Embodied Intelligence

Dasein

Heidegger is a notoriously heavy read – and a controversial one, given he lived in Germany through two world wars and after. His concept of Dasein – the world as perceived and lived in by humans has made me think though.

It’s easy to imagine there’s a world without us. Of course there is. Surely? A world of maths, logic, science and mindless physical processes. Not to mention a less thought-filled living world of birds and beasts – nature red in tooth and claw.

So what’s so special about humans that Heidegger says we define our very own universe? I think I get his point. Everything we see, refer to, understand and know is in fact self-referring – it is based on human experiences, human timescales, human sensory apparatus and the human scale.

We can’t truly understand or describe the world from the point of view of an ant, let alone from the perspective of a celestial body. But a celestial body is dead, so it has no perspective surely? If I read Heidegger right – I think it does.

Knowledge, wisdom, trial and error, mindless and mindful – the course of the universe is to record more and more information in itself including embodied intelligence – information stored in physical forms.

In the same way as an ant contains within it information about carbon-based life, geological time and the process of evolution; even the most basic planet contains information about the elements, supernovae and stellar aeons which led to it.

From the blinding simplicity of the Big Bang to the unimaginably vast store of data which is a galaxy – let alone a universe of them – the course of ‘life’ has been captured, recorded, embodied and stored in both vast and minuscule stores of accumulated ‘relevant complexity’ – in effect: information.

As Heidegger suggests, our mentally comprehensible portion of this recorded information is determined by our embodied human faculties and timescales. But for the ant or the celestial body the ‘recording’ is at vastly different scales. Dasein or the ‘human universe’ is but a tiny portion of this. And what each of us sees and understands of it, is but the portion lit by our own tiny flickering candle.

That we see and understand even that much, is an accident of stellar and evolutionary history – our tiny illuminated moment in space and time. But for each of us it is a very fortunate and beautiful one. And Heidegger invites us to live it to the full.

Life, Philosophy, Psychology

Embodied

Blame René Descartes. Mind separated from body – dualism – was his big idea. “I think therefore I am” is probably a fair bet, but Thomas Aquinas got the whole story – we are but one; body and mind entwined.

If in doubt, check out the limbic system or the brain of a crocodile – or indeed the limbic system responding to a crocodile. Fright, fight and flight. Simple instinct doing automatically what nature intended, without the need for laboured thought. The body is more intelligent thank we think. Conscious thought is a bit-part player in most of what we are.

As an aside, I’m increasingly persuaded that the main block to artificial intelligence is not the number and speed of processors mimicking ‘neurones’ but the lack of ‘sensors’ – ie no body to carry so called embodied intelligence. Look at an iPhone – is it software or hardware? It’s neither – it’s both.

At the recommendation of two friends I’m trying ‘mindfulness meditation’ in pursuit of ‘inner peace’. And in the process it’s a shock to discover I am blissfully unaware – almost 100% of the time – of what my body is doing, feels like or needs. All I generally think about is what I’m thinking about.

Bodies get a raw deal, celebrated only for ‘beauty’, reviled for decline and decay. But like a well kept older car, a classic chassis is something to celebrate – and keep rust free and polished.

This week, in my fist ever eye test, I discover I have two healthy optic nerves, two unblemished retinas and scored a perfect 16 in the ‘puff’ test of eyeball pressure. My eyes will neither explode nor collapse in the foreseeable future. Marvellous.

Part of the point of ‘mindfulness’, I’m learning, is to recognise that there’s 70+ kilos of amazing living breathing body here as well as 1.5kg of grey matter.

Remembering you actually are your body – forgetting the contemporary obsession with how it looks – and instead marvelling that it lives and breathes and broadly speaking works, is harder to do than it seems.

Western philosophy has largely forgotten bodies since Aquinas. So I’m going East for a few weeks to meditate on the philosophical reconnection of mind with body. It’s no more complicated than breathing.

Life, Science

Why is an octopus smarter than a snail? Same family, same squishy body. Yet one is entirely predictable, the other spookily individual. Is it ‘in’ their bodies?

Having reflected on the ’embodied intelligence’ in a strawberry last week, I read that some Roboticists are moving on from the clever brain/dumb body ‘central processor’ model. Powerful chip-sets and nuts and bolts are being pushed aside by inherently ‘clever’ squishy limbs and appendages better adapted to their task.

Why pick up a fragile glass with a big clunky metal hand, when a rubber bag filled with coffee grounds, attached to a vacuum pump, morphs perfectly to the job?

Embodied intelligence is an interesting thought. Millions of years of evolution mean my leg swings naturally forward and lands in front of the other when I walk. The brain has very little to do. The ‘intelligence’ is largely designed in. Aquinas would recognise this – for him our bodies, like our emotions, are a full part of our ‘reason’.

The matter arising is, are octopuses smart because they evolved a big brain – for the joy of contemplation, communication, complex waving and changing colour? Or does an eight legged body (actually two ‘arms’ and six ‘legs’) mean high intelligence ’emerges’ as a bigger brain develops in response to increasing bodily complexity?

It’s all a bit simpler for a snail – A to B at a foot per minute. Perhaps that’s why they’re a bit simple. The surest predictor of animal brain size is body size. I wonder whether complexity of motor skills and sensory apparatus isn’t a big driver too.

What does it mean for us? First our intelligence is ’embodied’ in quick fingers, rapid eyes and sharp ears. Perhaps also what it means, is we aren’t Cartesian ‘ghosts in machines’. We aren’t software and hardware. We are completely integrated ‘wetware’ – like an octopus, as much arms and legs as big brains.

So if we want to build smarter tools and helpers, and understand ourselves better, inspiration from nature – not Fritz Lang – is the answer.