Social-semiotic externalism in “Can robot understand values?”

English presentation seminar Prof. Minao Kukika

November 20, 2015

Seiichiro Yasuda

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List of acronyms (for your reference)

SGP: Symbol grounding problem

ESGP: Ethical (SGP)

AMA: Artificial moral agent

AI: Artificial intelligence

EMH: Extended mind hypothesis

SS-EMH: Social-semiotically (EMH)

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Contents

1. Internalism behind the question? (p. 4)

2. A lesson from Vogt’s semiotic-social approach to SGP (p. 9)

3. A lesson from Clark & Chalmers’ EMH (p. 13)

4. Social-semiotic externalism (p. 18)

5. A few hints for further development of social-semiotic externalism (p. 22)

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1.

Internalism

behind the question?

(“Can robot understand values?” )

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• ESGP’s basic assumption

[A] ¬ ∀𝑥 ∈ AMA𝑥 passes moral Turing test

→ 𝑥 is fully moral

• Moral Turing test:= External test of whether a given AMA simulates human moral behavior (linguistic or not) well enough

• Full morality:= Whatever this is, it includes the condition that agent’s symbol-use be “grounded,” or that “she” “know what ‘she’ says.”

[A] Colloquially: Just because an AMA’s external behavior passes the moral Turing test, that doesn’t mean that “she” is fully moral.

On this assumption [A], the paper asks (1): Can AMAs go beyond just externally passing moral Turing test and become fully moral? and (2): If so, how? How can we ground their symbol-use, i.e., make them “know what ‘they’ say”? --- ESGP

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• Parallel to the original SGP

[B] ¬ ∀𝑥 ∈ AI𝑥 passes Turing test

→ 𝑥 is fully intelligent

• Turing test:= External test of whether an AI simulates human speech behavior well enough

• Full intelligence:= Whatever this is, it includes the condition that the AI’s symbol-use be “grounded,” or that “she” “know what ‘she’ says.”

[B] Colloquially: Just because an AI’s external behavior passes Turing test, that doesn’t mean that “she” is fully intelligent.

On this assumption [B], it’s been asked (by many AI researchers), (1): Can AIs go beyond just externally passing Turing test and become fully intelligent? And (2): If so, how? How can we ground their symbol-use, i.e., make them “know what ‘they’ say? --- SGP

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• An internalist assumption behind [A] & [B]?

Behind [A] and [B], something like the following seems to be assumed:

ℵ We cannot credit an artificial agent with the status of full morality/intelligence without checking what’s happening inside “her.”

An internalist assumption behind SGP as well as ESGP?

Compare this to the justification internalism:

We cannot credit someone with the status of knowing that p without checking what justifications she has in her mind. (Even if it is in fact that p, if she is just lucky in believing that p, her belief is not acceptable as a piece of knowledge.)

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• But, an externalist manifesto at the end of Sec. 4?

A quote from Kukita:

We diagnose that an AI is not a moral agent as long as it lacks understanding of the symbols it manipulates. Nevertheless, we do not necessarily assume that there is something unobservable and therefore mystic to our moral decision making. Taking SGP seriously does not imply admitting such unobservable and mystic factors. [Emphasis added]

Question: The “unobservable” and “mystic” factors seem to allude to the “mental” stuff inside us. How to understand this apparently anti-internalist remark, on the face of Kukita’s introduction of ESGP, by way of an analogy to SGP, which strongly invites an internalist stance in understanding the force of the problems? (My answer will come in Section 3 and Section 4.)

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2.

A lesson from

Vogt’s semiotic-social approach to SGP

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• Vogt’s semiotic conception of sign A quote from Kukita:

Vogt, following Peirce, thinks that a sign is composed of three components, form, meaning (interpretation) and referent, and the relationship among them. Here a sign is not viewed as a mere string of letters [i.e., form], but as a process of its being associated with something [i.e., referent, where the association is mediated by meaning], or as relationship resulting from the [triadic] association, i.e., it is regarded as semiosis [Italics are original, boldface emphasis added.]

