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The notion of sentience is something that's unsurprisingly well-trodden in both philosophy and neuroscience. Your statements presumes that such is flippant. W

by wheels 5y ago

The notion of sentience is something that's unsurprisingly well-trodden in both philosophy and neuroscience. Your statements presumes that such is flippant. While there's not a single well-agreed on definition, there are different things like ability to see and project oneself into the future and to assign value to those projections, the ability to empathize, the ability to miss things that are no longer there, etc. are often metrics used for higher levels of sentience. We know that humans and some other mammals do these things. I believe I remember that there's some debate about crows and some other birds. While octopuses are the only invertebrate that has passed the "mirror-test", part of what this article is getting at is that we don't know much about their emotions and extended sense of self, and assigning them to a high category of sentience may be premature. (Or not; asking that question is what this article is about.) But human sentience isn't trivial. Your argument is basically, "We're all chemical systems, eh?" And sure, at some level that's true, but it's not really enlightening to the discussion.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Philosophy says none of those assertions are provable. You could very well be an automaton in a simulation and all your presumptions about the world are false.
- wheels 5y ago
  Those are very different corners of philosophy. Things can be epistomogically unprovable, but at the same time ethically relevant. Put another way, your counterargument applies equally to genocide as it does to octopus intelligence. That doesn't mean we should proceed as if genocide is ethically neutral.
Sporktacular 5y ago
Well trodden yet nowhere close to being understood. I'll say it again - whether or not we are deterministic is not a settled question. I didn't take a position on that either way. My point was that because of our present (poor) understanding there's no reason to assume a human and an octopus have different degrees of agency, so questioning whether or not an octopus is deterministic is inconsequential to whether we can relate emotionally with one: - If we both are then friendship, bonding, emotions etc. are just an illusion that our wiring compels us to entertain, and so we will proceed to do so. - If we both aren't then friendship may be just as real for both of us and we'll proceed the same way. An answer to this would have consequences for moral choice, and as long as it's open we should act ethically, even if only as a precaution. But the outcome here is the same. This isn't about ethical ramifications.
- wheels 5y ago
  You're right that whether we're deterministic or not isn't settled, but that argument is mostly a physics question, not a biological one. (It reduces to: is the universe deterministic? And it is a very much a debate at the center of different interpretations of quantum physics.) But we still find it useful to talk about different strata of intelligence and to make predictions based on that. Like I said, your argument is basically, "It's all just chemicals." And that's true, but just doesn't move the conversation in any interesting direction. There is utility in reasoning about these things at the macro level, and that's what this article is about. It's kind of like saying, "Is this apple red or blue?" And you object, "Red and blue are just labels on an infinite spectrum and don't exist as specific wavelengths!" That's true. But you can still, with high utility and reasonableness, talk about things being red and blue, despite those terms not being perfectly well defined.
  - Sporktacular 5y ago
    Yes reality exists in layers etc. and this is all fine and frankly almost obvious, but it's not a response. Again, I am not taking an existential position - whether it's all just chemicals or otherwise is NOT relevant or useful. It's that it's also useless for analysing animal behaviour and it's similarity and compatibility to our own, since the case for humans is not settled either. I don't know how else to say it.
vlovich123 5y ago
Something to remember about the MSR test. The high level conclusion that we draw from it is a large leap from what the experiment is able to show and we haven’t been able to distinguish it from any number of plausible theories. For example, I caught my dog looking at me through the mirror in the room when she didn’t have direct line of sight and we were the only two in the room and I was talking in ways that would get her attention. That indicates some level of recognition of the role a mirror plays and that the image in the mirror is a reflection and not a mystery animal. That animals utilize their senses differently and find different things interesting to them says more about the limitations of our ability to evaluate other animals than it does about their actual sentience and intelligence I think. Eg maybe the MSR test is simply a test that works well on animals that have a similar working sensory model to us (or at least vision is important enough and interest in mirrors is aligned). > there are different things like ability to see and project oneself into the future and to assign value to those projections, the ability to empathize, the ability to miss things that are no longer there, etc. are often metrics used for higher levels of sentience. That’s a bold claim. I’d say at most we have a sample size of one species because we’re able to communicate and compare notes with each other + within a species animals work fairly similarly enough for the most part. We have absolutely no knowledge of whether the things you said are important for sentience/intelligence. Not if candidates we think are likely closest in intelligence (elephants, dolphins, crows) demonstrate these traits as it requires a degree of insight and communication we don’t have. - we have to do convoluted experiments to try to tease out effects but we don’t actually know what the experiments are telling us. Maybe if our brain imaging technology gets better some of these questions will become more answerable.
- pygy_ 5y ago
  Yeah, most animals can recognize their own smell. Humans fail the PSR, the pee self-recognition test, are they even conscious?
- curl-up 5y ago
  Additionally, couldn't MSR results simply be produced by mirror neurons firing? I.e., touching a marked part of the body does not mean "Animal in the mirror is me", it can simply mean "Marked part of that animal is 'itching' me"? Are there MSR tests that used windows to other animals instead mirrors as a control?

