Non-artificial Aspects of Intelligence – Ideas from Indian Philosophy

What makes human beings intelligent? This is a hot topic of current research in various fields: quantum physics, biology, neurophysics, psychology, parapsychology and so on. This article looks at some answers to this question from ancient Indian philosophical literature, an invaluable source of knowledge for understanding intelligence and consciousness. We will use modern computer science terminology to describe the ideas.

Herbert Simon said “It seems fairly clear to me that there are no discernible limits to the range of things that computers can be programmed to do”. Advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has inspired fiction with themes of computers' taking over human beings. There is a vast AI literature dealing with questions such as can a machine think like a human?, what are the activities that a human being or a living being performs, which a computer can also perform? Is there some quality of living beings that can never be observed or realized in a lifeless object? and so on. In this article, we will summarize the answers provided by Indian Philosophy to all these questions long ago. Time and again, philosophers, psychologists, and scientists have occupied themselves trying to find answers to questions such as what makes human beings intelligent?, what makes them more intelligent than animals?, and what is intelligence in the first place? The interest in understanding intelligence has only increased in recent times among the scientific community spanning a spectrum of research areas: quantum physics, biology, neurophysics, psychology, parapsychology and so on. This article is another such approach deriving some ideas from Indian philosophical literature, an invaluable source of knowledge for understanding intelligence and consciousness though composed in ancient times. We will use modern computer science terminology to describe the ideas.

A summary of Indian philosophical views on mind and matter, when written in computer terminology is as follows: The physical body of any living being is like a piece of hardware. It is made up of matter. Every living being, human or animal, or any living organism at all, has a mind. Mind is an accumulation of the experiences of the owner and therefore an accumulation of information. Mind is like a software package with data and programs. Moreover, this software is made up of faster-than-light particles! (It is worth recalling that many theoretical and experimental investigations of faster-than –light particles called tachyons were carried on during 1960’s through 1980’s in the last century. Theoretically, the existence of tachyons is not contrary to the principle of Relativity. However, all experiments to detect faster-than-light energy failed.) Interestingly, in Indian philosophical literature, it is frequently stated that mind is faster than matter and that mind is a sense like all other senses: taste, smell, touch, hearing, and vision. In the view of this philosophy, energy faster than light exists and it is recognized by us as thought just as heat is sensed by touch, taste by the tongue, sound by hearing, and light by vision. We will see the rationale for this ancient point of view by analyzing the common and contrasting characteristics of a computer and a living brain. According to this philosophy, just like a computer’s hardware and software do not “really know” what they are doing or anything else, both the body and the mind of a living being also do not “really know” but there is a certain Consciousness that “knows”. It is all-pervading, everlasting, and full of love and bliss. Consciousness is the operator, as it were, of both mind and matter.


What Is Intelligence?
Ask anybody the question, “What is the difference between human beings and animals?” The frequent answer is “Humans are intelligent”. The answer is reasonable. For example, people do arithmetic whereas animals usually cannot. A child who does arithmetic faster than another is considered more intelligent than the other. On the other hand, our packet calculators can do arithmetic always accurately and much faster than we. Yet we do not think they are talented. Thus, the same capability to do arithmetic is regarded as intelligence in humans but not in calculators. (Incidentally, programs in these calculators are not graded as “intelligent” by our AI standards.) Apparently, we use the word “intelligence” without a precise definition or meaning. In our daily life, we observe several capabilities which we consider intelligent: ability to remember, to do so for a long time, to recollect fast, to learn new things and to learn them fast, to plan a strategy, to discover a principle of nature, to prove a mathematical theorem, to write a poem, to compose music, and so on.

