view is strictly constructive. However, contemporary science suffers a diminished comprehension of these constructive methods in part because it is widely perceived that reductionism has failed. But this is false, reductionism has not failed.

§104 So what exactly is the problem? What of all those fundamental reductions that do fail?

§105 As noted earlier, reductions necessarily have a constructive frame of reference; no matter how poorly defined that is. If a reduction fails it does not lead to “non-reductive” solutions, it simply indicates that the constructive frame of reference has failed. It certainly cannot lead to phenomena that is without cause (functional dependence), unless a new primitive aspect of the world has been identified. The failure of a reduction simply requires that the constructive frame of reference needs to be reconsidered and ultimately revised to provide a casual chain constructed such that the attempted reduction succeeds. It is by this means that inspired guesswork and empirical induction, the degree of confirmation based on the frequency of like past events and the comparative probability that one event will occur over another^(ref.30), continually refines the tautologous framework within which logical deduction is made.

§106 The end product of this process is the residual product of scientific consideration. For all practical purposes this residual is essentially what remains should the individuals involved in its production be absent. It is captured in the marks generated by those individuals; in the syntax of the language used in its expression and analysis. Individuals of our species are only able to engage with the existing body of scientific knowledge by engaging with this syntactic medium.

§107 Ultimately, we can only hope to extend science by extending the range of explanation provided by this medium. Scientific contributions are ultimately measured by their refinement or extension of this syntactic framework. This framework is present in the common language of science and in its logical and mathematical clarifications. It is most effective when expressed constructively in a well-defined formal syntax of an accessible symbolic language where interpretation is eliminated. Its apprehension by individuals that are unfamiliar with it relies upon a minimal number of readily accessible premises. Its veracity is measured by the degree to which its predictions coincide with the way things are. Its statements are consistent and can be confirmed. Its application is measured by the good and productive changes that it brings to our behavior; the new things that it enables us to do.

§108 Not everything can be known to science. To suggest otherwise denies the cornerstone of science, falsification. Falsification simply asserts that for predictions to be scientifically valid they can never be mere assertions, they must be verifiable and there must always be the potential of new discovery that will enlighten us further. A theory must be testable. This is the nature of science^{(ref.31)(ref.32)}.

§109 New discovery assists in the process of refinement and such discovery must always be anticipated. The best that we can hope for from science is that it leads to periods of time where our theories are constantly productive with beneficial effects upon our collective behavior. Nature's goals seem clear enough. We serve those goals when new scientific breakthroughs increase the potential long-term survival and expansion of the living complexity that has formed upon this planet.

Beyond Contemporary Logic

How our model differs.

§110 The one requirement in our construction of the world that steps beyond earlier work is the logical necessity of a simple and inert extension to prevailing physical models. That extension is the primitive inclusion of the basis of experience and the identification of a role that this primitive plays in shaping the substantive basis of the world. The mechanical explanation that follows, describing the engineering of sentience, is then an advance on the earlier explanations by providing a natural ontology for the characterization of sense.

§111 We are forced to recognize that the method of constructive integration utilized in computational systems is inadequate. That we are able to imbue the simple mechanical actions of machinery with the benefit of a formalized inductive or deductive logic that captures the effective methods of thinking is a remarkable and surprising fact. However, it is not adequate to infer the presence of experience and it certainly offers no explanation of experience. The approach has proven to be a useful tool in computer systems, and it has enabled us to place some part of our intelligence in mechanical devices. This is wholly unexpected.

§112 However, since the operators of computational logic do not differentiate against the entire landscape of available sense, inputs are atomic and require logical integration. Thus no symbolic system implemented currently in software and silicon can be said to emulate the competence of our species (or any other) in any function that involves a sensory mode. Pattern matching is logically powerful but it is expensive and does not implement the economy of the recognition function seen in biology. From an engineering point of view integrative logic is expensive to implement. It requires a set of comparison values that must be searched and is not directly connected to motile response. We show that consequently the functionality of such computational systems is necessarily limited. We can consider contemporary computational logic to only reflect a fragment of cognitive capacity.

