Mahault Albarracin - Cognitive Science
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YT version: https://youtu.be/n8G50ynU0Vg
In this interview on MLST, Dr. Tim Scarfe interviews Mahault Albarracin, who is the director of product for R&D at VERSES and also a PhD student in cognitive computing at the University of Quebec in Montreal. They discuss a range of topics related to consciousness, cognition, and machine learning.
Throughout the conversation, they touch upon various philosophical and computational concepts such as panpsychism, computationalism, and materiality. They consider the "hard problem" of consciousness, which is the question of how and why we have subjective experiences.
Albarracin shares her views on the controversial Integrated Information Theory and the open letter of opposition it received from the scientific community. She reflects on the nature of scientific critique and rivalry, advising caution in declaring entire fields of study as pseudoscientific.
A substantial part of the discussion is dedicated to the topic of science itself, where Albarracin talks about thresholds between legitimate science and pseudoscience, the role of evidence, and the importance of validating scientific methods and claims.
They touch upon language models, discussing whether they can be considered as having a "theory of mind" and the implications of assigning such properties to AI systems. Albarracin challenges the idea that there is a pure form of intelligence independent of material constraints and emphasizes the role of sociality in the development of our cognitive abilities.
Albarracin offers her thoughts on scientific endeavors, the predictability of systems, the nature of intelligence, and the processes of learning and adaptation. She gives insights into the concept of using degeneracy as a way to increase resilience within systems and the role of maintaining a degree of redundancy or extra capacity as a buffer against unforeseen events.
The conversation concludes with her discussing the potential benefits of collective intelligence, likening the adaptability and resilience of interconnected agent systems to those found in natural ecosystems.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahault-albarracin-1742bb153/
00:00:00 - Intro / IIT scandal
00:05:54 - Gaydar paper / What makes good science
00:10:51 - Language
00:18:16 - Intelligence
00:29:06 - X-risk
00:40:49 - Self modelling
00:43:56 - Anthropomorphisation
00:46:41 - Mediation and subjectivity
00:51:03 - Understanding
00:56:33 - Resiliency
Technical topics:
1. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) - Giulio Tononi
2. The "hard problem" of consciousness - David Chalmers
3. Panpsychism and Computationalism in philosophy of mind
4. Active Inference Framework - Karl Friston
5. Theory of Mind and its computation in AI systems
6. Noam Chomsky's views on language models and linguistics
7. Daniel Dennett's Intentional Stance theory
8. Collective intelligence and system resilience
9. Redundancy and degeneracy in complex systems
10. Michael Levin's research on bioelectricity and pattern formation
11. The role of phenomenology in cognitive science
Autopoitic Enactivism and the Free Energy Principle - Prof. Friston, Prof Buckley, Dr. Ramstead
We explore connections between FEP and enactivism, including tensions raised in a paper critiquing FEP from an enactivist perspective.
Dr. Maxwell Ramstead provides background on enactivism emerging from autopoiesis, with a focus on embodied cognition and rejecting information processing/computational views of mind.
Chris shares his journey from robotics into FEP, starting as a skeptic but becoming convinced it's the right framework. He notes there are both "high road" and "low road" versions, ranging from embodied to more radically anti-representational stances. He doesn't see a definitive fork between dynamical systems and information theory as the source of conflict. Rather, the notion of operational closure in enactivism seems to be the main sticking point.
The group explores definitional issues around structure/organization, boundaries, and operational closure. Maxwell argues the generative model in FEP captures organizational dependencies akin to operational closure. The Markov blanket formalism models structural interfaces.
We discuss the concept of goals in cognitive systems - Chris advocates an intentional stance perspective - using notions of goals/intentions if they help explain system dynamics. Goals emerge from beliefs about dynamical trajectories. Prof Friston provides an elegant explanation of how goal-directed behavior naturally falls out of the FEP mathematics in a particular "goldilocks" regime of system scale/dynamics. The conversation explores the idea that many systems simply act "as if" they have goals or models, without necessarily possessing explicit representations. This helps resolve tensions between enactivist and computational perspectives.
Throughout the dialogue, Maxwell presses philosophical points about the FEP abolishing what he perceives as false dichotomies in cognitive science such as internalism/externalism. He is critical of enactivists' commitment to bright line divides between subject areas.
