4 ms·

That's completely different statement. The first one was about the objective state of an external thing, the new one is about interaction with it.

p1esk 6y ago
Is “sentience” an objective state? Its definition is just as fuzzy as definitions of “life” or “consciousness”. For example, there are people in this thread who say a mosquito or even a plant might be sentient. Would you agree with that?
- jobigoud 6y ago
  I think there are two different aspect to this that are conflated. First, sentience may or may not be a binary thing. That is, some people consider that a mosquito is definitely sentient or definitely not sentient, and other people consider that sentience is a spectrum and that a mosquito is somewhere along that spectrum, being more sentient than a sponge, but less sentient than a mouse. The second aspect is whether sentience is an objective state, an attribute of a particular creature, or if it is a subjective opinion like you seem to imply. Just because it's a spectrum doesn't mean it can't be objective. So the fact that people disagree on whether a mosquito is sentient or not doesn't imply that the whole concept is subjective. They are just collapsing the definition based on a threshold that may not exist. Thus the word "sentient" is subjective but the actual attribute is not. This is the same for "life" and "consciousness". The property of "living" may not be a clear line in the sand. It doesn't mean that something is living or inert depending on the observer. My opinion is that yes, there is a definite, objective sentience "amount" or "quotient" that a creature has, independently of who is asking. This value is not black and white. I do not know this value for mosquito but I can roughly sort a lot of entities and I use that to take decisions (like what I eat for example). With this fuzzy (but objective) definition, there could also exist entities that are more sentient than human beings. In fact, if we figure out machine sentience I don't see why it would stop exactly at human level.

p1esk 6y ago

Is “sentience” an objective state? Its definition is just as fuzzy as definitions of “life” or “consciousness”. For example, there are people in this thread who say a mosquito or even a plant might be sentient. Would you agree with that?

jobigoud 6y ago
I think there are two different aspect to this that are conflated. First, sentience may or may not be a binary thing. That is, some people consider that a mosquito is definitely sentient or definitely not sentient, and other people consider that sentience is a spectrum and that a mosquito is somewhere along that spectrum, being more sentient than a sponge, but less sentient than a mouse. The second aspect is whether sentience is an objective state, an attribute of a particular creature, or if it is a subjective opinion like you seem to imply. Just because it's a spectrum doesn't mean it can't be objective. So the fact that people disagree on whether a mosquito is sentient or not doesn't imply that the whole concept is subjective. They are just collapsing the definition based on a threshold that may not exist. Thus the word "sentient" is subjective but the actual attribute is not. This is the same for "life" and "consciousness". The property of "living" may not be a clear line in the sand. It doesn't mean that something is living or inert depending on the observer. My opinion is that yes, there is a definite, objective sentience "amount" or "quotient" that a creature has, independently of who is asking. This value is not black and white. I do not know this value for mosquito but I can roughly sort a lot of entities and I use that to take decisions (like what I eat for example). With this fuzzy (but objective) definition, there could also exist entities that are more sentient than human beings. In fact, if we figure out machine sentience I don't see why it would stop exactly at human level.