§113 Simply put, computers are not engineered as sentience is engineered in nature. It is our task here to illustrate exactly where symbolic computer systems fail and to indicate exactly what the new engineering we propose can achieve that computational systems cannot.

Taking Experience Seriously

The proposal.

§114 We present a substantive argument for the evolution of senses and the familiar mind that requires only that we introduce a new universal primitive as the basis of experience. The introduction of this inert primitive enables a model with broad explanatory powers.

§115 Our proposal is essentially a logical reduction that argues the necessity and the sufficiency of the primitive that we propose.

§116 The model can be quantified by the value the primitive provides to organism survival. It can be verified by predictions concerning the physiological structures that form in its presence. Through these predictions the model is falsifiable.

§117 This hypothesis enables an account of the presence and workings of complexity. It provides an account of the origins of life and a role for experience in evolutionary theory. It offers an explanation of the evolution of senses and the manner by which sentience and motile physiology is engineered.

§118 We take experience seriously as existent in the world. By doing so it is necessary to extend physical theory and provide a role for experience in the mechanics and evolution of physical structures. This argument appears to be previously unconsidered.

Engineering Sentience

A summary of the model.

§119 An impression is the physical trace of a mark (the subject of a sign) upon the sentient form, against the primitive we propose.

§120 We use the notion “against” here in the same way that we may speak of constructing a shelter against a wall or consider how the structure of mass-energy is affected when assembled “against” the gravitational field. There exists an inert presence, the basis of experience, the properties of which, when mass-energy is assembled against it, provide the covariant physical characterization of sense; producing a characteristic action.

§121 We develop formally the topological notion of a sensory manifold that is an element of the physical structure that characterizes sense. A set of such manifolds may be considered to represent the cellular membranes of an organism but the physical basis of these sensory manifolds is not identified here. For now we view sensory manifolds as abstractions that enable the prediction of physical structure but do not yet tie them to a particular physical architecture^note:12.

§123 Our formal development also aims to capture the thermodynamic and chemical behavior involved in the hierarchical structure of these dynamic sensory systems. Sensory manifolds are not static or uniform structures, they carry a variety of properties that can be described as surface functions that effect entropy, stimulate thermodynamic catalysis, and translations or deformations of the sensory manifold that produce sense and motility.

§124 Sensory manifolds rely upon the presence of a primitive aspect of the world that has the following properties:

1. The primitive provides a non-local affect^note:13 against which physical structure can produce a sensory manifold.
2. The non-local affect is across the collection of sensory manifolds corresponding to the characterized sense of an individual.
3. A differentiated experience (a sign) corresponds to one or more states of the individual's sensory manifolds.
4. The natural selection of sensory manifolds, and the consequent evolution of metabolism, establishes structural links between states of the sensory manifold and motile responses.
5. Sensory manifolds of similar conformance correspond to senses of similarly^note:14.

§128 Translations of the sensory manifolds represent the operation of the organism. For simplicity we assume that the entire organism is engineered according to the same principles. Hence, sensory characterizations and related motile responses vary in form and focus according to genetic disposition; the genetically constructed organism provides an a priori link between sense and response.

§129 Once an impression has been formed in the physical structure of the entity it will recollect that mark when it is reformed or recollect a similarity when it is partially reformed. Such reformations take place when a mark is again encountered, when similar marks are encountered, or when the impression is independently reformed in the operation of the organism. This, incidentally, is how and why analogy works in our species.

§130 This functionality requires certain physical properties that have been previously noted.

• There necessarily exists a certain non-locality manifest in sense and in physical operations of the sensory manifold. The impression is an imprint upon a distributed motile physiology. The impression upon the organism is coexistent with all other impressions to produce the entire embodiment of sense.
• There is a physical transformation across the physiology that is motile. A physical transformation amplifies by conformance spread,chemotaxis and other motility to characterize sense and produce a larger coordinated motile subsystem response.
• Recollections are tightly bound to responses in individual organism structures. This is the basis of organism individuation – it is the reason that I do not feel what you feel, despite the universal nature of the underlying primitive.
• The conditions of the impression are reproducible. That is, a particular biological morphology corresponds to a particular memory, when reformed, the sense of it is again manifest. A reproduced impression is familiar to the organism.
• Differentiation among impressions is the primary operation of semeiosis (the operation of the mind).

