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> Sentience is a philosophy question, not a neuroscience question. Came here to say the same thing. Neuroscience can give us one answer, but neuron-like "thing

> Sentience is a philosophy question, not a neuroscience question. Came here to say the same thing. Neuroscience can give us one answer, but neuron-like "things", whether real or artificial, need not be the only way to build sentient beings.

colechristensen 4y ago
I don't think neuroscience can convincingly determine if a set of neurons is sentient either. They can't point to the progression of sentience between an embryo and an adult human, they can't tell you why sentience goes away when you're sedated, drunk, or anesthetized, they can't measure the difference in sentience between a flea, a cat, and a human, they can't do much of anything at all with sentience besides assert that it's there and has something to do with neurons. It's something like the dark matter of the field. Physicists can say that it really appears that there is something there because of how galaxies behave, they can see evidence of a thing really being there but have nothing but guesses and handwaving to explain what.
- scoofy 4y ago
  The problem of qualia is exactly that... a serious philosophical problem. The only evidence for sentience we have is our own experience. We assume other minds exist, but we have no causal factors that can demonstrate it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia We live in a world of dualism mind and body, but this is typically unacceptable to most philosophers. Generally the problem breaks down to: Materialism -> Consciousness is probably an illusion. Idealism -> The material world is an illusion and/or consciousness is in everything regardless of material. Modern NN tech views -> Consciousness is a material-independent orchestra of neural networks Superstitions -> god(s) grants consciousness to specific beings and not others That said, I think it's plausible to come pretty close to figuring it all out if we have enough time and experimentation. E.g. we now have very good evidence that most mammals have similar experience to our own through better understanding of language acquisition and evolution. This wasn't always the case. We don't know what we don't know, and something out there may provide a serious breakthrough in building a model of philosophy of mind that is convincing.

colechristensen 4y ago

I don't think neuroscience can convincingly determine if a set of neurons is sentient either. They can't point to the progression of sentience between an embryo and an adult human, they can't tell you why sentience goes away when you're sedated, drunk, or anesthetized, they can't measure the difference in sentience between a flea, a cat, and a human, they can't do much of anything at all with sentience besides assert that it's there and has something to do with neurons. It's something like the dark matter of the field. Physicists can say that it really appears that there is something there because of how galaxies behave, they can see evidence of a thing really being there but have nothing but guesses and handwaving to explain what.

scoofy 4y ago
The problem of qualia is exactly that... a serious philosophical problem. The only evidence for sentience we have is our own experience. We assume other minds exist, but we have no causal factors that can demonstrate it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia We live in a world of dualism mind and body, but this is typically unacceptable to most philosophers. Generally the problem breaks down to: Materialism -> Consciousness is probably an illusion. Idealism -> The material world is an illusion and/or consciousness is in everything regardless of material. Modern NN tech views -> Consciousness is a material-independent orchestra of neural networks Superstitions -> god(s) grants consciousness to specific beings and not others That said, I think it's plausible to come pretty close to figuring it all out if we have enough time and experimentation. E.g. we now have very good evidence that most mammals have similar experience to our own through better understanding of language acquisition and evolution. This wasn't always the case. We don't know what we don't know, and something out there may provide a serious breakthrough in building a model of philosophy of mind that is convincing.