Is there a capability that is really characteristic of life in the sense that a machine having that capability does not already exist nor can ever be made in the future? The other day, I was on the side of a lake enjoying the sight of beautiful birds flying over its quiet waters. Seeing the lively little flying birds so full of life was wonderful. At that moment, I thought flying and movement in general, are characteristic of life - well, a dead bird cannot fly and a dead man cannot walk! While I was still musing, an airplane flew in the sky above, making loud noise. Oh, airplanes can fly, how I forgot them! So, flying is not a characteristic that distinguishes life from lifeless matter. These days, we are making sensors to read our credit cards, recorders to listen to what we speak or sing and repeat every thing exactly what they have heard! So, machines can see, hear, talk and so on; AI programs discover even new theories, fly aircraft in enemy territories, - you name it they can do it!

What about “can a machine think?” Let us discuss it by writing it in two parts: what can a machine do? And what is it that a machine cannot do? The first part was more or less answered in theoretical computer science. To answer the second part, an analysis of our familiar notions about what intelligent behavior is would reveal that there are some features of intelligence which human beings seem to possess but machines including computers cannot. These are:
* A computer carries only a mapping of information but not “real information” that seems to exist in a brain.
* A computer does not have a desire or motive.
* A computer does not know what it is doing.
* A computer never violates an instruction that has been stored in its memory whereas human beings supposedly have “originality”.

The first three observations when further elaborated hint at a possible solution of the mind-brain identity problem. In our daily experience, the last two aspects of intelligence occur as the capabilities “to know” and “to love”. The evidence of these two capabilities in real life even points to the existence of an all pervading, everlasting, non-material and non-mental “Supreme Intelligence” which is also an “abundance of Love”.

What a Machine Can Do

Loosely speaking, a computer can do any task if it is clearly told what the task is and how to do it. The ability of a hand calculator to do arithmetic as well as that of an expert system to do medical diagnosis is based on the following two components of it:

1. The software - description of the task to perform that translates into definitions of inputs and outputs, and a sequence of already written instructions called an “effective procedure” explaining how to perform the task.
2. The hardware - a material device that can store the effective procedure, inputs and outputs and from where any of the stored information can be retrieved whenever necessary, to implement the effective procedure.

An effective procedure has the following properties: (1) It can be precisely described using finite vocabulary, (2) When repeated on the same or different appropriate device, it produces identical results from identical staring conditions (3) It is executable in finite time using finite storage. From a well known Turing’s theorem follows that if an effective procedure can be written to perform a task, a machine can be built to carry it out. Since computers have stored information (called memory), they exhibit or simulate many “intelligent” behaviors such as learning, planning, and pattern recognition. Machines which do not have memory cannot exhibit these behaviors. All living beings are similar to computers in the sense that their physical body or brain plays the part of hardware while the stored information in the brain plays the part of computer software; they together help living beings perform various functions in life. The difference in intelligence levels of humans and animals is then similar to the difference in the abilities of pocket calculators and computers with large memories and sophisticated programs. All living beings have mechanisms to store, retrieve, and process information. The ability to formulate language, formulate laws, create art, and anything that people do but other living organisms cannot is due to people’s having better memories, better programs in those memories and better processing capabilities.