§131 The primitive we propose is thus an essential component of the physical substrate and responsible for the engineering of sentience. This same mechanism instantiates complexity and is subjected to the principles of natural selection because its forms may provide survival advantage.

§132 It is important to note that no computational system can replicate this engineering, it is not computable by current implementations of logic and it provides an economy of engineering that is simpler and more powerful. However, existing logic can be interpreted in a manner that is compatible with this new model – and such an interpretation would be compatible with the view of Rudolf Carnap, in particular, and the logical positivists in general. Firstly, apprehension, the differentiation of marks through impressions in the organism (that Carnap occasionally called the given) is a quite different mechanism compared to the integration of inputs by conventional logic. There is no non-locality in the computational systems that currently implement logic. Conventional systems rely upon abstract symbol manipulation, representations of the given, not the givenitself. In our model, the given has no subject or representation (consistent with Carnap's observations in his Construction).

§133 To summarize, we suggest that the primitive aspect of nature we propose, that we have called the primitive-of-experience, enables an economy of engineering not present in Alan Turing's model of computation. We introduce a necessary non-locality associated with this engineering that enables the non-local coordination of physical behavior; that a physical structure, a manifold of sense, embodies the representation of states in the world relevant to the organism; that this physical structure is evolved in an a priori association with the motile responses that it evokes. And further, that these simple mechanisms lead inevitably to the assembly of what is familiar to you and I as “the mind”.

§134 Later we will propose molecular models consistent with this engineering and look toward sensory systems (esp. visual systems) and simple organisms (esp. bacteria) for evidence to support the model.

A Role for Experience in Nature

A brief overview of the present model.

§135 Our proposal has a substantive basis and extends earlier physicalist thinking by a necessary and sufficient extension to existing physical models.

§136 We view the physical construction of senses and the familiar mind as an engineering by natural selection of motile sentient physiological structures against the primitive we propose. This provides a role for the primitive of experience in the physical assembly of organisms.

§137 Simply put, the construction of physical forms that produce characterizations of this primitive (i.e., sense), provide survival advantage. Senses evolve for the richer characterization of experience in conjunction with the motile responses to which they are intimately related. This evolutionary principle, constructed by natural selection, provides survival advantage. The rest follows.

§138 The economy of the engineering we propose ties recognition and motile response. The proposal eliminates across system interaction latencies and integrative functions in computational models and replaces these mechanisms with mechanics of biophysical differentiation (reduction from the whole) against the “wall” of the primitive we propose that provides an effective nonlocal synchronization in biology.^note:15

§140 We rely upon a non-locality that is intrinsic to the primitive we propose. Locality is logically denied by the fact that we can consider categories and multiple relations. Take any sense, a visual image say. It cannot be reduced to a single state.

§141 For practical purposes we construct our model of the world on the basis of three evident primitive aspects of nature: mass-energy, described by the standard model or some increment thereof and shaped by the evident affects of gravity and the proposed primitive of experience.

§142 For comparison and clarity, the new primitive we propose is inert. Its affect is not a force as one considers electromagnetism a force. And, by analogy only, we describe it as inert and present in the same way that the affect of gravity is inert and present in General Relativity.

§143 Gravity can be conveniently characterized as a curvature of space-time in the presence of mass. We seek a convenient characterization of the engineering of sentience that characterizes sense.

§144 So that we may move beyond identity theories and make predictions that enable the presence of the primitive to be empirically identified, it is clearly insufficient to develop a model that can be explained by or corresponds with known mechanics. For our conjecture to hold, the primitive must enable a capability that is otherwise impossible and yet remain formally describable. From the formal description arises the means of proof and a new technology for recognition and motility.

§145 In our model, familiar high-order experiences – senses – are covariant with motile physiology. Sense is characterized by the motion and shape of physiology. Motility and sense are two aspects of the same engineering. We explore potential molecular models to illustrate the proposed behavior (in particular in the well developed molecular models of bacteria).

§146 Sentient motile function is selected in evolution because of the survival benefit that the combination of sense and motility provides. In other words, it helps if you can both sense and react, so the two features develop together – they are closely bound.

