Taken from: I am - A blueprint for sentience by Krys Norman
One of the many challenges to understanding this subject is that so much of it is just so subjective. There has been considerable investigation and speculation as to the human brain's physiology. There has been break though after break through over the last few decades and this is proving invaluable for the treatment of many disorders. Thought, on the other hand, is still proving elusive in describing definitively. The psychologists and philosophers are still struggling with this. They can refer to the ideas or arrangements of ideas that result from thinking, the act of producing thoughts, or the process of producing thoughts. Although thought is a fundamental human activity familiar to everyone, there is no generally accepted agreement as to what thought is or how thought is created. Thoughts are the result or product of either spontaneous or willed acts of thinking.
This is the premise for the platform of sentience. It forms from the concept of biologic and this can then be expanded into biophilosphy; in turn providing a base for thought, mathematics, God, etc... Biologic has been discussed, using different terminology, many times before by many other authors (Dawkins, et al.). It helps to provide a rational explanation of many types of behaviour of animals and defines humans within this group first and foremost. The differentiating aspects of sentience in humans still rest on animalistic or emotional processes. Biologic is quite straightforward and possibly derives from the very onset of life. A fundamental tenet of life is that it requires to exist and carry on existing for as long as possible. Its building blocks are its genes; built using very simple hydrocarbon molecules in a fantastically complex combination. This combination changes inert matter into something that behaves with a purpose outside that described intuitively by physical and chemical rules. Its purpose can be seen to be a curious thing; that the gene structure is to continue into the future, even after the original genes at any point in time have long ceased to be. How genes popped into existence a billion years or so ago is a bit vague to say the least. There doesn't seem to be any driving force that turns inert matter into something that exhibits a driving force for replication. It just doesn't make much sense with the knowledge that we have today. Maybe, all it is, is that it just takes a long time in a rich mix of possible reactions for one to result in a uniquely combining formula. The results from all the others would disappear without trace but the combination that just happened to repeat itself in the right conditions could prevail forever. It would require either an infinite amount of resource or a system where there was a constant reusing of source matter. At its most base functionality, life appears to be a mechanism for propagating energy; even a form of entropy. Like water running downhill to a lower potential state maybe life is another way of enabling this. No life process exists without a drop in the overall energy. One way or another it ekes out. The by-product of the chemical and biomechanical reactions is always heat, no matter how infinitesimally tiny the amounts. This could be a way that energy reaches lower states, as simple as that. From the perspective of life as a concept, it requires energy to be constantly pouring into its system in order for it to continue. This can be radiated in or available from stored reserves. Either way, this is generally from sunlight which provides heat and the power for photosynthesis.
How this questionable start could lead to the complexities and diversity that the genes are the basis of is mind boggling and some of the finest brains on the planet are trying to figure out how their brains came to be on the planet. For the purpose of this book, though, it is simply taken as read that this is what genes do. They replicate themselves. In any given finite environment, the genes that replicate themselves most successfully use the energy that the less successful ones would have used. The less successful ones are denied the energy they need to replicate and their sequence ceases. The fittest survives. Evolution. It would appear that there are a myriad of overlaying environments which has resulted in occasions where increasingly complex sequences and combinations have become the most successful, irrespective of where they occurred in the food chain. Where ever life exists it has an single common denominator that defines its observable purpose. The logic of this purpose of life is that to exist is good, to not is bad; and in order to exist in the future, to procreate is good, to not is bad. The terms "good" and "bad" are used here as part of a reaction to events or the possibility of events. The good is the purpose inherent in all life forms, the bad is potential or actual loss of genetic existence. In animals this is the basis of desire and fear which occur as emotions. In higher order animals up to humans, this is also the basis of beliefs. The digital on/off state is at the heart of all life, though, and it is the fundamental process for decision making. This is biologic. It is the fundamental logic of life and leads to all beliefs.
Many of the problems of logical absolutism that plagues philosophy (and its subsection, mathematics) can be neatly, or at least pragmatically, countered using biologic. It ultimately becomes impossible to prove anything using the abstract concept of thought as all logic reduces to nothing from its ethereal state; maybe this could be a definition of "ethereal". Most influential philosophers have followed various routes of reasoning over the millennia and many quite conflicting conclusions have been reached. It provides for endless discussion and deliberation but, if anything, the conclusions diverge rather than converge. To logically distil thought into a belief doesn't work. It only works the other way round but that goes against the grain of philosophy as it lies at the heart of religion. Religion, for all its corruption, is based on the acceptance of beliefs over thought and uses this trump card against any logical argument. Many Philosophers and religious intellectuals have tried to combine the two and ended up with a mix like that of oil and water. It could be argued that, other than a route of Nihilism (which leads to nothing) all philosophical arguments are based on beliefs and assumptions before logic. The whole thing is a fudge, no matter how precise and intellectually defensible the logical argument becomes later. If, in the following of logical routes in a logical process, the consensus of end points diverges then, logically, it is the starting points and directions that are different. This could be seen very clearly if the acceptance of different beliefs of philosophers was used as a belief by philosophers. It appears that this is not the case. Their problem is that this conflicts with their intellectual pride, in turn driven by their beliefs. In relinquishing their intellectual faith and the positive emotions that are felt with this, they experience a loss which is emotionally painful. The logical route round this is to deny it to themselves and anyone else and preferably find others who will validate through interaction. It is understandable but does lead to quite a lot of confusion. If biologic is used as a fundamental assumption then a whole heap of philosophical, mathematical, spiritual and social explanations align. This is under the concept of biophilosophy and is only to be touched upon here.
