Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (34 page)

Against the Jukebox Theory

This happens because our intelligence is not disembodied, but is instantiated in physical objects: our brains. Their structure is due to the long process of evolution, and their operations are governed by the laws of physics. Since they are physical entities, our brains run without being told how to run. So it is at the level where thoughts are produced by physical law that Carroll's rule-paradox breaks down; and likewise, it is at the level where a brain interprets incoming data as a message that the message-paradox breaks down. It seems that brains come equipped with "hardware" for recognizing that certain things are messages, and for decoding those messages. This minimal inborn ability to extract inner meaning is what allows the highly recursive, snowballing process of language acquisition to take place. The inborn hardware is like a jukebox: it supplies the additional information which turns mere triggers into complete messages.

Meaning Is Intrinsic If Intelligence Is Natural

Now if different people's "jukeboxes" had different "songs" in then responded to given triggers in completely idiosyncratic ways, the would have no inclination to attribute intrinsic meaning to those tri; However, human brains are so constructed that one brain responds in much the same way to a given trigger as does another brain, all other t being equal. This is why a baby can learn any language; it responds to triggers in the same way as any other baby. This uniformity of "human jukeboxes" establishes a uniform

"language" in which frame message outer messages can be communicated. If, furthermore, we believe human intelligence is just one example of a general phenomena nature-the emergence of intelligent beings in widely varying contexts then presumably the "language" in which frame messages and outer sages are communicated among humans is a "dialect" of a
universal
gauge by which intelligences can communicate with each other. Thus, would be certain kinds of triggers which would have "universal triggering power", in that all intelligent beings would tend to respond to them i same way as we do.

This would allow us to shift our description of where meaning located. We could ascribe the meanings (frame, outer, and inner) message to the message itself, because of the fact that deciphering mechanisms are themselves universal-that is, they are fundamental f of nature which arise in the same way in diverse contexts. To make it concrete, suppose that "A-5" triggered the same song in all jukeboxes suppose moreover that jukeboxes were not man-made artifacts, but w occurring natural objects, like galaxies or carbon atoms. Under such circumstances, we would probably feel justified in calling the universal triggering power of "A-5" its "inherent meaning"; also, "A-5" would merit: the name of "message", rather than "trigger", and the song would indeed "revelation" of the inherent, though implicit, meaning of "A-5".

Earth Chauvinism

This ascribing of meaning to a message comes from the invariance c processing of the message by intelligences distributed anywhere ii universe. In that sense, it bears some resemblance to the ascribing of to an object. To the ancients, it must have seemed that an object's weight was an intrinsic property of the object. But as gravity became understood, it was realized that weight varies with the gravitational field the object is immersed in.

Nevertheless, there is a related quantity, the mass, which not vary according to the gravitational field; and from this invariance the conclusion that an object's mass was an intrinsic property of the object itself. If it turns out that mass is also variable, according to context, then will backtrack and revise our opinion that it is an intrinsic property of an object. In the same way, we might imagine that there could exist other kinds of "jukeboxes"-intelligences-which communicate among each other via messages which we would never recognize as messages, and who also would never recognize our messages as messages. If that were the case, then the claim that meaning is an intrinsic property of a set of symbols would have to be reconsidered. On the other hand, how could we ever realize that such beings existed?

It is interesting to compare this argument for the inherency of meaning with a parallel argument for the inherency of weight. Suppose one defined an object's weight as

"the magnitude of the downward force which the object exerts when on the surface of the planet Earth". Under this definition, the downward force which an object exerts when on the surface of Mars would have to be given another name than "weight". This definition makes weight an inherent property, but at the cost of geocentricity" Earth chauvinism". It would be like "Greenwich chauvinism"-refusing to accept local time anywhere on the globe but in the
GMT
time zone. It is an unnatural way to think of time.

Perhaps we are unknowingly burdened with a similar chauvinism with respect to intelligence, and consequently with respect to meaning. In our chauvinism, we would call any being with a brain sufficiently much like our own "intelligent", and refuse to recognize other types of objects as intelligent. To take an extreme example, consider a meteorite which, instead of deciphering the outer-space Bach record, punctures it with colossal indifference, and continues in its merry orbit. It has interacted with the record in a way which we feel disregards the record's meaning. Therefore, we might well feel tempted to call the meteorite "stupid". But perhaps we would thereby do the meteorite a disservice. Perhaps it has a "higher intelligence" which we in our Earth chauvinism cannot perceive, and its interaction with the record was a manifestation of that higher intelligence. Perhaps, then, the record has a "higher meaning"-totally different from that which we attribute to it; perhaps its meaning depends on the type of intelligence perceiving it. Perhaps.

It would be nice if we could define intelligence in some other way than "that which gets the same meaning out of a sequence of symbols as we do". For if we can only define it this one way, then our argument that meaning is an intrinsic property is circular, hence content-free. We should try to formulate in some independent way a set of characteristics which deserve the name "intelligence". Such characteristics would constitute the uniform core of intelligence, shared by humans. At this point in history we do not yet have a well-defined list of those characteristics. However, it appears likely that within the next few decades there will be much progress made in elucidating what human intelligence is. In particular, perhaps cognitive psychologists, workers in Artificial Intelligence, and neuroscientists will be able to synthesize their understandings, and come up with a definition of intelligence. It may still be human-chauvinistic; there is no way around that. But to counterbalance that, there may be some elegant and beautiful-and perhaps even simple-abstract ways of characterizing the essence of intelligence. This would serve to lessen the feeling of having

formulated an anthropocentric concept. And of course, if contact were established with an alien civilization from another star system, we feel supported in our belief that our own type of intelligence is not just a fluke, but an example of a basic form which reappears in nature in contexts, like stars and uranium nuclei. This in turn would support the idea of meaning being an inherent property.

