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2017-04-28 at 10:27 PM UTC
Originally posted by Open Your Mind So based on similarities you share with other humans, you assume they also have a subjective experience. If a machine could simulate a human so precisely that you could not tell it was actually a machine, would you consider it to have a subjective experience?
I'd consider myself to have as strong evidence for the consciousness of that machine as I had for other humans, so yes, I would operate on the assumption that machine was conscious. And I do think that's a physical possibility. I brought up the lack of subjective experience in modern computers not to say that it's impossible but that it represents a qualitative difference between computational power and consciousness: not every sufficiently fast computer is conscious ergo Moore's law does not carry us to AI by default.I am guessing that you assume some animals also have a subjective experience, while their consciousness/mind probably isn't the same as at human level, they do seem to experience the world in a subjective way. Where does subjective experience stop? Can we imagine insects having a subjective experience? Plants? Single celled organisms? Minerals? What is the cut off point?
It practice I'll argue it tracks pretty closely to the animal kingdom, although there are certainly exceptional cases (as far as I know only in the direction of non-conscious animals rather than conscious non-animals). But all we have to satisfy this question is empirical investigation, I don't have a dogmatic commitment to some things being conscious and other not. Chalmers proposes this phrase "what is it like to be X" as our criterion for consciousness, like if we can't say something about what it would be like to be a thing that that thing can't be conscious. I think this runs the risk of being a little too inclusive, you can find a decent record of thought about what it's like to be various inanimate objects in the eastern tradition. "Does x have qualia" seems better to me, although perhaps it runs the risk of being tautological. -
2017-04-28 at 10:57 PM UTC
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2017-04-29 at 8:06 PM UTC
Originally posted by Lanny I'd consider myself to have as strong evidence for the consciousness of that machine as I had for other humans, so yes, I would operate on the assumption that machine was conscious. And I do think that's a physical possibility. I brought up the lack of subjective experience in modern computers not to say that it's impossible but that it represents a qualitative difference between computational power and consciousness: not every sufficiently fast computer is conscious ergo Moore's law does not carry us to AI by default.
Do you define consciousness and subjective experience as the same thing?
Originally posted by Lanny It practice I'll argue it tracks pretty closely to the animal kingdom, although there are certainly exceptional cases (as far as I know only in the direction of non-conscious animals rather than conscious non-animals). But all we have to satisfy this question is empirical investigation, I don't have a dogmatic commitment to some things being conscious and other not. Chalmers proposes this phrase "what is it like to be X" as our criterion for consciousness, like if we can't say something about what it would be like to be a thing that that thing can't be conscious. I think this runs the risk of being a little too inclusive, you can find a decent record of thought about what it's like to be various inanimate objects in the eastern tradition. "Does x have qualia" seems better to me, although perhaps it runs the risk of being tautological.
What is it like to be a bat?
Anyways, what are your reasons for assuming inanimate objects or even things like plants wouldn't have any subjective experience? Is "subjective experience" a trait that is supposed to be unique to highly evolved lifeforms, or could it possibly be something that is like an inherent quality of existing? Perhaps what you call "subjective experience" exists on a spectrum, with us in the center, stuff like rocks on the low end, and post-human beings exist on the high end. I mean, we evolved out of literal dust. We are basically just really complicated dust, that can walk around and think about ourselves. We have this really complicated way of experiencing the world but isn't it possible that the way we experience the world is just a highly evolved, highly complicated form of something that has always been there? I guess one question to ask yourself is why would subjective experience evolve out of nothing in the first place? Why would subjective experience pop into existence, seemingly randomly, if it wasn't already there in a a very basic way, that became more complicated as our existence became more complicated? -
2017-04-29 at 8:49 PM UTC
Originally posted by Open Your Mind Do you define consciousness and subjective experience as the same thing?
In this context, yes, I'm using them as synonyms. Although people use the term consciousness to refer to different things, often some property only held by humans or certain mammals which is not my usage.What is it like to be a bat?
I imagine it would be characterized by low vision, acute perception of sound, a very different model of space, and less-than-human level cognition.Anyways, what are your reasons for assuming inanimate objects or even things like plants wouldn't have any subjective experience?
Explaining the behavior of those things seems pretty straight forward without positing subjective experience. If we want to explain why a human limps when they walk we'd typically say something like "they experience pain when they put weight on a certain leg, so they avoid doing that". Our story of causal origin entails a self-same experience (we don't know what pain is like for that person, it's inaccessible to us, but we know our pain and our best explanation posits an isomorphic experience in another). If we want to explain why a stone falls to the ground when dropped we would say something like "gravity acts on the stone, pulling it down", explaining that behavior doesn't suggest that the rock has experience in a similar way to us.Is "subjective experience" a trait that is supposed to be unique to highly evolved lifeforms, or could it possibly be something that is like an inherent quality of existing?
It could be, we will have as much difficulty conclusively disproving the absence of experience in some things as we do proving the minds in others, we can never directly access the experience of others or the lack of same. But on a practical level I admit experience to other humans because it seems like the simplest explanation of my observations, so by the same token I deny experience in inanimate objects: giving them subjective experience doesn't seem necessary to explain any part of the world.Perhaps what you call "subjective experience" exists on a spectrum, with us in the center, stuff like rocks on the low end, and post-human beings exist on the high end. I mean, we evolved out of literal dust. We are basically just really complicated dust, that can walk around and think about ourselves. We have this really complicated way of experiencing the world but isn't it possible that the way we experience the world is just a highly evolved, highly complicated form of something that has always been there?
Chalmers floats this idea a few times as well, although tends to back away from it. I'm not dogmatically committed to it being either true or false, but as mentioned, I just don't think there's the evidence there to support it.I guess one question to ask yourself is why would subjective experience evolve out of nothing in the first place? Why would subjective experience pop into existence, seemingly randomly, if it wasn't already there in a a very basic way, that became more complicated as our existence became more complicated?
Most of our properties are emergent. Cell structures don't exist in rocks or space dust or outside of life but exist in us, that doesn't mean cell structures are an inherent element of existence. So I'm not convinced that we need pervasive experience to explain more complex human-like experience.