§147 Using this extended model we develop a logical construction that predicts the birth of complexity and extends evolutionary theory by providing a role for experience in the engineering of sentience by natural selection.

§148 More generally, we shall put it this way: states of mind are covariant with physical states, for any given state of mind there is a substantive state, where the sense and the substantive state are the product of the engineering of sentience around the universal primitive that we propose.

§149 Life is instantiated because this primitive is present and produces simple sentience in the earliest physical assembly of organisms. Senses evolve by natural selection, higher-order experience characterized by the evolving physiology plays a role in the evolution of species by providing a survival advantage. The familiar mind is constructed by the same means.

§150 Perhaps this is the most significant prediction of the model, the prediction of life in the otherwise mechanical world of current physical models. More generally, we state this by saying that the model explains the presence of complexity in nature.

§151 How an inert universal primitive can affectively produce these results is the subject of the earlier parts of this book. A mathematical model for the engineering of sentience is proposed.

Presenting the Evidence

The nature of the evidence we will present to support our hypothesis.

§152 Theorists will, no doubt, rebel against our introduction of a new universal primitive for a variety of reasons. Let us make the obvious observations. Proposing a new universal primitive has precedent. That precedent is, of course, Issac Newton. That such a primitive is inert and present also has precedent. That precedent is the General Relativity of Albert Einstein.

§153 We will explore objections to our premises, as well as alternative proposals, early in the book and it is incumbent upon us to present evidence that supports our argument. We must build models that make predictions that can be verified by observation within a theoretical framework that is truly falsifiable.

§154 We are fortunate. The understanding of biophysics and the available empirical data is unprecedented. In recent decades it has developed at an extraordinary pace. Indeed, there is such a density of current activity that new discoveries are occurring almost weekly.

§155 Many of these discoveries are illuminating. For example, at the time of writing (December 2006) the journal Nature has published an article that discloses that pain is the product of an identifiable gene ^(ref.33). The importance of this article may not be realized for some time but it is important to our considerations. It illustrates that pain is an independently evolved biophysical system unrelated to the other senses and that these senses can operate without the pain mechanism with no discernible ill effects expect the inability to sense when damage is being done to the organism. Pain is not an intensity of sense – highlighting our prediction that experience is a characterized primitive and has no magnitude. We will discuss this case in more detail later.

§156 The reason for these advances is new technology. These new technologies have been founded in the advanced methodologies of science developed during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. They have allowed us to identify, explore and record the mechanisms of the genetic code. They have enabled us to develop detailed molecular models of biological processes.

§157 We view this new wealth of data akin to the explorations of Kepler and Galileo when analyzing the behavior that Newton would later identify as the product of a universal primitive. Thus, in these empirical models we expect to find evidence to confirm our theory. For example, we may be able to provide an explanation for receptor conformance, chemotaxis and other motility^(ref.34), and, in general, the variety of synchronous behavior that appears to be present throughout biophysical systems. We have learned of lot about what happens in biology, and we hope to provide an explanation of why it happens that way.

Developing the Model

How we will develop the basis of the theory.

§158 In what follows we will use the presence of the primitive we propose as the basis of a formal explanation. If successful, this formalism will provide a mathematical foundation for the physical engineering of sentience. This will, in turn, provide the basis of an operational model and upon the operational model we should be able to identify models of interaction between entities.

§159 We will use as a precedence for our formal approach the description of the gravitational field as a primitive aspect of the world in the general theory of relativity (GR). Like the gravitational field, the effect of the new primitive is covariant with the physical phenomena.

§160 Covariance is necessary but not sufficient; in isolation, covariance simply takes us back to identity theory. The solution must be mutually affective; in which one primitive aspect shapes the other.

§161 The formal characterization of the primitive then must play a role similar to the role played by the curvature of space-time in GR. Unfortunately, this characterization is not going to be as convenient as the curvature of space-time. Yet such simplicity is our goal.

§162 We seek to formulate a set of equations that accurately predicts the behavior of mass-energy that results from the the presence of the primitive in the physical world; leading to the initiation and evolution of physiological structures. These equations need to describe the mechanisms of differentiation, recollection and recognition. However, this is no small task.