What a Machine Cannot Do

A Computer Carries a Representation of Information but not any Real Information

Since we have to tell a computer how to do a job before it can do it, we must store in its memory a description of the procedure and other necessary information all expressed in a certain language. The computer’s memory is made of cells each of which has two states denoted by ‘0’ and ‘1’. The information to be stored is mapped to strings of ‘0’s and ‘1’s and then entered into the memory by driving the cells into corresponding states. Retrieving information from the memory is to sense these cells to find the states they are in. The computer therefore, carries a representation of the information but does not “really know” what it all means. It does not really understand the procedure, the inputs, or the outputs. What information must be represented by bytes of ‘0’s and ‘1’s is not the decision of the computer but our decision. Neverthelesss a representation of required information must be entered and stored in the computer in order that it performs the designated tasks. Actually, let alone the computer, for reading, writing and for communicating with one another, we human beings need to represent information in some form as well. Language, sound (while talking), electrical signal (while talking on the phone), or light (in optical communications), etc. are all various forms of representations of information. A point to note is that a representation of information is in fact, quite different from the information that it conveys. For example, we use different words in different languages to mean the same object. We use the signals from the lights on a car to indicate that its driver is about to turn right or left. Just like a container is required to carry water from place to place but water is not the same as the container, a mapping of information into matter or energy is required for its communication but the means of communication is quite different from what is communicated. To summarize, a computer carries only a representation of information but not any “real information” which only exists in our heads. Nor does it “know” the meaning of the contents of its memory. Still, amazingly, once a representation of a piece of information is entered into the computer, it can add, subtract, or a draw a picture of it, compare it with another piece of information and tell whether it is new or not, and so on. It can do almost anything that a person can do with that piece of information. It then behaves as though it knows the information without “really knowing” it. So, there is a certain “knowing” present in human beings and probably in all living beings that is not yet found in a computer. On the other hand, there seems to be a certain “real information” in the brain, which is mapped to material particles (e.g., when written on paper) or material energy signals (such as telephone) in our communications. Whether this “real information” is just a state of matter with a certain chemical composition or something entirely different fro matter is known as the mind-brain identity problem.

Mind May Be Faster Than Matter

We will now describe a process that can never be simulated in a computer. A human brain has self-awareness, by which I simply mean that we know what we are doing at least when we are awake. For example, if I am looking at an object I know that I am looking at it. we can see that this self-awareness cannot be simulated in a computer as follows: Now a days, those of us working with personal computers often use expressions like “the computer knows this”, “the program understands this”, or the program does not understand”, and so on. Whenever we say that the program knows a certain object, all it means is that the computer has a representation of that object stored in its memory. So, let us define “computer knows” as follows:

A computer knows an object when a representation of that object exists in its memory.
In fact, this definition applies to a human brain as well. A brain knows an object when a representation of that object exists in its memory.

Suppose a computer knows a particular object A. To be self-aware, the computer must also know that it knows A, it must also know that it knows that it knows A, and so on. It is a loop, let us call it the self-awareness loop and note that it is an infinite loop cases. According our definition of “computer knows”, to be self-aware, the computer must have a mechanism that can write all the sentences of the self-awareness loop into its memory, once a representation of A is entered into the memory. Since the machine has only a finite storage, and takes a finite time no matter how small, to write each of the sentences, the machine can only complete a finite loop but not an infinite loop. Clearly, by executing the loop a finite number of times, the machine in fact, would not “really know” what it is doing; in other words, the loop has to be infinite and a machine cannot be made to be self-aware. On the other hand, we humans know what we are doing at least when we are awake. So, does the infinite self-awareness loop complete in a human brain? Completing this infinite loop would require the WRITE instruction to be executed with faster-than-light speeds. Some brain scientists say that there are no infinite loops executing in the brain but that the hierarchical structure of the brain somehow creates the sense of self-awareness. In 1967, Feinberg [2] showed that existence of faster-than-light objects and signals is not inconsistent with the theory of relativity. He called them tachyons. It can be shown that the self-awareness infinite loop can be completed in a system consisting of both tachyons and ordinary particles. So, in [1], I conjectured that the “real information” present in a brain may be made up of tachyons. This conjecture was suggested to me by the Vedanta literature where mind is described to be very fast and faster than matter. In the following section, we describe some intuitive reasons based on our daily experience that would support this conjecture.