by wheels 5y ago

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

Philosophy says none of those assertions are provable. You could very well be an automaton in a simulation and all your presumptions about the world are false.

wheels 5y ago
Those are very different corners of philosophy. Things can be epistomogically unprovable, but at the same time ethically relevant. Put another way, your counterargument applies equally to genocide as it does to octopus intelligence. That doesn't mean we should proceed as if genocide is ethically neutral.

Sporktacular 5y ago

Well trodden yet nowhere close to being understood. I'll say it again - whether or not we are deterministic is not a settled question. I didn't take a position on that either way. My point was that because of our present (poor) understanding there's no reason to assume a human and an octopus have different degrees of agency, so questioning whether or not an octopus is deterministic is inconsequential to whether we can relate emotionally with one: - If we both are then friendship, bonding, emotions etc. are just an illusion that our wiring compels us to entertain, and so we will proceed to do so. - If we both aren't then friendship may be just as real for both of us and we'll proceed the same way. An answer to this would have consequences for moral choice, and as long as it's open we should act ethically, even if only as a precaution. But the outcome here is the same. This isn't about ethical ramifications.

wheels 5y ago
You're right that whether we're deterministic or not isn't settled, but that argument is mostly a physics question, not a biological one. (It reduces to: is the universe deterministic? And it is a very much a debate at the center of different interpretations of quantum physics.) But we still find it useful to talk about different strata of intelligence and to make predictions based on that. Like I said, your argument is basically, "It's all just chemicals." And that's true, but just doesn't move the conversation in any interesting direction. There is utility in reasoning about these things at the macro level, and that's what this article is about. It's kind of like saying, "Is this apple red or blue?" And you object, "Red and blue are just labels on an infinite spectrum and don't exist as specific wavelengths!" That's true. But you can still, with high utility and reasonableness, talk about things being red and blue, despite those terms not being perfectly well defined.
- Sporktacular 5y ago
  Yes reality exists in layers etc. and this is all fine and frankly almost obvious, but it's not a response. Again, I am not taking an existential position - whether it's all just chemicals or otherwise is NOT relevant or useful. It's that it's also useless for analysing animal behaviour and it's similarity and compatibility to our own, since the case for humans is not settled either. I don't know how else to say it.

vlovich123 5y ago

Something to remember about the MSR test. The high level conclusion that we draw from it is a large leap from what the experiment is able to show and we haven’t been able to distinguish it from any number of plausible theories. For example, I caught my dog looking at me through the mirror in the room when she didn’t have direct line of sight and we were the only two in the room and I was talking in ways that would get her attention. That indicates some level of recognition of the role a mirror plays and that the image in the mirror is a reflection and not a mystery animal. That animals utilize their senses differently and find different things interesting to them says more about the limitations of our ability to evaluate other animals than it does about their actual sentience and intelligence I think. Eg maybe the MSR test is simply a test that works well on animals that have a similar working sensory model to us (or at least vision is important enough and interest in mirrors is aligned). > there are different things like ability to see and project oneself into the future and to assign value to those projections, the ability to empathize, the ability to miss things that are no longer there, etc. are often metrics used for higher levels of sentience. That’s a bold claim. I’d say at most we have a sample size of one species because we’re able to communicate and compare notes with each other + within a species animals work fairly similarly enough for the most part. We have absolutely no knowledge of whether the things you said are important for sentience/intelligence. Not if candidates we think are likely closest in intelligence (elephants, dolphins, crows) demonstrate these traits as it requires a degree of insight and communication we don’t have. - we have to do convoluted experiments to try to tease out effects but we don’t actually know what the experiments are telling us. Maybe if our brain imaging technology gets better some of these questions will become more answerable.

pygy_ 5y ago
Yeah, most animals can recognize their own smell. Humans fail the PSR, the pee self-recognition test, are they even conscious?
curl-up 5y ago
Additionally, couldn't MSR results simply be produced by mirror neurons firing? I.e., touching a marked part of the body does not mean "Animal in the mirror is me", it can simply mean "Marked part of that animal is 'itching' me"? Are there MSR tests that used windows to other animals instead mirrors as a control?