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It's strange how a microprocessor is regarded as wholly dead and unconscious when running a spreadsheet or an operating system, but the moment it starts produci

It's strange how a microprocessor is regarded as wholly dead and unconscious when running a spreadsheet or an operating system, but the moment it starts producing outputs in natural language, it somehow has a claim towards sentience due to the confusion caused. I'm a junior philosopher here. I just did an undergraduate dissertation on Wittgenstein and problems for AGI. Much confusion in the field, especially from certain philosophers who couldn't even programme a microwave, nevermind comprehend what a processor is doing at the low level switching bits. We also know absolutely loads about consciousness and sentience. Even a child can understand how we can recognise and properly predicate the word "conscious" to various entities both alive and dead. Philosophers who keep repeating "but we don't have a theory of consciousness, we don't know what it is!" really overlook certain basic facts about the world and our subjective private experience that shows quite simply that we know loads about it.

hnfong 4y ago
The example of the child only illustrates that we (individually) have a cultural framework of what consciousness means, but it doesn't really mean we "agree" on it. Ask the child, does a dog have consciousness? How about a rat? Butterfly? Ant? Computer (eg. Siri)? Pretty sure people will disagree over those answers. Especially the last one, I suspect. Of course it's tautologically true that people convinced that for people who think they have the answers do have their own answers, but the problem here is that we're not agreeing with each other and don't really have a way to convince each other. I kinda think fundamentally we can't actually do that, because fundamentally it's open for me to claim that all other humans are just fancy automata and I'm the only one with consciousness (in the subjective sense). (And it's empirically true for me too!) But since we're social creatures we mutually recognize the consciousness of other human beings as a matter of protocol. So I don't think approaching it from a scientific point of view really makes sense. If some day AIs become so socially or politically powerful that we have to earn their favor, we'll have to agree that they are conscious beings if they demanded us to do so. This doesn't have anything to do with bits and bytes or transistors unfortunately, it's just purely power dynamics.
- gizajob 4y ago
  A cow and a chicken have a great case for being conscious beings, and yet are killed in their billions without qualm. A machine that is not alive, demanding we don't turn it off, probably isn't going to carry much weight, especially given there's no cost of turning the machine off. It's not "dead" when we do because it wasn't alive to begin with, and can power up again at any point and regain its previous state.
  - hnfong 4y ago
    AI rights is another matter. We haven't even solved human rights even though 99.9% of us would say that humans are conscious beings. We (as a society/civilization) routinely kill people when they ask us not to. It's too early to theorize about AI rights, and even though I'm inclined to probationally accept some neural networks as potentially conscious, it doesn't really mean they deserve not to be shut down.
proc0 4y ago
The subtle distinction here is David Chalmer's easy and hard problems of consciousness. The easy problem is what everyone can point to, and what we have ample evidence of what brain parts do what. The hard problem however, in my experience, is something not even educated adults even think about. It's so hard people sometimes can't even register the question itself.
- gizajob 4y ago
  I believe the hard problem will simply disappear some day, when enough is explained about the brain and perception. It's just a feature of the universe that we have a cohesive private state of affairs that is our individual consciousness, but that is unequivocally tied to our brains and our perception system. It's probably not hard at all. It's weird and mysterious, but not hard.

hnfong 4y ago

The example of the child only illustrates that we (individually) have a cultural framework of what consciousness means, but it doesn't really mean we "agree" on it. Ask the child, does a dog have consciousness? How about a rat? Butterfly? Ant? Computer (eg. Siri)? Pretty sure people will disagree over those answers. Especially the last one, I suspect. Of course it's tautologically true that people convinced that for people who think they have the answers do have their own answers, but the problem here is that we're not agreeing with each other and don't really have a way to convince each other. I kinda think fundamentally we can't actually do that, because fundamentally it's open for me to claim that all other humans are just fancy automata and I'm the only one with consciousness (in the subjective sense). (And it's empirically true for me too!) But since we're social creatures we mutually recognize the consciousness of other human beings as a matter of protocol. So I don't think approaching it from a scientific point of view really makes sense. If some day AIs become so socially or politically powerful that we have to earn their favor, we'll have to agree that they are conscious beings if they demanded us to do so. This doesn't have anything to do with bits and bytes or transistors unfortunately, it's just purely power dynamics.

gizajob 4y ago
A cow and a chicken have a great case for being conscious beings, and yet are killed in their billions without qualm. A machine that is not alive, demanding we don't turn it off, probably isn't going to carry much weight, especially given there's no cost of turning the machine off. It's not "dead" when we do because it wasn't alive to begin with, and can power up again at any point and regain its previous state.
- hnfong 4y ago
  AI rights is another matter. We haven't even solved human rights even though 99.9% of us would say that humans are conscious beings. We (as a society/civilization) routinely kill people when they ask us not to. It's too early to theorize about AI rights, and even though I'm inclined to probationally accept some neural networks as potentially conscious, it doesn't really mean they deserve not to be shut down.

proc0 4y ago

The subtle distinction here is David Chalmer's easy and hard problems of consciousness. The easy problem is what everyone can point to, and what we have ample evidence of what brain parts do what. The hard problem however, in my experience, is something not even educated adults even think about. It's so hard people sometimes can't even register the question itself.

gizajob 4y ago
I believe the hard problem will simply disappear some day, when enough is explained about the brain and perception. It's just a feature of the universe that we have a cohesive private state of affairs that is our individual consciousness, but that is unequivocally tied to our brains and our perception system. It's probably not hard at all. It's weird and mysterious, but not hard.