Causality of Mind and Matter

That a cause must precede its effect is assumed in all physical sciences. The purpose of any scientific discipline is to formulate laws that would describe how the future states of a system depend upon its past and present states. A law can be deterministic or probabilistic. A deterministic law implies that an exactly defined initial state of the system whenever it recurs and subjected to the same external environment is succeeded precisely by the same course of events and therefore by a well defined final state. A probabilistic law specifies the probability of occurrence of each of a possible set of final states resulting from the initial state. In any case, a theory assumes that all reasons responsible for the final state occur prior to the final state. On the other hand, mind seems to have a different causality. Desire is an important component of the mind. Whenever we take an action, it has a purpose, for example, we get into the car to go somewhere. So, the future state of being in a certain place is a cause of being in the car now, in addition to the physical movement that actually gets the body into the car. On the other hand, lifeless matter never has any expectation for the future. We, human beings regard ourselves more intelligent than animals because we do more planning and strategizing for the future than animals do. In AI, behaviors such as planning and learning are called “intelligent” and involve what is called inductive reasoning as opposed to the deductive reasoning that takes place in a computer. We say an event A is the cause of an event B, if B’s occurrence follows whenever A occurs. Knowing that A causes B and that A has occurred, to predict that B will occur is deduction. Knowing that A causes B and that B has occurred, to infer that A must have occurred is also deductive reasoning. On the other hand, given en event B, to find an event or set of events that would cause B to occur is called inductive reasoning. Both types of reasoning take place in a human brain. Interestingly, our AI programs can simulate inductive reasoning in a computer. However, by taking a close look at how the simulation takes place when the program executes, we find that the computer carries out only deductive reasoning [3]. This is expected because as a physical system, it should obey the law of causality that a cause must precede its effect.

Naturally, questions such as the following arise:
1. When a living organism chooses a course of action and acts accordingly to achieve a particular goal in future, is this action a violation of the causality principle?
2. If a system obeying the causality principle can carry out only deductive reasoning does inductive reasoning ever take place in a brain?
As an answer to the first question, it is suggested that a goal directed behavior is in accordance with the causality principle because at the time of action, the desire for the goal is already present. However, this desire is created in a computer and in the brain in different ways. The goal (to do or not to do a given task) is entered into the computer as input from outside and then causes it go through the required process. In the case of the brain, we can only say that we do not know how this goal is generated assuming that we do not want to bring in free will which is still a myth in the view of many. Brain scientists are still studying the control aspects of the brain, so answers are not available to the above questions at present. The only point of the questions is to suggest that there may be a fundamental difference in the causality aspects of living and lifeless systems. Interestingly, in the tachyon theory, the roles of cause and effect of two events may be interchanged by choosing a suitable frame of reference and could explain why in inductively inferring that A is the cause of B, B depends upon A and A depends upon B as well. Also, it is possible for a tachyon to convey to an ordinary particle, what the effects on a future event will be if the ordinary particle sends signals towards the future event. This is exactly similar to our knowing what to do now so as to influence a future event. In the associated wave picture, tachyons are solutions of the Klein Gordon equation corresponding to imaginary mass values. These waves represent anomalous wave phenomenon in a dispersive medium and are non-local. A tachyon cannot be created at one position but must be created over a region through a non-local process. The tachyon wave function does not really propagate faster than light but it appears everywhere because it is created everywhere, not because it moves fast. Interestingly again, this non-local generation of tachyon wave function is similar to the way information is generated and carried non-locally by collections of neurons in a brain. So, a system of tachyons interacting with collections of neurons (which are ordinary particles and hence obey the law that a cause must precede its effect) is worth attempting as a model of the brain, to explain the observed EEG frequencies.

The Self-Starter Ability

In spite of performing various tasks miraculously, in a computer, both the hardware and the software do not know anything. Neither can a program ever start itself. To perform any task, a computer program needs to be invoked by somebody else, either from outside by the operator or by another program within the system. Indian philosophy states that mind, being an accumulation of thoughts and experiences of the owner, is “jada” which is Sanskrit for dumb. Mind is similar to computer software consisting of programs and data and does not “know” anything. Mind does not have the self-starter ability (usually referred to as free will) either.
A computer never violates any of the instructions or rules that it is programmed with. In Computing machinery and Intelligence, Turing talks about the observance of traffic rules by automobile drivers. If a person gets into an accident on account of strictly following driving rules but without using “common sense” that person would be called a fool. That person has followed driving rules just as a machine would. Turing says that a machine can never have this “common sense” to violate a law that it is programmed to obey whereas we expect human beings to have such common sense. While it is easy to agree with Turing on this aspect of the machine, this example does not clearly show a human being’s ability to violate an already existing rule in the brain; one may argue that drivers follow the drive-safely rule (the survival instinct also existing in the brain) with a higher priority over the traffic rules. So, we use the story below to see that a human being indeed has the ability to choose to follow or violate established rules.

