01. Introduction

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Relevancy of the research topic

This work is devoted to the examination of possibility of creation of technologies based on the emergence principle, when the system produces new relations which are absent in its constituent parts. Thanks to this principle it is possible to reproduce artificially the function of consciousness and sensations in an instrumental way. Also the possibility of modeling of artificial worlds differing from virtual reality, which is based on the same principle, is considered here.
Notwithstanding the development of the scientific and technological progress and the expansion of research in the field of artificial intelligence, there are practically no publications on the topic of creation in an instrumental way of artificial sensations, the subject of technologic reproduction of “soul” is still not developed, and our perceptions thereof have hardly changed over the past centuries. Often the reasoning thereof goes beyond the edge of its scientific character and rationality and slide into theology and mysticism.
There is still no clear definition of “who” or “what” feels within a living body, how this effect of “awareness” occurs, what nature our sensations are of, and how to reproduce it artificially. The conceptual understanding of “animateness” based on the technical approach is more important than the technical implementation itself. Which due to the present-day development of technologies will not involve any difficulty.
The author attempts to describe the basic principles of operation of consciousness and sensations, the possibility of their technical reproduction, and conducts a philosophic analysis of the new idea about consciousness as the main function of our perception of the aliveness.


Level of scientific development of the subject

The research relating to this topic may be classified into three basic approaches:

- functional, aimed at the duplication of functions of rational actions and used in the modelling of artificial intelligence;

- philosophic, studying logical regularities of mind and consciousness;

- biological and medical, describing psychological, biological, biochemical and biophysical instruments of operation of the brain.


The research in connection with the creation of artificial intelligence is sufficiently well described in the works by Norbert Wiener, Alan Turing, Claude Shannon, John von Neumann, Frank Rosenblatt, Warren McCulloch, Walter Pitts, Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, John McCarthy, Myron Krueger, David Rumelhart and many other scientists. In the 1950s to 60s the first analogues of artificial neural networks – perceptrons - were created. The development of artificial neural networks found application in the models by Kohonen, Word, Hopfield, Elman, Jordan, Kosko, in САМ-models.

Many different organizations, such as divisions and laboratories for artificial intelligence of many universities and research centers worldwide work on the problem of artificial intelligence and artificial neural networks - Stanford University, University of Cambridge, Oxford, University of California, BERKELEY, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and many other. There are international, national, branch-wise, business associations for artificial intelligence research, and consortiums thereof, for example AAAI, ECCAI, ISAI, etc.

The creation of artificial intelligence does not pursue the aim of obtaining of the phenomenon of “animateness” and does not attempt to reproduce sensations and feelings in an artificial way. For the most part these are mathematical, and architectural and system models aimed at the information processing and calculation optimization.

Since the old days many philosophers and scientists attempt to describe consciousness using the philosophic approach. Gradually it turned into a separate line of philosophy – the philosophy of consciousness. In this connection the resource of Philosophy Professor David Chalmers from the Australian National University - ONLINE PAPERS ON CONSCIOUSNESS - is worth a particular mentioning, where many research papers devoted to this topic are collected.

Biological, medical and psychological approaches are represented in the works by different scientists and the work of brain research institutes studying its morphology, reflexes, using the methods of electrophysiology and electroencephalogram, brain tomography, MRT, the description of biochemical and biophysical processes in the brain, as well as based on the materials of clinical supervision of patients with brain damage and the experiments with animals, including the method of ablation.

This subject represents an interdisciplinary research concerning not only the sphere of artificial intelligence, but also neurobiology, neuromorphology, philosophy of consciousness, connectionism, combinatorial theory, graph theory, psychology, cognitive and other sciences. This work attempts to see in a new light the principle of sensation and animateness as a whole from the point of view of physics, logic, from the perspective of information theory and system theory.


Target and subject of research

The target of this research is the notions of consciousness and sensations, as well as the notions of reality and existence in general, as objectives of technical modelling.

The subject of the research is the technical and technological possibility of reproduction of the algorithm of sensations for the systems of artificial consciousness and the “reality of existence” in the systems of artificial worlds.


Aims and objectives of the research

The aim of the research is the logical analysis of ontological principles of creation of the “perceiving” in the system for which the effect of “existence” of sensations or processes in the systems of artificial consciousness will appear, as well as the definition of difference between this approach and the virtual information modelling.

The objectives of the research are to:

- give a definition of the notions of “intelligence” and “consciousness”, show the difference;

- describe the state of emergence by determining how additional attributes appear in the system which are not present in the system’s constituent parts. Determine how and for what purpose these attributes exist within the system. Draw an analogy between the existence of feelings for consciousness and attributes for the system;

- describe the algorithm of functioning of human sensations based on the difference between the sensations. Show how to achieve a similar effect using a physical condition;

- study the notion of reality by showing weak points of the ideal and the material approaches in philosophy;

- define the notions of physical effect and information by showing the difference between the real and the virtual;

- describe the spatial and energy approach which have additional attributes, unlike the spatial approach and the energy approach used separately.

- describe the principles of the proposed technology as a replacement for the programming method with the method of design feature, using the temporal degree of freedom instead of the spatial for the purpose of creation of a complex physical phenomenon, and not virtual information.

- explain why state-of-the-art technical resources, digital or analogue, can not be used for the modelling of artificial sensations;

- describe the conclusions giving a new look at the notions in connection with animateness.


Theoretical and methodological grounds for the research

The approach proposed by the author is based on the principle of emergence and the system attributes existing for the system itself, which can also be considered as the functional of consciousness and sensations. Unlike integral, phenomenological, ideal and other theories of consciousness the author claims that technically affordable physical conditions are sufficient for the duplication of functions of consciousness. Nevertheless the approach differs from the theory of materialism considering everything as the objective reality. The author uses the comparison with the basic notions of the information theory and the system theory, the methods of logical analysis, deduction and induction.


Theoretical and practical importance of the research

By understanding the above principles and creating similar technologies, we will not only get the opportunity of construction of artificial systems and attributes existing within them at a totally new technical and conceptual level. The approaches proposed in this work have a broad range of potential use for scientific, industrial and other purposes.