COGNITIVE REVOLUTION, VIRTUALITY AND GOOD LIFE
Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic
School of Innovation, Design and Engineering
Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden
http://www.idt.mdh.se/~gdc
Abstract
We are living in an era in which the focus is shifting from performing and physical to controlling and cognitive/informational. This emerging increasingly informational world is our new ecology, an infosphere that presents the grounds for a cognitive revolution based on interactions in networks of biological and artificial intelligent agents. After industrial revolution which extended human body with the mechanical machinery, cognitive revolution extends human mind with the information processing machinery. Those novel circumstances come with new qualities and preferences which demand new conceptualizations. We have a work ahead on establishing value systems and practices extended from the real to the virtual or info-computational.
This paper first presents our current understanding of the virtual and then offers an interpretation framework based on info-computational understanding of cognition in which the agency in the world implies computational processing of informational structures. The notion of good life is discussed in the light of different ideals of well-being in the infosphere.
Introduction
It is a common place that ICT is revolutionarily changing our lives on a global scale and in number of dimensions. This revolution is at least as radical as the industrial revolution, and its far-reaching consequences we can still only speculate about. The basic reason is the “phase transition” from slow and predominantly local contacts and information processing to practically instantaneous communication on the global scale, supported by unprecedented capacities of information processing – computation and storage. Single human’s cognitive capacities are extended by vast networks of humans and machines. Those networks include among others research (CERN was the birth-place of the World Wide Web), education, commerce, business, government (e-government, still local), and virtual (often global) teams in business, communications and entertainment (an industry of worldwide proportions engaging vast resources). That is where we find the first examples of virtual worlds and first experiences of the cognition augmented by the information from the virtual. The history of virtual worlds goes back to 1979 (Bartle 2003), with the emergence of MUD (MultiUser Dungeon – text-based combination of online chat, role-playing games and fiction) and Usenet (discussion system for exchange of public messages in internet newsgroups). Present-day networks of users and computing machinery both in social networking services (Facebook, Twitter, Google+), virtual worlds (Second Life, World of Warcraft, virtual education environments, e-commerce, medical) are obviously just a beginning in the development of computational networks and environments supporting globally extended cognition. It is not difficult to imagine a future internet of things that can be used to connect virtual and real objects, which will be an epoch-making change in human relationships with the world, both in terms of extended cognition and enhanced decision-making and impact capabilities. In this context understanding of cognition is central as very much of information-processing technology provides direct inputs to human cognitive system and old understanding of human as a dual system consisting of physical body and somewhat mysterious and difficult to explain “mind” does not suffice.
Pinker (2003) identified the following key characteristics of the cognitive revolution: “The mental world can be grounded in the physical world by the concepts of information, computation, and feedback” (p. 31); “An infinite range of behavior can be generated by finite combinatorial programs in the mind” (36); “Universal mental mechanisms can underlie superficial variation across cultures” (37); “The mind is a complex system composed of many interacting parts”. (p. 39).
This paper presents contemporary understanding of virtual worlds and offers an interpretation framework based on info-computational understanding of cognition in which the world, real as well as virtual is a source of information for an agent. Agency implies information processing. Through interactions – both with the environment (including other agents) and by interactive information processing within an agents own cognitive apparatus, information is structured, and the relationships between different informational structures established. This interactivist, autopoetic (Maturana, Varela), constructivist understanding of cognition has consequences for our view of socio-technical systems, including computer aided cognition and virtual reality. Info-computational framework is used to elucidate mechanisms of information processing in the virtual and their consequences for the real, as a basis for understanding values of the virtual as related to the real. The idea of good life is discussed in the light of different dimensions of well-being – economy of fun (Castronova, 2007) and sensemaking (Fiss and Hirsch, 2005).
