- Author
- Johannes Jaeger, Anna Riedl, Alex Djedovic, John Vervaeke and Denis Walsh, in Frontiers in Psychology
- Published
- 25 June 2024
- Kind
- Peer-reviewed theoretical paper (Hypothesis and Theory), with no experiments
- Original
- www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1362658/full
- Subject
- Mind, attention and practice
What it is
Five authors from universities in Vienna and Toronto wrote this for Frontiers in Psychology. It sets out to ground relevance realization in biology. Relevance realization is how an agent picks what matters. The paper then draws conclusions about artificial intelligence.
What it says
- The authors say organisms must first turn ill-defined problems into well-defined ones. Algorithms never face this.
- The authors argue relevance realization cannot be fully formalized. They cite infinite regress and Gödel's theorems.
- The authors say life makes itself through organizational closure. They cite Rosen's conjecture on simple systems.
- The authors say all organisms, even bacteria, realize relevance. Humans differ only in complexity.
- The authors describe three nested processes: self-manufacture, anticipation, and adaptation of goals, actions and affordances.
- The authors conclude, if their argument holds, that cognition is not computation. Purely algorithmic human-like thinkers are a pipe dream.
What evidence it gives
The paper offers conceptual argument only. It draws on Rosen's mathematics of living systems and Hofmeyr's models. Its main example is a bacterium swimming up a nutrient gradient. It runs no experiments and gives no data. It calls its claims about consciousness speculative. It also cites a footnote on a published simulation of Rosen's system.
Interests and limits
One author originated the relevance realization framework that the paper extends. The first author's funding came from the John Templeton Foundation. A footnote notes a published simulation of Rosen's system in lambda calculus. It says this does not change the argument. No working AI system is tested. The reference list was not read in detail.