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Form

Referent Meaning (Interpretation)

Semiosis (Sign as process)

• Vogt’s semiotic-social approach to SGP

A quote from Kukita:

If semiotic symbols are meaningful and grounded per definition, the [only] question will be how we can get semiotic process to emerge in an artificial system. In an experiment using multiple robotic agents which collaborate to achieve a goal, he succeeded in getting a vocabulary and compositional syntax to emerge among them (Vogt 1997). Steels declared that this kind of approach is sufficient to solve SGP (Steels 2008). [Italics are original, boldface emphasis added.]

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• Lesson: Vogt’s approach extended to ESGP Kukita:

o finds Vogt’s semiotic-social approach to SGP promising; and

o suggests to extend it to ESGP by (i) implementing “interest” to the robotic agents and (ii) making their “interest” publicly observable (thereby making them sensitive to the interest of oneself and one another).

• Note: Emerging semiosis vs. implemented interest In Kukita’s suggested approach, the semiosis (grounded, meaningful sign-communication process) is supposed to emerge from the development of a community, while the interest of each agent is supposed to be implemented by the system designer somehow. This separate treatment may be a point of further consideration.

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3.

A lesson from

Clark & Chalmers’ EMH

(i.e., active “externalism”*)

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* I put this “externalism” in the scare quotes here because this “externalism” is so fundamentally different from another kind of externalism I will ascribe to Kukita in Section 4. The difference will be explained in p. 21.

• Clark & Chalmers’ EMH (or active “externalism”)

A quote from Kukita: Clark and Chalmers (1998) … claim that the mind is a set of faculties that help solve a variety of survival tasks, and … as such is not confined within the individual biological body… . [I]ntelligence is a product of collaboration of biological agents and technological artifacts and thus belongs to a larger softly assembled system composed of humans, technological artifact, and other surroundings. It was not a mere machine called Deep Blue that defeated Gary Kasparov, but … a large[r] symbiotic assemblage composed of computers, engineers, programmers, and chess trainers. The credit should not go exclusively to the machine, but to the system as a whole. [Emphasis added.]

This seems a fair representation of EMH of C&C, but with stronger emphases on the social and symbiotic (or mutually dependent) nature of the “larger system.” This credit hardly goes to C&C.

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• Lesson: EMH transformed! (into SS-EMH) A quote from Kukita:

[W]e humans also arrive at the meaning of a symbol with external aids from various resources.

Interpretation of this quote

Step 1:

C&C’s EMH calls for the expansion of the range (extension) of

“the mental,” without calling for any rethinking about the

concept (intension) of “the mental.” In other words, they raise

an extensional issue of whether (some of) our “mental

contents” spread outside of the “skin,” where the good old

Cartesian (hence in a sense internalistic) intension = concept of

“the mental” is kept unchallenged. (See p. 17 for more details of

this Cartesian/internalist nature of their EMH.)

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Step 2:

Kukita somehow draws from their Cartesian EMH a lesson about the concept of “the mental,” in particular, that of the (symbol) meaning:

Even I am a part of a larger symbiotic-semiotic system. Only as such do I “know the meaning of what I say.” So, even I cannot be said to “know the meaning” if I am individually taken out of this system.

Here, the very concept of “mind” is changed, from something that exists and acts individually to something existing and acting only as a part of a larger symbiotic and semiotic system. Of course, to “mean” something (by using symbols or not) is a “mental” act; this concept is changed, too, accordingly.

EMH in C&C (1998) is primarily concerned with whether “the mental” spreads outside of the “skin,” keeping the old concept of “the mental” as a fixed point of reference. But, in explaining EMH, Kukita exhibits a concern with what “the mental” is. EMH is philosophically transformed into SS-EMH in his paper.

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• Otto, Extended Otto, and Otto-in/as-semiosis

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Extended Otto

The museum is on 53rd street.

Otto

Mind-extending paraphernalia (written memos, etc.)

Whether Extended Otto “knows what ‘he’ says” still depends on what are occurring inside Extended Otto.

Extended Otto is surely extended, but exists and acts individually (and ahistorically).

C&C’s EMH

No semiotic agent exists or acts individually (or ahistorically). Now, which is a semiosis, an act of a semiotic agent or the agent herself? ---Or, both, in respective “levels”?