Every religion in the world tells us to “speak truth”. The advantage of telling truth is brought home to us by stories such as the Boy Who Cried Wolf. “Speak truth” is a rule that can be programmed into a computer. Wise people like Christ, Gandhi, and King tell us not to lie because a certain program in their brains remembers from either their or others’ past experiences, bad consequences of telling a lie. The program also has a look-ahead far enough into the future to see that bad consequences can happen in the future by telling a lie at present. This program is similar to one of our chess playing programs, which determine the strategy to apply to the current situation based on a look ahead of possible future moves. Wise people know that to speak truth is the right strategy. Yet, we usually think – one can never be successful by telling truth; the religion tells us to do so but that is not practical in real life. We think this way because our look ahead does not go deep enough into the search tree of possible future events to see the bad consequences of a lie which usually occur later in time than benefits from the lie. On the other hand, although one is firmly committed to speaking truth always, in some situations, it may be very difficult to decide whether to speak truth or lie. The following famous story is an example. Once upon a time, there was a very religious person who spoke nothing but truth all his life. Let us call him Truth Speaker. One day, he was sitting in a grove and doing meditation with closed eyes. Suddenly, he heard the sound of running foot steps. On opening his eyes, he saw a scared man running for his life. The man stopped when he saw Truth Speaker and said with a gasping breath “I am being chased by robbers. I am running for my life. I cannot run any more. I will behind the bushes over here. Please do not reveal my where-about to anybody”. So saying, the man ran and hid behind the bushes without even waiting for Truth Speaker to reply. Truth speaker went back to meditation. A few minutes later, he again heard thundering foot steps of running men and opened his eyes. He saw some armed men. When they saw truth Speaker, they too stopped and said “We are looking for a man whom we saw come this way. Did you see anybody running past you a short while ago? If so, do you know which way he went?” Truth Speaker thought that he should never tell a lie. So, he pointed to the robbers the bush where the scared man was hiding. The robbers then caught the man and killed him. After some days, Truth Speaker died but was taken to hell instead of to heaven. There, Truth Speaker asked the ruler of hell (a personification of justice according to Hindu Religion) - why was he brought to hell instead of to heaven where he should have been on account of speaking nothing but truth all his life. The ruler of hell replied “You spoke truth alright but by telling a lie you could have saved the life of the man who was being chased by robbers. You did not have a tiny bit of compassion. You were carried away by your arrogant observance of speak-truth principle and your selfishness to go to heaven. That is why you deserve hell.” The point in the story is not at all whether Truth Speaker went to heaven or hell after death nor whether there is a heaven or hell. The point is a person’s ability to see when to speak truth and when not. Truth Speaker was following a rule which firmly stuck inside his head and his mode of thinking was that of a machine which was programmed to tell truth and therefore never lie. On the other hand, imagine that in the story, Truth Speaker told the robbers that he did not see anybody around earlier that day and they were only the people that he saw until then. The reason for that lie is compassion for a stranger. In this case, his mind did not execute an instruction expected to be carried out. Nor did it care for a future benefit, namely going to heaven. Thus the action of lying was directed neither by the past nor by a future goal. This ability to violate a rule of the past and act on one’s own is the self-starter also called free will by some. This ability refuses to be told what to do and refuses to be told by somebody else. One may argue that there is a future goal even in the alternate story and that the goal was to save the life of the stranger. True; however, until that moment, there was only one goal, which is going to heaven, Truth Speaker had no idea of the stranger or of saving him. A new goal was created at that moment and also assigned higher priority than the already existing goal. So, it was a violation of the past and an already existing future goal. It presents an example of what we call the self-starter capability. We can certainly write a truth speaking program which can lie in the situation described in the story as well as in some other situations as long as their number is finite. But if presented with a situation different from those already known to the program, it will tell the truth. Thus, a machine can never have this self-starter capability. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to assume that such prediction of behavior may not always possible in the case of a human being. (Even in human beings, the existence of free will can only be assumed and cannot be proved.)

