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I wonder how you can be so sure about digital logic not being able to produce subjective experience? How is being able to describe how a mechanism works related

I wonder how you can be so sure about digital logic not being able to produce subjective experience? How is being able to describe how a mechanism works related to knowing if it feels something or not? We have no sure way to tell if any other human experiences anything or if they are philosophical zombies. This is just something we have not figures out how to measure conceptually let alone technically. Where do you take the confidence of judging whether the AI has subjective experience in this case? Do you think that there is something still to be found in the human brain that will explain why we (humans, animals) uniquely have subjective experience and others (AI) are zombies?

snickerbockers 4y ago
> I wonder how you can be so sure about digital logic not being able to produce subjective experience? How is being able to describe how a mechanism works related to knowing if it feels something or not? I have a consciousness, and this is something I am able to observe. I hope that some day there will be an explanation for this, but until then the lack of an explanation does not invalidate my own observations. >How is being able to describe how a mechanism works related to knowing if it feels something or not? It's not, but if you can't observe that a machine is conscious and you also can't observe any mechanism that would make it conscious then there's no basis to assume a consciousness exists. >We have no sure way to tell if any other human experiences anything or if they are philosophical zombies. This is just something we have not figures out how to measure conceptually let alone technically. Where do you take the confidence of judging whether the AI has subjective experience in this case? Yes it is technically true that nobody can be sure of anybody possessing a consciousness but themself. However, it's not illogical to assume that another human being who is very similar to you must also have similar experiences even if it cannot be proven outright. It's highly illogical to assume that a computer program would have similar experiences to a person. >Do you think that there is something still to be found in the human brain that will explain why we (humans, animals) uniquely have subjective experience and others (AI) are zombies? Yes. I can't even begin to speculate on what that is, but the fact that we (or at least I) are conscious implies that something must be causing that consciousness.

snickerbockers 4y ago

> I wonder how you can be so sure about digital logic not being able to produce subjective experience? How is being able to describe how a mechanism works related to knowing if it feels something or not? I have a consciousness, and this is something I am able to observe. I hope that some day there will be an explanation for this, but until then the lack of an explanation does not invalidate my own observations. >How is being able to describe how a mechanism works related to knowing if it feels something or not? It's not, but if you can't observe that a machine is conscious and you also can't observe any mechanism that would make it conscious then there's no basis to assume a consciousness exists. >We have no sure way to tell if any other human experiences anything or if they are philosophical zombies. This is just something we have not figures out how to measure conceptually let alone technically. Where do you take the confidence of judging whether the AI has subjective experience in this case? Yes it is technically true that nobody can be sure of anybody possessing a consciousness but themself. However, it's not illogical to assume that another human being who is very similar to you must also have similar experiences even if it cannot be proven outright. It's highly illogical to assume that a computer program would have similar experiences to a person. >Do you think that there is something still to be found in the human brain that will explain why we (humans, animals) uniquely have subjective experience and others (AI) are zombies? Yes. I can't even begin to speculate on what that is, but the fact that we (or at least I) are conscious implies that something must be causing that consciousness.