The Self-Awareness of a Robot

 "NOT all with brains are conscious; NOT all that are alive have brains".

In this self-contradictory statement, three points of view are to be re-evaluated with the intention to redefine the constructs of how we understand the phenomena of being Alive, Aware, and Conscious. Based on his experiments on Biotronics, Joey Lawsin, who articulated the expression, argues that (i) one doesn't need to be aware nor to be conscious to be alive, (ii) one does not need to be conscious to be aware, and (iii) one does not need to have a brain to be conscious.

To address and justify his remarkable counter-intuitive claims, Lawsin designed an experimental prototype that simulates the Sensation of Awareness, Emergence of Consciousness, and the Realization of being Alive. His approach strategically brackets on his theory on algorithmic or associative consciousness, a concept which suggests that: (a) to be conscious one must be able to pair or label objects, (b) to be aware one must be capable to sense its surroundings, and (c) to be alive one must be capable to use energy to power itself as proposed in this article "What it takes to be considered alive?".

In the following YouTube videos, the true nature and scopes of awareness, consciousness, and lifeness are uncovered by comparing and analyzing the forms, designs, restrictions, limitations, and behaviors of his experimental models. In the videos, the spider, which is basically made up of Lego parts, is powered by a common household battery. And, as you will see later, the spider amazingly displayed evidence of awareness, twice.

In this first video, the movements of the spider are carried by a simple mechanical automation that emerges from its design. Its movements are not programmed. Its actions or behaviors are generated due to the dynamics or mechanisms of its design and constructions. Its battery when replaced with a human heart makes the spider walks continuously forever just like a jellyfish (an animal without a brain, heart, or blood) that drifts aimlessly throughout the sea entirely for the rest of its life. The jellyfish is considered alive basically because it moves by itself continuously and produces its own energy by consuming foods for locomotion. However, it is not considered conscious because it is neither aware of itself nor even aware of its environment, and it doesn't have a brain, the seat of consciousness as humans falsely believe. It simply reacts unknowingly with its environment because of the natural parameters present around it much like the temperature and pressure that wake us up during sleep, bed falls, wet dreams, and even house fire. Likewise, the spider in the video can do what the jellyfish can do as well. It can produce its own energy automatically by docking itself in a charging station or powering itself with solar panels. The state of being the spider exhibits, and the jellyfish for this matter, is classified as Mechanical or Alive.

Mechanical or Alive State of Being

In the second video, the spider is basically alive. It is primitively alive if the rationales laid out in the first video are taken into considerations. Its actions of going back and forth are delivered through a series of instructions extensively coded by the author using a computer program. These codes are embedded in a microcontroller that serves as its brain. However, without the battery, the codes and the brain become useless. If the battery is substituted with a living heart, the spider will walk continuously forever, and if its micro-controller is substituted with a living brain, the spider may become aware of its surrounding but may not be conscious much like the dog who can't self-recognize itself in a mirror or the fly that repetitively hits the sliding door without noticing its wide mirror. This state of being is called Orchestrated, or Programmed.

Orchestrated or Animated State of Being

In the third video, the spider is alive and aware but again not conscious. It is alive because of the same reasoning stated in this article and above propositions. It is aware because it can manipulate itself and interact logically with its environment. Although its actions are delivered by a piece of code and movements by its physical design via a battery, the spider is aware of its surroundings due to the fact the robot is actually doing its own decision making and calculation in its brain without any interventions from the programmer. The awareness is originating from within the organism. The simple algorithm of "object detected; move away!" is much like the instructional instinct we do when our eyes see a snake as we instantaneously move away from it without having any intervention from our brain - a mechanical action. Although the spider is aware of its surroundings, it is not conscious. In terms of analogy, this is like comparing the spider with a six-month-old puppy who maybe sensually aware of his surroundings but has no idea what these objects around him are. This state of life is called Sensoric or Awareness.

Sensoric or Aware State of Being

Again, in the next video, the spider tests its awareness skills by scanning its surrounding for a charging station. Once it finds its base, it charges itself and energizes its battery just like energizing the human body by "eating". Although a piece of code was sketched on its electronic "brain" (a switching conglomeration of switches), the behaviors of the spider provide clues that somehow it knows when to charge its battery without any intervention from the programmer. Again, awareness comes within the organism. The best part, following Lawsin's simplified definition of Consciousness as more of Association than Awareness, the spider manages to associate its "no more battery power" with its docking station. Moreover, it recognizes the station from the other objects in its surrounding using its lens through Mirror Image Recognition (MIR), a scanning technique developed to compare a certain pattern with a pre-acquired pattern. This matching technique, which originated from I.M, is a form of consciousness.

In his book, Originemology, Lawsin argued that Consciousness is not a matter of being aware of one's self and one's environment, the two basic ingredients of consciousness as defined in the Webster dictionary. He said that to be conscious one must also learn how to match or pair what he senses - sees, smells, hears, tastes, thinks - with a tag, a label, a definition, a description, or a name. He based this claim from his thought experiment known as the "The Caveman in the Box Troika" and laboratory experiment known as "The Bowlingual Experiment" using two dogs named Zero; an Alaskan malamute and Peanut; a chihuahua as specimens. The one to one correspondence type of consciousness that the two dogs exhibited is known as Associative or Correlative Consciousness (Lawsin, 1988).

Lawsin also pointed out that "Being alive is totally different from Being living". The spider is alive because it consumes energy ("a form of food that is eaten") but is not living because of the following reasons:

•Living objects move or in motion (perform).
•Living objects respond with their sensors (sense).
•Living objects reproduce with an exact copy of itself (replicate).
•Living objects grow with their surrounding environment (thrive).
•Living objects take and expel gas (breathe).
•Living objects consume food in the form of energy (eat).
•Living objects are created by cells (the seed).

However, the list can be changed to make the spider a "living" organism.
•The spider may use motors to be in motions (perform).
•The spider may use sensors to detect things (sense).
•The spider may use materials from its surroundings to grow (thrive).
•The spider may use auto-fabrication to reproduce (replicate).
•The spider may use elements from the environment to energize (breath).
•The spider may use batteries to store energy (eat).
•The spider may use instructions house in cells (the machinery).

Remember that the actions eat, breathe, sense, perform are external behaviors controlled by the individual, while, replicate, grow, cellify are internal actions uncontrolled by the individual. Take note also, just like humans are programmed by Nature, the spider receives instructions too from the outside world, me. The illusion that humans program itself, the indicator akin to consciousness, may seem wrong after all. Could it be possible that humans are simply a very sophisticated sensor-actuator machine? If all the given actions are contained, where the spider could act and function independently, would the spider now be considered a living organism?

In summary, (1) when an object consumes energy, interacts chemically, it is alive but not aware and conscious; (2) when an object uses its sensors, it is aware but not alive and conscious; (3) when an object programs itself, the object is animated; and, (4) when an object acquires information, it is conscious. The results of all these conclusions show that life is more mechanical, chemical, instructional than biology.

Side Note: It is a misconception that the bleeps in the brain, which can be detected on a monitor interface, don't point where information is stored. Instead, the bleeps are simply indicators of where the actions are taking place. Remember, if the concept is correct, then how does it retrieve and read back the stored raw information from the brain using a machine? (refer: string telephone)

Source: The Comparative Study of  Neural and Aneural Consciousness, Lawsin, 1988

" One can't be conscious without awareness, but can be aware without consciousness". 

~ Joey Lawsin

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