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The only physical evidence is found in behavior and facial expressions. But the internal evidence is very convincing: try, for example, sticking yourself with a

The only physical evidence is found in behavior and facial expressions. But the internal evidence is very convincing: try, for example, sticking yourself with a pin. Much if not all of morality also depends on our belief in or knowledge of sentience. Sentience is why torture, rape and murder are wrong.

chmod775 4y ago
> But the internal evidence is very convincing: try, for example, sticking yourself with a pin. Systems don't need sentience to avoid self-harm: simply assign a large negative weight to self-harm. Now you need a big reward to offset it, making the system reluctant to perform such an action.
- whittingtonaaon 4y ago
  I’m not talking about self harm. I’m talking about the experience of pain—which most everyone has had! These are different things.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    I'm not quite following your argument on pain. Ability to feel pain is not sentience.
    - whittingtonaaon 4y ago
      It is if you take “sentience” to mean “the ability to feel,” which is what my dictionary just told me. I think this category really is the most basic differentiating one. Higher level stuff like self awareness all depend on it. The most basic difference between a computer and a human (or even a dog…) is, in my opinion, the ability to feel.
      - simonh 4y ago
        Dictionary definitions are of limited utility in philosophical discussions because they often make very broad assumptions. For example computers can certainly sense things, they can detect inputs and make decisions based on those inputs. What is the difference between feeling and sensing though? In this case by ‘feel’ we might implicitly assume various capabilities of the subject experiencing the feeling, like self awareness. If we’re being precise we can’t just say feeling is enough, we need to state the assumptions the dictionary leaves unstated.
        whittingtonaaon 4y ago
        When we say a camera can see—or a computer can sense—we are using an anthropocentric metaphor.
      - chmod775 4y ago
        >It is if you take “sentience” to mean “the ability to feel,” I don't like this definition much because "feel" is a fuzzy word. In this context it should be "feel" as in experience. I can build a machine that can sense heat and react to it, but I can't build one that can experience heat, or can I? You need to figure out what having the capability "to experience" means, and you'll be one step closer to defining sentience. Even so, I've never experienced anyone coming up with a succinct definition encapsulating how I experience sentience. I believe it can't be done. If it can't be done it renders any discussion about whether or not someone or something is sentient moot. If it can't be put into words we also cannot know how others experience it: If they say this machine is just as sentient as I am, we'll have to take their word for it. So the meaning of sentience is subjective, so there can't be an objective definition acceptable to everyone and everything claiming to be sentient. There's my argument for why sentience cannot be defined. Feel free to prove me wrong by pulling it off.
        wlorenz65 4y ago
        > but I can't build one that can experience heat, or can I? It would need to have a planner that can detach from reality to hunt for new longterm plans, plus a hardcoded function that draws it back to the present by replacing the top planning goal with "avoid that!" whenever the heat sensor activation has crossed a threshold.
        trentgreene 4y ago
        ‘So the meaning of sentience is subjective, so there can't be an objective definition acceptable to everyone and everything claiming to be sentient.‘ It feels like your begging the question here, I don’t think this follows from any of your arguments. Except for maybe where you state you believe sentience can’t be defined, which again, begs the question. Though admittedly I don’t see much of a traditional argument — your conclusion is interesting, could you try supporting it?
        chmod775 4y ago
        The first "So" at the beginning of that sentence is a typo. It indeed doesn't follow. You can quickly spot what makes sentience subjective when you follow the explanations. They're all either utter gibberish once unpacked, lead to the conclusion that my computer is sentient (fine by me, but I don't think that's what we wanted?), are rooted in other terms with subjective meaning, or they are circular. Let's look at that third kind, which Wikipedia illustrates well: > Sentience: Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations [...] > Experience: Experience refers to conscious events in general [...] > Conscious: Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience [...] Back at where we started. To break this circle one needs to substitute one of the terms with how they intrinsically and subjectively understand it. Therefore the meaning of sentience is subjective. I realize you can expand this to mean that then everything is subjective, but to me that is a sliding scale. The challenge I posed could be rephrased to come up with a definition that is concise and not circular. It would have to be rooted only in objectively definable terms.
Aeolun 4y ago
Then is torture, rape and murder wrong because the victim is sentient, or because the perpetrator is?
- whittingtonaaon 4y ago
  Because the victim is, of course.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    We do, however, choose to not give guilty verdicts to people we feel are not adequately capable of judging this for themselves.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Then is torture, rape and murder wrong because the victim is sentient, or because the perpetrator is? Nothing is wrong unless it's done by a moral actor (which is a much higher standard than sentience. Pretty much everything with a central nervous system is sentient, but lobsters, for instance, are not moral actors. Similarly, the usual understanding of the moral status (the gravity of not the binary permissible/wrong status) of the three acts you describe is somewhat connected to the target as well as the actor being a moral actor (that's least the case with torture, and most the case with murder) rather than merely sentient.
- simonh 4y ago
  There are arguments to be made for both. Some crimes, even if virtual, can stain or corrupt the perpetrator in ways inimical to society. There are plenty of examples of people who fantasised or role played abhorrent behaviour and went on to perpetrate it in real life, so there is a real danger. For example we tolerate computer games with virtual killing, but don’t tolerate virtual rape games. Even with virtual killing there are limits. Should we tolerate nazi death camp torturer simulation games?
  - haswell 4y ago
    I'm trying to understand the connection between the original question and video games. This seems like an orthogonal set of considerations.