§163 Space-time is the necessary framework for the apprehension of all behavior, and so it is a necessary component of our equations. However, consistent with GR,^(ref.35) we eliminate space-time as a property of the material world. Space-time is here considered an intrinsic of mass-energy and sense; it may be apprehended but it does not exist in the world beyond this apprehension. At the level of our species it is simply another way of thinking about mass-energy and the relations between the manifestations of mass-energy.

§164 The behavior of recognition and response, sense and motility, enabled by our primitive, is a more difficult phenomenon to deal with than the gravitational field because it does not readily fall into our existing geometric frameworks. Because conventional formal structures provide no means to reason about the elements of apprehension, they embody many of the challenges that we must overcome.

Models

The constructive characterization we propose.

§165 This basis provides the foundation of three models that describe the construction from primitive nature.

1. The first model is one of general sentience. In this model we characterize the construction of motile sentient organisms and the characterization of sense. We explain the physical engineering of sentience, how sentient entities come into existence and senses evolve.
2. The second model is one of semeiosis. In this model we characterize the higher-order processes that process the content of experience and produce intentional behavior. It is the process in nature that constructs metaphysical marks, the products of intent. It can also be viewed as the operation of the organism that incorporates the familiar mind.
3. The third model is a meta-semeiotic model that characterizes the inevitable behaviors and interaction models of sentient entities (groups of the organisms we have described). These interactions develop in social organisms through the marks that propagate idiomatic behavior, concepts and conventions. This model includes the workings of religion, science and natural ethics in our species; the inevitable behaviors by individuals in groups that are mitigated by convention or, more generally, signs.

§166 We provide a single coherent view of nature in which our species arises and in which all can eventually be scientifically explained by minds that may themselves eventually be within our power to artificially construct.

§167 We adopt Rudolf Carnap's definition of a formal language^(ref.36).

§169 In other words, it is our goal to provide a logical syntactic framework that captures the construction that we propose and that, independent of any intermediate interpretation, enables formal transformations capable of producing consistent results.

§170 As to semantics, we shall utilize a precise definition of the term “meaning”. Meaning is exactly the behavior that is the product of the mechanisms of apprehension according to our model. So that if one is to ask the meaning of a particular syntax; it is exactly the behavior it produces as the produce of its apprehension. We may now speak distinctly of the behavior the sign produces in the organism that constructed the sign, should there be one, and the behavior produced in others.

§171 A brief clarification of this definition will be helpful.

§172 Consider a computer program written by an individual of our species. What is the meaning of the program? Clearly, the behavior of the machine executing the program is not the behavior of the programmer. Thus it should be clear that any consistency of meaning relies upon the similarity of the apprehender. A computer program “means” precisely the same thing to two identical machines, and it means precisely the same thing to two identical computer programmers. If the machines are not identical, for example, let us say that the two machines utilize different instruction sets (or programming language translators) then it may be said that the computer program has no meaning to one computer but is meaningful to the other. Similarly, if two programmers are not identical, one understanding one language and the other another, then it may be said that the computer program has no meaning to one, but has meaning to the other.

§173 Now there is, in fact, some similarity between programming languages and computer programmers. The languages have similar syntactic constructs, are generally written in structured English, and the programmers have a similar capacity to reason. So it will be the case that with some effort the programmer that is unfamiliar with the language of the computer program may be able to apprehend some meaning from it and, in time, the exact meaning (and recognize the nature of the machine required to execute it). To this end the programmer is, in effect, self modifying so that they increase their degree of similarity with the original author of the program.^note:16 Unfortunately, a contemporary computer does not have the advantage, found in biology, of modifying it's physical structure.

§175 These circumstances reflect the situation in the real world and it enables us to appreciate the definition of meaning that we will use. The central point to remember is that meaning is a function of apprehension only; there is no static meaning in the world beyond the individual apprehension of signs (recall, signs are individuated experiences); consensus is a function of the degree of similarity between us (apprehending entities) and meaning is exactly the behavior produced by the sign. When we speak of “understanding” it is this similarity and behavior to which we refer.