Symbiotic semiotic system

Otto’s saying something constitutes a semiosis, and whether Otto “knows what he says” depends on what have occurred in the system as a whole (and on what will happen thereafter as a result, too, perhaps).

New EMH suggested by Kukita (as I see it)

Otto

4.

Kukita’s social-semiotic externalism

(or SS-EMH)

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• Upshot of Kukita’s (tacit?) transformation of EMH -- An answer to the question of p. 8 --

If I’m right, we can find in Kukita’s paper a conceptual journey like a “reverse Blue bird,” initially inviting us to look for “meaning” as if it were inside of an individual, only to reveal that “it” is outside of each individual in the sense that “it” is in the system. It first introduces us to ESGP/SGP as if it were an internalist problem, but then reveals that what has been assumed all along is not the internalist assumption, namely, [ℵ] of p. 7:

ℵ We cannot credit an artificial agent with full morality/ intelligence without checking what’s happening inside “her,”

but its externalist version ℵ′ :

ℵ′ We cannot credit an artificial agent with full morality/ intelligence without checking what have occurred, up to the moment of “her” observed act, in the social-semiotic system as a whole [only as a part of which “she” has been, is, and will be].

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• Evidence In fact, right after the sentence quoted in p. 15:

[W]e humans also arrive at the meaning of a symbol with external aids from various resources,

Kukita goes on to say:

So the question will become about how we prepare a useful environment in which robotic agents can make a good use of symbols which emerged from interaction, cooperation and communication between robotic agents. [emphasis added]

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• Social-semiotic externalism (or SS-EMH)

• First, C&C consider their EMH as a version of “extenalism of mental content,” comparable to Putnam’s and Burge’s theses on this account. Secondly, their EMH is an extensional thesis, as we have observed. Judging from these two, they apparently take the internalism/externalism debate of “mental content” as primarily about whether or not to accept (the possibility of) “the mental” outside of the “skin,” with little (if any) interest in or even awareness of the conceptual issue. This tendency seems common among many, if not most, analytic philosophers concerned with this issue.

• We can find in Kukita’s transformation of EMH a hint for an alternative understanding of this issue, as about the concept of “the mental/mind” because we can find in it a hint for a conceptual externalism of “symbol-grounding,” i.e., of “meaning” [and, perhaps, of “mind”]. Let me call it social-semiotic externalism.

• Putnam’s “semantic externalism” (taken together with his [social] division of linguistic labor) and Burge’s “social externalism” may be better understood if they are taken as conceptual externalism in this sense: challenging our (internalistic and Cartesian) concept of “mind.” Indeed, their externalisms may be integrated by the social-semiotic externalism, if it is developed further.

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5.

A few hints for

further development of

social-semiotic externalism

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• “Symbol-grounding” reconsidered o Under the internalist assumption of [ℵ], the notion of “symbol-

grounding” is understood as a monadic matter of fact (i.e., truth/falsity), as to whether an agent has within herself the right sort of internal “stuff” (meaning-in-the-mind) mediating symbols (sign-forms) she uses and the external reality.

o Under the externalist assumption [ℵ′], the same notion may (just may) be understood at a higher level, as a relational-indexical matter of status, in the sense of “being on the same page,” or “talking about the same world.” That is, “symbol-grounding” may be seen as a status with which an agent x in a symbolic communication about (as far as x is concerned, about) a world 𝔐 endows, and continues to endow, another agent y as long as x has no reason to suspect that y is not talking about the same 𝔐 as x is.

Symbol-grounding judgment (to be made by a Turing tester on the testee’s symbol-use) may be relative in two senses: (1) in the sense of being indexical, and (2) in the sense of sharing the same relativity with the extensional-semantic truth/falsity judgment. (A sentence p is true/false only relative to a certain interpretation 𝔐.)

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• A possibility of social division of symbol-grounding labor

I still do not have much details about this. But, it just seems to me that Putnam’s “division of linguistic labor” may be re-interpreted as describing the social and historical nature of the phenomenon of “symbol-grounding” (or “reference”) as it is achieved in or by the histories of human natural languages. So interpreted, the thesis has a distant, but crucial resemblance to (a part of) the so-called Duem-Quine thesis, I think.

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