This article takes a Self-Actualising perspective of self-awareness stemming from all my articles on the subject and including the articles on formation, see also what is self-actualisation.
Self-awareness may also be defined as the available intelligence to interact with the environment
Think of life or a being as a system, that is interactive within a larger system and contains subsystems that are interactive and that contain further subsystems.
From the articles on Formation we can begin to elicit observable properties that form the system of life or the being.
The most defining properties relevant to Self-Actualisation are:
- It contains beliefs or programming that grow.
- It functions utilising a process called events or moments.
- It deliberately evolves, utilising information from events run through its programming to create output.
- Outputs are the realisation of beliefs.
- Outputs are direction or intentions or thoughts.
- Outputs maybe compounded or made manifest in larger ways through expansion and repetition.
- Programming or beliefs form Identity. Identity is the formation of “I am” and “I am that I am” a singular Being.
- Evolution for Consciousness is the expansion or growth of Identity (beliefs and programming).
The defining properties listed form the core qualities or core characteristics towards a system self-actualising.
Self-Actualisation is a process and a process is a continuous set of actions. The system of consciousness is dynamic as it evolves or expands and it expands through action.
The self-awareness of a system would reflect its capacity to evolve successfully. Or in other words; Ones capacity to interact with the environment would reflect ones capacity to evolve successfully.
A Systems Approach to Self-Awareness
A system is a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network; a complex whole.
Within the field of quantum physics the observed attributes of successful systems or systems that have longevity are:
- Evolution
- Emergence
- Self-Organisation.
- Feedback Loops
Evolution
Evolution for systems and sub-systems is ever increasing complexity. This is the primary strategy and the following principles are towards enabling effective evolution.
Emergence
Emergence is a system interacting with other systems that form aspects of its properties.
Self-Organising
All systems self-organise to perpetuate order.
Feedback Loops
Where systems interact, feedback occurs.
Self-Awareness is the capacity to interact with the environment. For a system that would have longevity it would evolve utilising emergence, self-organising and feedback loops to greater degrees to create longevity. The environment is in constant flux, so change is the constant. The environment includes what is external and internal to the system.
Attributes of systems may vary, it is their combined effect towards creating longevity that would demonstrate the degree of self-awareness.
Some examples:
A chair
A chair as a system is a static system so does not evolve. The chair has limited capacity to interact with the environment so is not particularly emergent. The degree of self-organising is not enough for a chair to proactively interact with the environment and maintain itself when the environment changes.
Looking at the chair as a set of programmes that form the system and output the thoughtform of the chair. The programming does not contain routines that would enable it to evolve successfully. One could add to the design, providing a way for the chair to evolve and add to the programmes’ characteristics so that it becomes more emergent, that is it has a greater capacity to interact with internal as well as external systems that form its environment.
Providing a capacity to better self-organise, could enable a chair to evolve, at a rudimentary level a capacity to self-repair would be a starting point from which the capacity for it to evolve continuously could be enabled.
The entire process of the evolution of a system within an environment requires that feedback is received in a way that enables actionable progress towards evolution.
An Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Computer
If artificial means made by humans, then artificial intelligence could be considered as, made by humans the capacity to perform function. The question then becomes, what function?
Then at what point do A.I. computers become self-aware? A computer is a system and by the definitions outlined an A.I. computer already displays a degree of self-awareness. For an A.I. computer to display the same degree of self-awareness as a human being it would require the programming to function like a human being or be made in the likeness of its creator.
At the present time developments into A.I. computing have focused upon aspects of human capabilities, like reasoning and problem-solving, knowledge representation, planning and decision-making, learning, natural language processing and perception.
All the developments could be assessed as a starting point. Then to what degree does that A.I. computer system have as a capacity to evolve successfully? What capacity does it display in terms of emergence, self-organising and creating and receiving feedback? A more fuller understanding of the system would encapsulate an understanding of programming in the being that is the greater consciousness we call the environment. The programmatical construction is present inside and outside of space time that calls the thoughtform of the Artificial Intelligence computer into substance. This would be the same for all things in existence in the space-time universe.
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