§176 This method, as noted earlier, is a pragmatic of solipsism and continues to be an effective method for analysis and communication between individuals despite our identification of the limits of computational methods and symbolic systems as currently conceived. We have no need to reinvent the entirety of logic, we only need to reform its basis; to see it as a constructive differentiation of our entire embodiment of sense, not as a construction of integrated parts.

§177 Conventional logic, implemented mechanically on computers, relies on the principle of integration and this provides temporal and locality difficulties when separate logical branches need to be unified. This is the primary distinction between the engineering of computers and the engineering of sentient organisms.

§178 A formal language is simply a convention for analysis and communication between individuals. Such languages rely upon the convention being uniformly understood; upon a similarity in their physical embodiment.

§179 In summary, logic implemented by sentient machines is engineered differently than logic in a symbolic computer. Sentient machines, machines-that-experience, use a non-local differentiation against the entire organism's characterization of experience. This provides a fundamentally different engineering basis for the mechanical interpretation of logical syntax that cannot be implemented in software and silicon as we understand it currently.

Proving the Case

How we propose to overcome objections.

§180 Our ultimate goal is to identify a mathematical model that enables particular predictions concerning the structure of physiology. However, the ability to make such predictions is complicated by the fact that all the natural forces play a role in the evolutionary formation of higher-order physiological structures. In other words, the other forces of nature introduce further complexity as their effects are able to have greater influence due to factors of time and scale. We anticipate therefore that the earliest verification of the theory will come from predictions concerning the simplest and more primitive organisms in which these effects are minimized and we take some time to examine the molecular models of bacteria.

§181 Let us set expectations correctly. At the time of writing the clear identification of such a particular prediction is not available. By particular prediction we mean that we have not identified something as particular as a perturbation in the orbit of Mercury that can be explained by the theory. Although it is worth observing that we currently having nothing as sophisticated as Newtonian theory in the biological setting that would enable the modeling of such a perturbation in the first place. We do suggest that conformance spread of bacterial receptors, chemotaxis (and other motility), place-neurons, neuro-plasticity, the non-local synchronization of neural behavior, and the role of and behavior of membrane traversing fluid molecules, such as nitric oxide, are particular behaviors that may be explained. The how of these mechanisms is becoming clear in the literature and we may be able to offer an explanation of why they occur and indicate exactly what it is they are doing.

§182 But we make such suggestions cautiously. The predictions made currently are rather more general conjectures. They concern the instantiation of sentience and complexity, physiological structure and motility, and the mechanisms of recognition and differentiation. Our physical proposal is tentative until, in particular, evidence for the economy of engineering we predict is shown to actually exist in organisms. We are convinced that other models involving the primitive are conceivable. We have followed intuitively the natural consequence as it appears to us.

§183 We do present what we consider to be a strong scientific argument for the logical necessity of a universal primitive by rejecting the ontological magic of contemporary emergence theory and appealing to a mutually affective covariant construction of primitive aspects of nature^note:17; but we are not yet at our goal of producing a theory with the robustness of Newton's calculus or Einstein's field equations. We do contend that an informal interpretation of the available evidence and the missing gaps in other theories provides a good intuitive basis for exploring our theory with vigor.

§185 Given these challenges we also propose to prove our case constructively; through the direct application of the theory to new technologies. This constructive approach to proof-in-practice is not available to theories of gravity or evolution in large part because of the scale of their effects.

§186 Similarly, if proof-in-practice is applied to competing solutions such as computational evolutionary models then these results are interesting for the limits they reveal^(ref.37). The development of artificial cellular technologies are also likely to be critical to our endeavour. So that engineering based on computational models may also serve to reveal the limits of this engineering and illustrate how the engineering we propose contributes^(ref.38). Clearly our model predicts that in both cases the engineering described by computational simulations and the fabrication of cells constructed upon those simulations is incomplete.

§187 If our proposals are valid then we will be able to develop technology able to solve problems that have proven intractable or impossible in the engineering sciences. These are essentially the problems of recognition and motility and they lie at the convergence of semiconductors and biological systems. The nature of such devices is already suggested by our comments in these introductory remarks.

§188 These methods of proof provide us with a significant advantage and may provide a shorter route to verification than is otherwise available.