A rarefied form of traditional philosophy is mathematics which has gone hand in hand with the highest levels of human thought. Without it, the last five hundred years of technology just couldn't have happened and the human race would still be an also ran in the animal kingdom. For all that it can be used to staggeringly powerful effect in design of machines and buildings, the fundamental proofs of mathematics are still tricky: What is one? What is zero? We haven't absolutely shown what they are. Surely, without these defined, we can hardly progress in a satisfactory fashion? Mathematics is so useful and it is accepted by the vast majority that one is one and that one plus one is two, etc... but it still is of concern to philosophers. It is also difficult to explain how some high level animals can count. Show a chimp a banana going into an empty box followed by another banana and the chimp is so perturbed when the box has three bananas emptied out of it. Using the biologic premises within biophilosophy can shed light on this. One and zero can be linked into the beliefs of genetic existence and loss of genetic existence. The belief that to exist is good can be echoed to the feeling that "one" exists and this is also associated with good. Not only that but it is also good if "one" continues to be "one" through out the future. "Zero" as nothing has no emotional association. It is neither good nor bad. It doesn't need to affect a life system and would take up valuable resource to do so. However, "one" becoming "zero" is associated with loss of existence and so, bad. There is an associated fear of this.
This desire for existence and continuity eases basic arithmetic by removing the requirement of it being derived from logical nothingness. It looks at the emotional state of the present which will then become the emotional state of the future and minimises the negative association of continuity loss. For example, what is one plus one?. Breaking this down into a timed emotional sequence has an initial starting point of a clean sheet as with all maths questions; An ambivalent state that need not concern. Then, there is a point where a one is introduced from nothing which is emotionally good. A belief is created that the one exists and a positive association of this is formed. Another one is then introduced from nothing which is also good and the belief is amended. This all is accessed within the emotional present state of the question. Moving forward to the answer is the equivalent of the emotional future. What are the ones going to become? The biologic response will link continuity positively and a lack or loss of continuity negatively. There can be many future outcomes and a whole sweep of them could be proposed to the biologic response. The result in the future could be one, it could be nothing, it could be three, it could be an apple. All of these solutions will have to involve a loss of the state of the original ones. They will all have an associated negative response and, emotionally, be bad. There will only be a single scenario in the possible futures that has an emotionally positive association with it. That would be the one that was chosen as correct, the others incorrect. It would maintain existential continuity and feel "right". The answer to the question can be given the belief of a name. In English, we call it two.
This is a seemingly laborious route to an obvious answer but maybe it is only obvious because it feels obvious. It provides two very useful strands of explanation, though. The first is that, if the mathematical basis stems from biologic assumptions not philosophical absolutism, it essentially bypasses the source problems of mathematics. All integer addition can be varied using the same process to give all the other integers. It can be then modified to the operation of sub-contraction; The same response of continuity applies. This is not to say that taking away is, in itself, considered bad. Even if one or some are removed from an equation they still exist as they are being removed. This does not provide a negative response. Only if there is lack of continuity from the original group to the remainder group is the negative response triggered. The "correct" answer will be the one that has continuity after a removal. Once these beliefs have been formed they can be extended into repeated sequences i.e. multiplication and division. Mathematics can, and has, expanded out massively from these most basic of starts. If they are formed on emotional beliefs then its logic can become very complicated indeed but still, ultimately, be reducible.
The second strand is that if mathematics can have the same emotional basis and be logically progressed using an ever widening platform of beliefs, then a similar platform of logical explanation can be created to explain human behaviour. Responses, beliefs, associations and choices can occur in fantastically complex layers. These choices of behaviour would provide the components of social interaction and this would layer up into society, culture, religions etc... They might appear conflicting and confusing but still be reducible and logical. Can this be proved? No of course not; it is based on beliefs which can never be proved. It can be deduced, however. It can also be modelled and expanded, no matter how counter intuitive it is.
