Hammering out cognitive theory

[John Freestone]

RussDill, thank you for your very informative posts in these threads. I've learned a lot.

I have no idea why you refer to this an obstacle. Clearly animals that react based on past events are more successful. Their only handicap is the additional biological requirements of supporting a neural network. In fact, correspondence is a handicap. If an organism always responds the same way, predators will quickly adapt.

Yes, it seems reasonable to suppose that this selective pressure is what drove the development of memory mechanisms, leading eventually to the cognitive models of self, other and environment that we call "consciousness", or at least, "human intelligence".

As far as cognition and speed, speed is important when it comes to natural selection. A slow reaction is often as bad as no reaction. In the area of computation theory, speed is not important. Nothing is going to come along and eat your program. Computational speed is another area you seem hung up on for what reason I have no idea.

This also relates to what I was saying about consciousness, and also to those areas of intelligence we prize as definitively human. As you say, a slow reaction can be so bad that the involuntary nervous system will make us jump when it detects a threat long before we have time to identify it or even become conscious of it. In our leisure time, gained through the invention of cooking, developing tool use, etc., we can now slowly cogitate what we might try hunting tomorrow, or the meaning of existence. Hence, modelling quick reactions, balance while walking, catching objects and other primitive animal traits, requires lots of processing power, while more abstract "reasoning" can require very little speed, although it might in some cases require more memory. Those self-referent models representing "consciousness" in an AI may not need much of either. I suppose it's a moot point until we know what consciousness is.