The Implications

What it all means.

A Summary of Contributions

A summary of fields to which the work contributes.

§189 The principal contribution of this work lies in the provision of an explanation of experience in nature and the identification of the role that the basis of experience plays in the development of physical structures. No other theory of sentience, of which we are aware, has this property and the implications of the existence of such a theory are broad.

§190 If our model is false, if the physical engineering of sentience and conscious capacity does rely upon conventional mechanics alone, then there is no role for experience in the formation of physical structure. This would be a disappointing but useful result and it would appear to illustrate that experience is beyond scientific explanation as currently conceived. In any case then the exploration of the theory has merit, the validation or elimination of the theory provides a valuable contribution to the natural sciences.

§191 However, validation offers significant benefits. We offer an explanation of how physics and biology are interrelated in the instance and expansion of complexity. We provide an explanation of the origin of all complexity. Thus we illustrate how physics and biology form a natural continuum. These contributions expand evolutionary theory by providing a role for experience in the process of evolution and in the mechanics of natural selection – in particular they explain the formation and evolution of sense and motility.

§192 Our models inform neuroscience and molecular biology. They contribute explanation to the record of observations in neurological and other biological physical structures and molecular processes. By this contribution we inform medicine, adding an explanation to sensory dysfunction and the effects of drugs and pathogens upon the senses.

§193 There are contributions here also to computer science and related machine engineering. These contributions are two fold.

§194 The first of these contributions are observations that relate to the limits of computation that account for the failure of purely computational approaches by the Turing model in applications that involve sensory modalities. Our models explain why existing approaches to artificial-intelligence and artificial-life have produced only limited results, and why image and speech recognition that mimics the capacity of our species has proved to be intractable. There is a non-local differentiating effect that lies beyond or constrains Markov models.

§195 There is an associated implication that the motile responses, ubiquitous in biology, cannot be emulated by purely computational responses. This would extend the negative result here to applications in robotics.

§196 The second of these contributions is the positive flip-side of these negative results. It relates to the introduction of sentience engineering, the creation of machines-that-experience. These are machines that apply the mechanics we propose.

§197 The machines we envision initially are not like the machines envisioned by many contemporary advocates of machine intelligence. We do not expect our designs to suddenly awaken, to magically manifest experience because of their degree of complexity. They are the product of sentience engineering and are sentient from the beginning. This allows us to consider a generation of simple sensors and motile materials of new kinds before we approach the loftier goals of intelligence at the level of our species.

§198 A good example of these simple machines is motile materials able to sense and respond to a variety of stresses, so imagine a suspension system for your car that is able to not only provide a smoother ride but that is also able to react to sudden changes during a collision, or perhaps able to avoid collisions by more immediate sense and response.

§199 There are certainly contributions here to the foundations of logic and epistemology, though much that we have done here in this regard is to affirm the intuitions of logical positivism. Among the philosophers of science that have contributed to these lines of thought we believe that we have especially confirmed the intuitions of Rudolf Carnap.

§200 We like to believe also that there are contributions here that elucidate issues in the foundations of mathematics that relate to apprehension, prediction and methods of proof. We provide a clear model illustrating the basis of traditional epistemology in ontology, and we also show that there are things that have epistemological status (things that can be known) but no ontological status (they do not exist). This, for example, gives a more detailed account of the division between real and imaginary numbers. According to our account, for example, irrational numbers and infinities do not exist beyond apprehension.

§201 Of necessity, given the foundational nature of our inquiry, we discuss the nature of space and time, the continuum and atomicity in the semeiotic context of our inquiry and in terms of the physical mechanics we propose. These discussions are contributions to both physical sciences and the foundations of mathematics. They are meant to illustrate how a more detailed consideration of apprehension and the mechanics of sentience can be integrated into these disciplines

The Limits of Computational Mechanics

We challenge the conventional view that computational mechanics and symbolic systems explain everything.

§202 Our explanation of nature identifies the limits of Turing computation and classical mechanics – essentially by observing that symbolic systems, and the mathematical logic upon which they are based, do not reflect the substantive engineering of sentience in nature. Widely held expectations that our computational machines will awaken are unreasonable.