Consider an animal species that is beholden to the forces of evolutionary change. It will be somewhere in a food cycle and have varying chances of superiority of survival and prosperity over others. The better it can adapt to its environment, the better the likelihood of both its individual members and its species as a whole. What appears to have developed over the eons in higher level animals is a desire to not only produce offspring but to protect and nurture them through their most vulnerable period of life, their infancy. No animal wants to die and no animal wants its own to die. Whether or not biologic is accepted as plausible, there is conjecture that built into every species is a desire for every individual's genetic code to pass on through their offspring (maybe, with the likes of ants this still can happen with a colony). This is also very important and a considerable percentage of an animal's resources are utilised in attempting this. There is a need to do this and it links to the very essence of life on this planet. Throughout the animal kingdom, generally, the more intelligent and the higher up the food chain a species is, the more effort is invested into the handful of chances of genetic continuity.
After a while the infants mature and become independent from their parents but still part of a wider society. Again, there is a benefit from remaining in stable groups with a common aim of survival and, preferably, prosperity. They can mate and have the positive emotions from providing a genetic legacy. These can manifest themselves as parental love and be increased by stability and nurturing their own offspring. The chance of survival can be increased by the best food and shelter which will, in turn, be derived by status in a group or mating with a member of high status in that group.
Within this natural cycle in human groups, chiefs can emerge, monarchies and dynasties can be formed, empires built and wars fought. Lots of wars! At the point that any group has colonized and developed fertile land, built or mined valuable items or plain plundered from others, they provide the ability for another group to amplify their own chances of success very rapidly by taking from them. It is in the best interest for the first group to sense their impending losses of food, wealth, even existence, such that they become angry and fight. The strongest side wins and takes the spoils. Their prosperity, no matter how cruelly gained, increased their individual's genetic chances and that feels good, whatever the prevailing moral codes might dictate.
What constitutes “strongest” though? In simple groups it comes down to the greater strength of either physique or numbers. The advent of intellectual logical process has had a massive change on this. One individual with a bow and arrow above a ravine can destroy ten exposed below. The iconic opening scene of “2001: A space odyssey” explores the initial transition so impressively. Superiority over physical strength came from the idea of amplifying the impact of a hand with the addition of a skeleton bone. This was an idea, something different, something new. This ability to harness new thought gave mankind superiority over every other animal on Earth within one hundred thousand short years. That’s just four or five thousand generations for a single species to dominate the world. It has come about solely from the development of new thought. There is a genetic benefit to this.
Because thought underlies many human actions and interactions, understanding its physical and metaphysical origins, processes, and effects has been a long standing goal of many academic disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, artificial intelligence, biology, sociology and cognitive science.
Thinking allows humans to make sense of, interpret, represent or model the world they experience, and to make predictions about that world. It is therefore helpful to an organism with needs, objectives, and desires as it makes plans or otherwise attempts to accomplish those goals. It is a staggeringly complex subject to even categorise, let alone explain.
Definitions may or may not require that thought:
take place within a human brain (see anthropomorphism), take place as part of a living biological system (see Alan Turing and Computing Machinery and Intelligence), take place only at a conscious level of awareness (see Unconscious Thought Theory), require language, is principally or even only conceptual, abstract ("formal"), involve other concepts such as drawing analogies, interpreting, evaluating, imagining, planning, and remembering.
To view all this pragmatically, though, could produce a series of processes within different sections that act as a loose model for human thought. This is the benefit of the Psychofunctionalist approach. There could be a logic section that allowed for an understanding of environment. Another section could decide what behaviour to do and how intensely that should be. The past experiences could be stored in a separate section and referred to on request. The subtleties of how each experience has an effect can be stored in yet another location. The previously learned processes and decisions could be stored and retrieved such that the whole system's logical efficiency is vastly increased over time. This isn't what is happening, not by a long stretch, but that's not to say there isn't benefit in perusing this model. For one thing, at least it can be attempted with today's technology. This sits in line with current high level computer program architecture. It is still highly complex but relatively straightforward compared with the challenges of neurological modelling. Not only that, it makes sense, and there is an entire industry out there already developing many of the components. This will be part of an ongoing development process and it looks like non human thought will come to fruition in the future, sometime. Quasi neural networks will be created in the quantities and connectivity that exists in our brains and a programming code will enable the spark of thought processes to occur at fundamental levels. This is still decades away. In the mean time, using off the shelf components will speed things up no end.
Simplifying the brains processes can lead to eight sections:
Senses, Emotional reactions, Beliefs through experience, Decision section, probables, possibles and rationale, Memories creation, Feelings beliefs, Output,
All of these are interconnected at all times. The Rationale being both "consciously aware" and consciously able to come to conclusions about available information. It makes more sense if it is the experience based learning and decision section that is making the choices and that these are being passed to the rationale as it had come to the conclusion itself. The rationale would believe it had made the decisions as to how to behave and learnt from the external responses ( i.e. the world around the brain) but this would not have been the case. This process is counter intuitive until the effects of negative responses to thought without self are taken into consideration. There are six other functional sections which are discussed below. These lead on to behaviour and, in turn, to more convoluted human occurrences such as laughter, soul, religion, etc.