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The machine's change in (1) vocal timing finds its analogue in the death o f the external matched signal: the first registers as an internal change; the second as an external change. We still do not know if our machine understands this as the death o f its machine mate. An existential understanding ofthe loss ofthe matching voice would require (ifwe ignore the lack o f a mammalian brain, or some might say any brain) an analogic equivalence between the A/O Evaluator shift to unmatched memory output and the death o f itself. It seems unlikely that a machine without a more developed symbolic life could
understand this loss. The predictive power of this kind of system, however, remains stimulus dependent. When the stimulus vanishes, the future disappears.
14. 15 Thepursuitofdeath
If we could make a higher level analyzing agent to determine and chart the larger patterns of change in A/O LTM [(3): matched to unmatched], we might be able to stimulate the machine into a weak awareness of the subjectivity of another machine encoded in the A/O LTMs meta-temporal identity. The A/O Evaluator sends a signal to
this agent when the shift from matched to unmatched occurs, and this signal causes this Pattern Recognizer to recall previous shifts and their defining vocal timing domains. The Pattern Recognizer could construct an information structure that charts the internal state changes against the representation o f catastrophic loss o f the external matching voice.
The information such a chart could encode is rather simple, and the prediction that follows even simpler: every vocal timing change will be followed not only by another, but also by the loss ofthe not-I representation. Because the representation ofthe not-I is used to
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determine the actions o f the machine (it stays and observers), its loss results in a change in action (the machine now moves). Before moving can be a form o f mourning, it must also representalossofbeingforthemachine. Ifweremovethemachine's eyesonthesideof its head, it will lose its primary temporal portal. It will still have its auditory input (and STM) by which it can chart a different temporal order, but the loss of this primary information will be recorded with the shift from matched to unmatched in the A/O LTM and will be noted by the A/O LTM Evaluator. This sensory loss, and the time/ memory scale it constructs, can stand for, can symbolize, the loss o f the external voice and the change in vocal timing. The prediction that a loss o f the external voice will necessarily follow a change in the machine's own vocal timing will also be tied to another internal
effect: thecommandtomoveanditssubsequenttemporarylossofsightandthetime- scale that sight generates. This causal structure (Cause [external loss] and Effect [internal loss]) mirrors the vocal timing change and is nested within the basic structure generated from that timing change. Our sense o f the future is growing more complex.
14. 16 Learning from the future
The bifurcation o f the memory and predicative domain defined and signaled by the
vocal timing change sets up a meta-time scale at which level internal symbolic exchanges begin to make some kind o f sense. The O agent wants to be able to predict when it will fail, and when it's short-term predictions will be irrelevant, while the A/O wants to be able to predict when it will have to shift its memory output from matched to unmatched. Our machine could not discover such detailed information, nor could these agents as they now
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stand actually want anything. They would first have to need this information as a means to act. But what is important here is the conceptual problem this presents. For the Optical Agent the loss of the external voice could stand for its loss o f sight, and because it happens prior to its effect, it could serve as a short-term prediction (generated out of a long-term prediction structure). This represents an internal symbolic communication, where one loss can stand for another. The signal itselfwould go from the A/O Evaluator to the O Agent. This signal is not, however, caused by an algorithm: if shift to unmatched output, send a signal to O that loss of sight is imminent. The meaning ofthe shifttounmatchedoutputisdeterminedbytheA/OLTMPattern. Itconcludesfrom previous patterns that the shift means a loss o f sight. This is a conclusion based on an internal analysis (abstraction) from a lower level abstraction (A/O LTM) which is in turn
generated from lower level sensory modeling. This is not the most elegant of control structures (but neither is much of our learning compared to "lower" animals: human weavingcomparedwithspiderweaving). Ithastheadvantage,however,ofmakingall predictions a function ofmemory (they are learned), and not of pre-programming.
14. 17 Inside a Chinese box: when structure becomes content within larger structures
A matched memory state (any input of value 0) within the A/O LTM, re- interpreted in terms o f the time scale generated from the Optical Agent, stands for 5 Optical moments. If a match has been found, then every five O moments will result in a matched input to A/O LTM. The Pattern Recognizer attached to A/O Evaluator
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functions as a symbolic catalyst linking the two time scales. The Pattern Recognizer has the power to include in any memory state within A/O LTM a representation of the 5 O moments. (Unfortunately,ourmachineistoosimpletoneedthiskindofsymbolic transfer. Without this need and use all one can say is this machine has the conceptual structure that could allow this integration o f two time-scales as a form o f its temporal consciousness).