§203 This is a negative result for computer science, identifying fundamental limits. Computer systems, as currently conceived, can never meet the expectations of twentieth century visionaries, such as Ray Kurzweil, for reasons that are fundamental to the nature of the world.

§204 For these same reasons the “Principle of Computational Equivalence” proposed by Stephen Wolfram in his book “A New Kind of Science” is false.

§205 The essential differences here lie in both the temporal nature and the nature of locality in the respective models of computation. The number of logical steps between apprehension and response has an economy of engineering in our proposal, that we argue is found in biology, that is not found in the Turing model. This broader locality of evaluations, enabled by the engineering of sentience against the primitive we propose, overcomes the challenge of integrating non-local results found in the Turing model of computation. These factors make a difference in the results of computations that relate principally to the ability to efficiently connect apprehension and response. Importantly, there is a substantive difference; in cases where temporal constraints prevail, the results of each approach differ.

§206 Simply put, Turing machines require many more logical steps to produce a result. This is an impediment to survival, and hence to evolution. Despite the often slower operation and greater uncertainty of biological operations, the broad economy of logical differentiation is more efficient than the labor of logical integration.

§207 Computers built with software and silicon, based upon a calculus of relations implemented by electronics, are simply not going to wake up one day. They capture and implement the effective techniques of thinking that are the product of the engineering of sentience, but these objective techniques cannot themselves manifest sentience. There is no magical emergence of experience, no matter how big and complex the system you build is, no matter how hard you try.

§208 More importantly, and for the same reasons, computers can never be intelligent as we are intelligent. The kind of intelligence that you possess arises only as a product of the engineering of sentience in motile sentient organism. This is a fundamentally different kind of mechanics than that found in computers.

§209 This is not to say that intelligent machines cannot be built. However, simple functional equivalence or bio-mimicry using existing models of physical mechanics, the cornerstone of modern expectations, are simply insufficient. They assume that our knowledge of physics is essentially complete. And this is a manifestly false assumption when you are looking for an explanation of experience in nature.

New Technologies

We propose to build motile machines-that-experience.

§210 In the later chapters we will explore the new things that our theories may enable us to do. But why take this radical approach? Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and we simply cannot imagine a more extraordinary way to prove the case than to carefully consider how successful theories may be applied.

§211 The applications we consider will not be constructed by computational techniques using classical mechanics, nor be built by electrical engineering in silicon and programmed using first order binary logic. They will not merely simulate the behavior of biology. They will be engineered using the same fundamental principles of biophysics. They will enable new technologies that are only possible because our premises hold.

§212 Should these premises hold true, we will enable a new kind of device, machines that experience, engineered for sentience, and capable of performing recognition as we do.

§213 We anticipate, however, that these devices will initially be massively parallel hybrids of biology and silicon. They will provide interfaces between today's silicon systems and biological systems. The fabrication technologies required to assemble such devices exist today in the semiconductor and biotechnology industries where molecular engineering is fast becoming a fine art.

§214 General purpose computers have been very useful. It is not yet clear that the engineering of sentience will allow a general purpose architecture but there is cause for optimism. We have achieved so much in computer science — but computer science has become a stagnant domain — it has been driven more by the economic pragmatics of commercial interest more than research interests.

§215 Perhaps it will be possible to directly program machines-that-experience using logical methods and techniques of translation not dissimilar from those we use today. If so, these methods will build upon modifications to the foundations of mathematical logic; at least as it pertains to the basis of relatives, differentiation and the operation of symbolic systems.

§216 A more exciting prospect is the potential to build special purpose sentient machines able to naturally adjust their behavior according to their needs; intelligent machines that are motile, autopoietic and experience. Such machines could reach into the environments that are hostile to us and finally we will have served nature's goal to extend the evolution of life beyond the confines of this fragile planet.

Sentience Engineering

We know experience exists and we can perform a few parlor tricks with it.

§217 Let us not get ahead of ourselves. New material discoveries are required that identify the mechanisms involved, technologies based upon these discoveries need to be developed, the tools of manufacture and new devices must be assembled that utilize logical techniques and process interaction models founded upon a revised basis for the foundations of logic, differentiation.