To conclude this topic, let us consider some new and old ex; and discuss the degree of inherent meaning which they have, by ourselves, to the extent that we can, in the shoes of an alien civilization which intercepts a weird object ...

Two Plaques in Space

Consider a rectangular plaque made of an indestructible metallic alloy which are engraved two dots, one immediately above the another preceding colon shows a picture.

Though the overall form of the might suggest that it is an artifact, and therefore that it might conceal some message, two dots are simply not sufficient to convey anything. (Can before reading on, hypothesize what they are supposed to mean suppose that we made a second plaque, containing more dots, as follows.

.

..

…

…..

……..

……………

……………………..

…………………………………

Now one of the most obvious things to do-so it might seer terrestrial intelligence at least-would be to count the dots in the successive rows. The sequence obtained is: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34.

Here there is evidence of a rule governing the progression from one the next. In fact, the recursive part of the definition of the Fib numbers can be inferred, with some confidence, from this list. Supp think of the initial pair of values (1,1) as a "genotype" from which the

"phenotype"-the full Fibonacci sequence-is pulled out by a recursive rule. By sending the genotype alone-namely the first version plaque-we fail to send the information which allows reconstitution phenotype. Thus, the genotype does not contain the full specification of

the phenotype. On the other hand, if we consider the second version of the plaque to be the genotype, then there is much better cause to suppose that the phenotype could actually be reconstituted. This new version of the genotype-a "long genotype"-contains so much information that
the mechanism by which phenotype is pulled out of genotype can
be inferred by intelligence from the genotype alone.

Once this mechanism is firmly established as the way to pull phenotype from genotype, then we can go back to using "short genotypes"-like the first plaque. For instance, the "short genotype" (1,3) would yield the phenotype 1,

3,

4,

7,

11,

18,

29,

47, .. .

-the Lucas sequence. And for every set of two initial values-that is, for every short genotype-there will be a corresponding phenotype. But the short genotypes, unlike the long ones, are only triggers-buttons to be pushed on the jukeboxes into which the recursive rule has been built. The long genotypes are informative enough that they trigger, in an intelligent being, the recognition of what kind of "jukebox" to build. In that sense, the long genotypes contain the information of the phenotype, whereas the short genotypes do not. In other words, the long genotype transmits not only an inner message, but also an outer message, which enables the inner message to be read. It seems that the clarity of the outer message resides in the sheer length of the message. This is not unexpected; it parallels precisely what happens in deciphering ancient texts. Clearly, one's likelihood of success depends crucially on the amount of text available.

Bach
vs.
Cage Again

But just having a long text may not be enough. Let us take up once more the difference between sending a record of Bach's music into space, and a record of John Cage's music.

Incidentally, the latter, being a Composition of Aleatorically Generated Elements, might be handily called a "
CAGE
", whereas the former, being a Beautiful Aperiodic Crystal of Harmony, might aptly be dubbed a "
BACH
". Now let's consider what the meaning of a Cage piece is to ourselves. A Cage piece has to be taken in a large cultural setting-as a revolt against certain kinds of traditions. Thus, if we want to transmit that meaning, we must not only send the notes of the piece, but we must have earlier communicated an extensive history of Western culture. It is fair to say, then, that an isolated record of John Cage's music does not have an intrinsic meaning. However, for a listener who is sufficiently well versed in Western and Eastern cultures, particularly in the trends in Western music over the last few decades, it does carry meaning-but such a listener is like a jukebox, and the piece is like a pair of buttons. The meaning is mostly contained inside the listener to begin with; the music serves only to trigger it. And this "jukebox", unlike pure intelligence, is not at all universal; it is highly earthbound, depending on idiosyncratic sequences of events all over our globe for long period of time. Hoping that John Cage's music will be understood by another civilization is like hoping that your favorite tune, on a jukebox on the moon, will have the same buttons as in a saloon in Saskatoon.

On the other hand, to appreciate Bach requires far less cultural k edge. This may seem like high irony, for Bach is so much more con and organized, and Cage is so devoid of intellectuality. But there strange reversal here: intelligence loves patterns and balks at randomness For most people, the randomness in Cage's music requires much explanation; and even after explanations, they may feel they are missing the message-whereas with much of Bach, words are superfluous. In sense, Bach's music is more self-contained than Cage's music. Still, it is clear how much of the human condition is presumed by Bach.

For instance, music has three major dimensions of structure (me harmony, rhythm), each of which can be further divided into small intermediate, and overall aspects. Now in each of these dimensions, there is a certain amount of complexity which our minds can handle before boggling; clearly a composer takes this into account, mostly unconsciously when writing a piece. These "levels of tolerable complexity" along different dimensions are probably very dependent on the peculiar conditions of our evolution as a species, and another intelligent species might have developed music with totally different levels of tolerable complexity along these many dimensions. Thus a Bach piece might conceivably have to be accompanied, by a lot of information about the human species, which simply could not inferred from the music's structure alone. If we equate the Bach music a genotype, and the emotions which it is supposed to evoke with the phenotype, then what we are interested in is whether the genotype con all the information necessary for the revelation of the phenotype.