14. 18 The I as the not-I: using the future to build other machines
Things are not so easy for the A/O LTM Pattern Recognizer (not to be confused
with the A/O Evaluator's Pattern Recognizer). It can learn to expect the loss of the matched input, but not when, except to the degree that it can know it will happen before the next vocal timing change and before the next loss of sight. In fact the initializing vocal change and the loss of sight define the domain of the matched memory. At the level of abstraction found in the A/O LTM Pattern Recognizer this is enough information to constructourmeta-temporalidentityinexistentialterms: adomaindefinedbytwo internal state changes and consisting of a model of internal perceptual states, but which are
notthoseperceptualstates. Thelossofsightcanstandforthelossofthisdomain. A feedback loop from the A/O LTM Pattern Recognizer could signal the loss of the matched domain to the A/O Evaluator, and thus eliminate the previous hard-wire instruction to shift its output to LTM when it no longer computes a match between A inputandOinput. ThetranslationofauditoryinformationintoalanguagetheOagent can understand ("you will lose sight"), and the reverse translation ("you must shift to
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unmatched memory"), in spite ofthe physical improbabilities, constructs the symbolic structure that allows for vocal timing changes to stand for a future state o f the machine. Because this state is in the future, it is a not-I. Because this state, while recognized as the representation of the machine's internal state, is built from and also represents an external input, it is a not-I. It is easy for the machine to recognize itself in the auditory external input (the not-I as I). But much more difficult to recognize the I as a not-I. The future provides the "distance", the abstraction that allows the I (the internal state of the machine) to function as a not-I equivalent to the not-I it already recognizes as a representation of itself. Thus, the machine cannot quite recognize the death of the other machine, but it can recognize the loss o f the external auditory signal that it uses to model its own internal state with the new and different life (internal state) the future offers it. It can believe in the possibility of the future.
This is kind of self-deception, used like fiction, to jump into the possibilities that logic cannot capture. It makes the machine what Stanislaw Lem might call a self- inductingmachine. WhenErgtheSelf-Inductorwounduptheclockprincesswiththekey to her life, stolen by a terrible human paleface, he had to play with time (and make up stories) in order to hide the fact that he had simply fabricated a new key instead of pursuing the mad human through space. Our machine builds (or represents) its world, including other machines, within a hierarchy of abstractions, in order to establish the analogic connections that will allow it to identify (self-induct) itself with an other by self- inducting itself into the future not as itself, but as the not-I represented in A/O LTM.
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Our machine builds a temporal map in order to make long term predictions. The Optical memory recall Agent can be nested within the A/O LTM recall Agent, thus integrating both time-scales within a single time sense. This is possible because the temporal structure that the A/O LTM Recall Agent remembers is both continually active anddevoidofanycontent. Eachmomentissimplyastructuralmark,and,becauseitis defined by degree o f change values, it recognizes not single phenomenal states, but the dynamic two state moments stored in O STM and O LTM.
In a more complex organism like human beings, however, this future structure, built out of internal changes caused by external inputs that simultaneously represent an other and the self (that is, there is a distinction between other and self, but the other can sometimes be used to represent the self), can abstract others to the point that they can stand for oneselfnot only in the future possibilities of life, but in the future possibilities of death. Outofthisallculture,includingtechnologyandlanguageisbuilt.
1This exercise can seem as a conceptual counterpoint to Heidegger's analytic description of our being towardthefutureinBeingandTime. Iamlookingatdifferentwaysinwhichbeing(orbecoming)canbe described. Iamnottryingtodescribebecomingatallhere. Rathermymachinesaremeanttofunctionas such a description.
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Epilogue: But what have I denied the existence of?
I claimed earlier that my machine(s) would serve as an allegory about how ontological limits describe ways ofmaking sense through the process ofbuilding. In what way are these machine(s) allegories? Commonly, an allegory is an ordered set o f relations withwhichorintowhichatextorsituationiscorrelatedortranslated. Inthissense allegories are applied. Such applications are fraught with dangers and confusions. A possible interpretation is not always probable. Furthermore the application o f an allegory can confuse the interpretive relations within the allegory with a causal explanation of events or histories (e. g. Freud or many political allegories). My machine allegories are very different. In fact in themselves they are not meant as allegories at all. The process of making them, o f correlating aspects o f my experience o f the world in relation to a clear set of ontological limits should be understood as allegorical. I am not writing an allegory of things or o f the world these things inhabit but an allegory o f the making o f these things and their world. The allegory does not have content, but the process of making the machine(s)does. Thisisanallegoricalprocessinwhichtheengineeringlimitsconfronted in building the machines opens the world as a system o f limits, organized around
causation, but directed at removing black boxes (homunculus or God or soul or the unconscious). Suchremovalcreatesanallegoryoflimitswithinwhichwebuildaspectsof sense as a way o f orienting ourselves within the world and or experience.
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My machines have few places to go, confined as they are to their world, but they haveawhentogointoorremainwithin. Thiswhenisasyntaxwithaverysimple semantics. Their processing builds a temporal envelope whose surface is constructed through the mutual correlation of a machine's own actions (vocalization) with its recognition o f another and with the limits o f the world (not to mention the perversity o f its creator). In many ways the construction o f a similar envelope has been the project o f this dissertation. I have attempted to construct a context within a set of texts in order to make visible the ways in which our negotiations within and towards sense and nonsense generate temporallimits. Howweinhabit'I'and'our'expressesourinvolvementinlanguageat the level o f symbolic functioning that confuses the future and the present (time) and meaningandtheword(grammar). Wefunctionasandwithinfragmentsoftimeand language through which we expose and disguise the limits of how we are, not just what or
who we are.
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