According to Indian philosophy, we are all basically good natured. Deep down inside, in our heart of hearts, we are kind, compassionate, loving and happy. It is not at all easy to see this: but according to this philosophy, undesirable qualities like selfishness, hatred, sorrow, etc. are all cause-effect behaviors which occur when an individual’ thinking is based on a memory of past experiences. However it is possible for an individual to ignore the entire past and ignore all future expectations and act on one’s own in any situation.


Who Has the Non-mechanical Capabilities

As we already saw in a previous section, our actions are often motivated by a desire to accomplish something no matter big or small and therefore there is a future state included among the initiators of the action. Our decisions depend upon both past and future states and our behaviors are cause-effect behaviors most of the time. Indian philosophy says that all physical and mental processes are subject to cause-effect relations and all causal behaviors are mechanical in the sense that the system undergoing a causal behavior does not “know” and has no free will. Just like the software and hardware in a computer, both mind and matter do not “know” and both do not have free will.

If the body is a piece of hardware and the mind is a piece of software and both of them do not “know” and must be set into operation by somebody else, who is that somebody? The ancient philosophy states that such somebody must exist because of our very experience that we do “know” and we do ‘”decide what to do on our own”. This somebody however must be different from mind and matter and is called “Brahman” meaning “the one who exists”. This Brahman knows that He/She/It exists, and knows the mind and the matter: It provides the infinite remembering capacity and supersensitive observation capacity required for the self-awareness loop. It is a self-starter and not restricted by any limitations of space, time, and logic; in other words, it is all pervading, everlasting, and is an unlimited reserve of love, happiness, compassion, and all that is beautiful. So, when the program Bacon discovers Kepler’s laws, the machine does not understand the laws, neither the software does, we do; in us, the body does not understand, the mind does neither although the mind thinks just like the Bacon software does. Brahman in us is the only one that knows it all. Brahman cannot be detected by experiments because it is He who knows the matter and the mind but they cannot know Him. The self-starter Brahman can start, change, or stop the courses of the body and the mind anytime at His will.

On the other hand, once started, mind carries on by itself unless there is an intervention just like a program written by us completes the tasks it is expected to complete without our intention (after all, the purpose of mechanization is precisely that, namely, to have machines to do certain tasks instead of people). The program appears as though it is doing things by itself, but we have perfect control over it. We started it and we can stop it in the middle of execution, or change it. So also, mind, while it works, creates the impression as though it is doing things on its own and as though it is simply brilliant. Mind also keeps on increasing its memory contents by adding more and more experiences as life goes on.

That every program has at least one bug is an axiom of computer science. So, the mind, being a pile of programs may have lots of inconsistencies. Just as our programs can do wonders only when free from bugs, the mind also becomes a powerful and useful tool only when purified from inconsistencies. Indian philosophy describes various approaches to debugging the mind. Mind control has a very important role in Hindu religion. The basic idea is to slow down the fast going mind to see the defects just like a programmer sets breaks at various points of a program execution in order to detect bugs. However, debugging of mind is very much more difficult than debugging of any computer program because mind keeps on creating more and more programs and does this too fast; one initial inconsistency leads to many others in practically no time. Such a mind with numerous impurities is the Devil. It is a trouble-maker in life. If the bugs are removed then the mind becomes useful and powerful. Life becomes pleasant when handled by a pure mind.

References
1. S. Vishnubhatla, Information in a Brain is due to Tachyon Waves, Proc. IEEE.SMC, p969, 1985
2. G. Feinberg, Possibility of Faster Than Light Particles, Phys. Review, 159, p 1089, 1967
3. S. Vishnubhatla, Principle of Causality and Intelligence, Proc. International Symposium on Nonlinear Analysis to Biomathematics, 1987