What is a Virtual World? The Nature of Virtuality
The term ‘virtuality’ is used by (Introna, 2008) to refer to “the mediation of interaction through an electronic medium between humans as well as between humans and machines.” The taxonomy of virtuality suggested by (Søraker, 2010) identifies the following types (p. 56): Multi-access VR (future VR, including HDM-augmented virtual worlds); Virtual Reality (CAVE, Virtusphere, Hitech flight simulators); Virtual World; Virtual Environment (most modern, off-line video games, incl. Nintendo Wii); Virtual Community (LambdaMoo, chat rooms, discussion forums, social networking sites such as Second Life) and Virtual institutes (virtual banks, libraries, universities, museums, galleries, experiments). To the Multi-access VR MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Play Games) can be included World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and similar.
Another way to delineate the world of virtuality is to see the topics addressed by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, which features the following topics: cultures of virtual worlds, pedagogy, education and innovation in virtual worlds, virtual worlds for health and healthcare, technology, economy and standards in virtual worlds, virtual economies, virtual goods and service delivery in virtual worlds, consumer behavior in virtual worlds - among others. The list shows that the popular idea of virtual worlds as “the pearly gates of cyberspace” and the return to medieval, spiritual concerns, proposed by (Wertheim, 1999) is representative of only a fraction of what is considered as virtual worlds today. Equally partial is apparently the view of the virtual as a “global shopping mall” (Dibbell, 1998).
Virtual reality VR is “a three-dimensional interactive computer generated environment that incorporates a first-person perspective”, according to (Brey, 1999). Heim (Heim, 1993) identifies seven divergent topics dominating virtual reality: simulation, interaction, artificiality, networked communication, telepresence and immersion. Since 1993, simulation and generative modelling has grown in importance to become one of the major research fields with wide range of applications in VR - from sciences to movie industry.
An interesting process of integration of the virtual and the real is going on, both literally in the form of ubiquitous computing and hybrid spaces (Aliaga, 1997), as well as conceptually. The idea of hybrid space is that besides a geometrical model of the real world, the virtual objects are created that interact with the real objects with equally realistic feel. Holographic 3D environments are an example of this physical hybridization between the real and the virtual. The nature of virtuality as an increasingly pervasive IT phenomenon, is addressed in (Poulymenakou et al., 2007) and (Tsekeris, 2008). For (de Souza e Silva, 2004) the idea of cyberspace actualizes the question to what degree the mental image corresponds to the real world. Importantly, de Souza e Silva argues that the concept of the virtual changes, since “it can no longer be considered independently from physical space; rather, it belongs to it.”
In his Difference and Repetition, Deleuze offers the following essential distinction:
“The virtual is opposed not to the real but to the actual. The virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual. Exactly what Proust said of states of resonance must be said of the virtual: 'Real without being actual, ideal without being abstract'; and symbolic without being fictional.” (Deleuze, 1994)
For Deleuze, the reality of the virtual is its structure. The structure (a pattern) as essential for understanding the virtual is also supported by (Petry, 2010) who points to the Wittgenstein’s claim from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that patterns are minimal elements of a cognitive structure that enable understanding.
Minsky, in Societies of Mind, gives a mechanism that helps to understand how real can be affected by virtual:
„But then, what makes some recollections seem so real? The secret is that real-time experience is just as indirect! The closest we can come to apprehending the world, in any case, is through descriptions which our agents make. In fact, if we inquire, instead, about why real things seem so real, we'll see that it depends, as well, on memories of things we've known before!“ (Minsky, 1988) p.155
Info-computational Framework for Understanding Virtuality
In order to analyze the functioning of systems made to provide for a user an experience of being present in a virtual world, the info-computational framework offers a suitable framework. On the basic level, within this approach, information is the stuff of the universe (structures) while computation is its dynamics (processes). The universe is a network of computing processes and its phenomena are fundamentally info-computational: continuous as well as discrete, analogue as well as digital. The absolute distinction between physical and mental is dissolved as both the real world as the virtual ones present different types of relationships between info-computational agents on different levels of organization. (Dodig Crnkovic and Müller, 2009)