Prof. Karl Friston - Inventor of the free energy principle https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=q_4u0aoAAAAJ
Prof. Chris Buckley - Professor of Neural Computation at Sussex University https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=nWuZ0XcAAAAJ&hl=en
Dr. Maxwell Ramstead - Director of Research at VERSES https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=ILpGOMkAAAAJ&hl=fr
We address critique in this paper:
Laying down a forking path: Tensions between enaction and the free energy principle (Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, Evan Thompson, Randall D. Beere)
https://philosophymindscience.org/index.php/phimisci/article/download/9187/8975
Other refs:
Multiscale integration: beyond internalism and externalism (Maxwell J D Ramstead)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33627890/
MLST panel: Dr. Tim Scarfe and Dr. Keith Duggar
TOC (auto generated):
0:00 - Introduction
0:41 - Defining enactivism and its variants
6:58 - The source of the conflict between dynamical systems and information theory
8:56 - Operational closure in enactivism
10:03 - Goals and intentions
12:35 - The link between dynamical systems and information theory
15:02 - Path integrals and non-equilibrium dynamics
18:38 - Operational closure defined
21:52 - Structure vs. organization in enactivism
24:24 - Markov blankets as interfaces
28:48 - Operational closure in FEP
30:28 - Structure and organization again
31:08 - Dynamics vs. information theory
33:55 - Goals and intentions emerge in the FEP mathematics
36:58 - The Good Regulator Theorem
49:30 - enactivism and its relation to ecological psychology
52:00 - Goals, intentions and beliefs
55:21 - Boundaries and meaning
58:55 - Enactivism's rejection of information theory
1:02:08 - Beliefs vs goals
1:05:06 - Ecological psychology and FEP
1:08:41 - The Good Regulator Theorem
1:18:38 - How goal-directed behavior emerges
1:23:13 - Ontological vs metaphysical boundaries
1:25:20 - Boundaries as maps
1:31:08 - Connections to the maximum entropy principle
1:33:45 - Relations to quantum and relational physics
Dr. MAXWELL RAMSTEAD - The Physics of Survival
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst
Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB
Join us for a fascinating discussion of the free energy principle with Dr. Maxwell Ramsted, a leading thinker exploring the intersection of math, physics, and philosophy and Director of Research at VERSES. The FEP was proposed by renowned neuroscientist Karl Friston, this principle offers a unifying theory explaining how systems maintain order and their identity.
The free energy principle inverts traditional survival logic. Rather than asking what behaviors promote survival, it queries - given things exist, what must they do? The answer: minimizing free energy, or "surprise." Systems persist by constantly ensuring their internal states match anticipated states based on a model of the world. Failure to minimize surprise leads to chaos as systems dissolve into disorder.
Thus, the free energy principle elucidates why lifeforms relentlessly model and predict their surroundings. It is an existential imperative counterbalancing entropy. Essentially, this principle describes the mind's pursuit of harmony between expectations and reality. Its relevance spans from cells to societies, underlying order wherever longevity is found.
Our discussion explores the technical details and philosophical implications of this paradigm-shifting theory. How does it further our understanding of cognition and intelligence? What insights does it offer about the fundamental patterns and properties of existence? Can it precipitate breakthroughs in disciplines like neuroscience and artificial intelligence?
Dr. Ramstead completed his Ph.D. at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 2019, with frequent research visits to UCL in London, under the supervision of the world’s most cited neuroscientist, Professor Karl Friston (UCL).
YT version: https://youtu.be/8qb28P7ksyE
https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=ILpGOMkAAAAJ&hl=frhttps://spatialwebfoundation.org/team/maxwell-ramstead/https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwell-ramstead-43a1991b7/https://twitter.com/mjdramstead
VERSES AI: https://www.verses.ai/
Intro: Tim Scarfe (Ph.D)
Interviewer: Keith Duggar (Ph.D MIT)
TOC:
0:00:00 - Tim Intro
0:08:10 - Intro and philosophy
0:14:26 - Intro to Maxwell
0:18:00 - FEP
0:29:08 - Markov Blankets
0:51:15 - Verses AI / Applications of FEP
1:05:55 - Potential issues with deploying FEP
1:10:50 - Shared knowledge graphs
1:14:29 - XRisk / Ethics
1:24:57 - Strength of Verses
1:28:30 - Misconceptions about FEP, Physics vs philosophy/criticism
1:44:41 - Emergence / consciousness
References:
Principia Mathematica
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30567249049
Andy Clark's paper "Whatever Next? Predictive Brains, Situated Agents, and the Future of Cognitive Science" (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2013)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23663408/
"Math Does Not Represent" by Erik Curiel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA_T20HAzyY
A free energy principle for generic quantum systems (Chris Fields et al)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.15242.pdf
Designing explainable artificial intelligence with active inference
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.04025
Am I Self-Conscious? (Friston)
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00579/full
The Meta-Problem of Consciousness
https://philarchive.org/archive/CHATMO-32v1
The Map-Territory Fallacy Fallacy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.06924
A Technical Critique of Some Parts of the Free Energy Principle - Martin Biehl et al
https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.06408
WEAK MARKOV BLANKETS IN HIGH-DIMENSIONAL, SPARSELY-COUPLED RANDOM DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS - DALTON A R SAKTHIVADIVEL
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.07620.pdf