chmod775 4y ago

> But the internal evidence is very convincing: try, for example, sticking yourself with a pin. Systems don't need sentience to avoid self-harm: simply assign a large negative weight to self-harm. Now you need a big reward to offset it, making the system reluctant to perform such an action.

whittingtonaaon 4y ago
I’m not talking about self harm. I’m talking about the experience of pain—which most everyone has had! These are different things.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  I'm not quite following your argument on pain. Ability to feel pain is not sentience.
  - whittingtonaaon 4y ago
    It is if you take “sentience” to mean “the ability to feel,” which is what my dictionary just told me. I think this category really is the most basic differentiating one. Higher level stuff like self awareness all depend on it. The most basic difference between a computer and a human (or even a dog…) is, in my opinion, the ability to feel.
    - simonh 4y ago
      Dictionary definitions are of limited utility in philosophical discussions because they often make very broad assumptions. For example computers can certainly sense things, they can detect inputs and make decisions based on those inputs. What is the difference between feeling and sensing though? In this case by ‘feel’ we might implicitly assume various capabilities of the subject experiencing the feeling, like self awareness. If we’re being precise we can’t just say feeling is enough, we need to state the assumptions the dictionary leaves unstated.
      - whittingtonaaon 4y ago
        When we say a camera can see—or a computer can sense—we are using an anthropocentric metaphor.
    - chmod775 4y ago
      >It is if you take “sentience” to mean “the ability to feel,” I don't like this definition much because "feel" is a fuzzy word. In this context it should be "feel" as in experience. I can build a machine that can sense heat and react to it, but I can't build one that can experience heat, or can I? You need to figure out what having the capability "to experience" means, and you'll be one step closer to defining sentience. Even so, I've never experienced anyone coming up with a succinct definition encapsulating how I experience sentience. I believe it can't be done. If it can't be done it renders any discussion about whether or not someone or something is sentient moot. If it can't be put into words we also cannot know how others experience it: If they say this machine is just as sentient as I am, we'll have to take their word for it. So the meaning of sentience is subjective, so there can't be an objective definition acceptable to everyone and everything claiming to be sentient. There's my argument for why sentience cannot be defined. Feel free to prove me wrong by pulling it off.
      - wlorenz65 4y ago
        > but I can't build one that can experience heat, or can I? It would need to have a planner that can detach from reality to hunt for new longterm plans, plus a hardcoded function that draws it back to the present by replacing the top planning goal with "avoid that!" whenever the heat sensor activation has crossed a threshold.
      - trentgreene 4y ago
        ‘So the meaning of sentience is subjective, so there can't be an objective definition acceptable to everyone and everything claiming to be sentient.‘ It feels like your begging the question here, I don’t think this follows from any of your arguments. Except for maybe where you state you believe sentience can’t be defined, which again, begs the question. Though admittedly I don’t see much of a traditional argument — your conclusion is interesting, could you try supporting it?
        chmod775 4y ago
        The first "So" at the beginning of that sentence is a typo. It indeed doesn't follow. You can quickly spot what makes sentience subjective when you follow the explanations. They're all either utter gibberish once unpacked, lead to the conclusion that my computer is sentient (fine by me, but I don't think that's what we wanted?), are rooted in other terms with subjective meaning, or they are circular. Let's look at that third kind, which Wikipedia illustrates well: > Sentience: Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations [...] > Experience: Experience refers to conscious events in general [...] > Conscious: Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience [...] Back at where we started. To break this circle one needs to substitute one of the terms with how they intrinsically and subjectively understand it. Therefore the meaning of sentience is subjective. I realize you can expand this to mean that then everything is subjective, but to me that is a sliding scale. The challenge I posed could be rephrased to come up with a definition that is concise and not circular. It would have to be rooted only in objectively definable terms.

Aeolun 4y ago

Then is torture, rape and murder wrong because the victim is sentient, or because the perpetrator is?

whittingtonaaon 4y ago
Because the victim is, of course.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  We do, however, choose to not give guilty verdicts to people we feel are not adequately capable of judging this for themselves.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Then is torture, rape and murder wrong because the victim is sentient, or because the perpetrator is? Nothing is wrong unless it's done by a moral actor (which is a much higher standard than sentience. Pretty much everything with a central nervous system is sentient, but lobsters, for instance, are not moral actors. Similarly, the usual understanding of the moral status (the gravity of not the binary permissible/wrong status) of the three acts you describe is somewhat connected to the target as well as the actor being a moral actor (that's least the case with torture, and most the case with murder) rather than merely sentient.
simonh 4y ago
There are arguments to be made for both. Some crimes, even if virtual, can stain or corrupt the perpetrator in ways inimical to society. There are plenty of examples of people who fantasised or role played abhorrent behaviour and went on to perpetrate it in real life, so there is a real danger. For example we tolerate computer games with virtual killing, but don’t tolerate virtual rape games. Even with virtual killing there are limits. Should we tolerate nazi death camp torturer simulation games?
- haswell 4y ago
  I'm trying to understand the connection between the original question and video games. This seems like an orthogonal set of considerations.