Info-computationalism (Dodig Crnkovic, 2006 and 2009) is a synthesis of two existing cosmologies – the informational universe and the computational universe. It unifies Informationalism (Informational Structural Realism) of Floridi (2008); Informational Realism of Sayre (1976) and (Ladyman et al., 2007) - with the Naturalist Computationalism/ Pancomputationalism of among others Zuse, Fredkin, Wolfram, Chaitin, and Lloyd. Info-computationalist naturalism interprets the dynamics of informational structures as computation. (Dodig Crnkovic, 2011a)
Info-computationalist understanding of cognition presents an integrative framework for contemporary knowledge from computing, neuroscience, cognitive science, biology, artificial intelligence, philosophy and number of other research fields. (Dodig-Crnkovic, 2009 and 2010) It is a way of naturalizing epistemology uniting two previously incompatible views: a symbolic, explicit and static notion of representation (mind as a mirror of the world) versus implicit and dynamic (interactive) one. Within info-computational framework, classical symbolic and connectionist (sub-symbolic) views are reconciled and used to describe different aspects of cognition. Naturalizing epistemology by defining cognition as information processing phenomenon is based on the development of multilevel dynamical computational models and simulations of intelligent systems, and has consequences for i.a. conceptual analysis of artificial intelligence and artificial life. (Dodig Crnkovic and Müller, 2009)
Starting from the assumption that cognition by nature is an info-computational phenomenon makes it easier to understand and analyze the situation where human cognition is aided by computing machinery. It should be emphasized that both information and computation are given broader meaning than in conventional computationalism. This approach answers Weizenbaum’s criticism:
“Still, the extreme or hardcore wing of the artificial intelligentsia will insist that the whole man, to again use Simon’s expression, is after all an information processor, and that an information –processing theory of man must therefore be adequate to account for his behaviour in its entirety. We may agree with the major premise without necessarily drawing the indicated conclusion. We have already observed that a portion of the information that human “processes” is kinesthetic, that it is “stored” in his muscles and joints. It is simply not clear that such information, and the processing associated with it, can be represented in the form of computer programs and data structures at all.
It may, of course, be argued that it is in principle possible for a computer to simulate the entire network of cells that constitutes the human body. But that would introduce a theory of information processing entirely different from any which has so far been advanced.” (Weizenbaum, 1976) p. 213
That is exactly this entirely different theory of information (from sub-symbolic o symbolic) and entirely different understanding of computation (natural computation going on in both brain and muscles, on different levels of complexity) that are fundamental for info-computationalism. Yes, humans (and other living organisms) are information processing systems, they exist through information for each other, and the world as a totality exists through information exchanged by computational processes.
Within info-computationalism, all characteristics of the cognitive revolution according to (Pinker, 2003) are accounted for: 1. the mental world is grounded in the physical world by the concepts of information and computation, with feedback as a (self-reflective) computational process; 2. an unlimited repertoire of behaviours are generated by finite informational structures of the embodied brain in the interaction with the environment; 3. universal info-computational mechanisms underlie variation across cultures; 4. the mind is a complex system of dynamical processes composed of many interacting mindless agents in a sense of Minsky with interactions constituting a “society of mind”.
At this stage of the ICT development we are still capable of making clear distinctions between the perceptions coming from the real and those from the virtual. However, our memories, thoughts and feelings about the two may be much more close in flavour and sometimes even indistinguishable. With the development of the virtual towards increasing realism technology might be able to enable so realistic perceptions that it will be increasingly difficult to make distinction even on the basic level of experience. That is one of the reasons why it is so important to understand virtual worlds and their impact on the development of society.
Computer Aided Cognition, Distributed Cognition and Beyond
Hutchins made in the mid 1980s an important contribution to cognitive science by developing the framework, (not a method!) of distributed cognition, which involves interplay between (groups of) agents and the environment. It presupposes embodiment of information in representations of interactions, coordination among (embodied) agents and a cognitive ecosystem.
”In 1978, Vygotsky’s Mind in Society was published in English. Minsky published his Society of Mind in 1985. At the same time, Parallel Distributed Processing was making a comeback as a model of cognition (Rumelhart, et al, 1986). The nearly perfect mirror symmetry of the titles of Vygotsky’s and Minsky’s books suggests that something special might be happening in systems of distributed processing, whether the processors are neurons, connectionist nodes, areas of a brain, whole persons, groups of persons, or groups of groups of persons.” Hutchins, http://files.meetup.com/410989/DistributedCognition.pdf