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It seems like you're confusing sentience with intelligence or some other related concept. Sentience is the mental state of subjectively experiencing sensations.

It seems like you're confusing sentience with intelligence or some other related concept. Sentience is the mental state of subjectively experiencing sensations. The only time humans aren't sentient is during some stages of sleep, being knocked unconscious, general anesthesia, brain damage, etc.

TOGoS 3y ago
I'm not sure that there's a sharp distinction. From my experience inside my own head, the times that I spend 'on autopilot' in hindsight seem a bit robotic. Pleasure and pain may have been experienced, but were somehow less meaningful than on other occasions when I am better attending to my feelings or just in a more stimulating environment (e.g. when it's raining and there's fresh breeze blowing in through the window). What we think of as 'sentience' is surely a combination of things happening in our brains that all animals have to different degrees, rather than an on/off switch that's only present in certain animals and at certain times. It's just that most people's conscious experience is boring enough (unconscious -> wake up -> go to work -> go home -> go to sleep; I can do algebra but my cat can't, etc) that a simplified 'conscious or not' model is generally accepted.
- fasterik 3y ago
  Yes, I think the general consensus is that consciousness is a spectrum. But even when something is a spectrum, it can still make sense to define a binary in terms of a threshold, like how we define bits in terms of high and low voltages. Obviously even when you're on autopilot you're above a certain threshold of sentience because you're still having conscious experiences. You would react if you were to see something dangerous or feel something painful. I still think it makes sense in this context to say that humans are sentient most of the time. I think it's reasonable to assume that intelligence is orthogonal to consciousness. I can imagine an AI that is very intelligent but has no subjective experience. Similarly, I can imagine a creature that has a very rich range of subjective experiences, but is unable to understand and change the world around it. Obviously these are just thought experiments and we don't have good theories of what consciousness and intelligence really are, but I think it's consistent with our current understanding of biology and neuroscience.
taneq 3y ago
If your definition of sentience is entirely related to subjective experience (as opposed to anything more concrete such as eg. a reflexive self model) then, given how completely non-disprovable subjective experiences are, it seems irrelevant to any serious conversation.

TOGoS 3y ago

I'm not sure that there's a sharp distinction. From my experience inside my own head, the times that I spend 'on autopilot' in hindsight seem a bit robotic. Pleasure and pain may have been experienced, but were somehow less meaningful than on other occasions when I am better attending to my feelings or just in a more stimulating environment (e.g. when it's raining and there's fresh breeze blowing in through the window). What we think of as 'sentience' is surely a combination of things happening in our brains that all animals have to different degrees, rather than an on/off switch that's only present in certain animals and at certain times. It's just that most people's conscious experience is boring enough (unconscious -> wake up -> go to work -> go home -> go to sleep; I can do algebra but my cat can't, etc) that a simplified 'conscious or not' model is generally accepted.

fasterik 3y ago
Yes, I think the general consensus is that consciousness is a spectrum. But even when something is a spectrum, it can still make sense to define a binary in terms of a threshold, like how we define bits in terms of high and low voltages. Obviously even when you're on autopilot you're above a certain threshold of sentience because you're still having conscious experiences. You would react if you were to see something dangerous or feel something painful. I still think it makes sense in this context to say that humans are sentient most of the time. I think it's reasonable to assume that intelligence is orthogonal to consciousness. I can imagine an AI that is very intelligent but has no subjective experience. Similarly, I can imagine a creature that has a very rich range of subjective experiences, but is unable to understand and change the world around it. Obviously these are just thought experiments and we don't have good theories of what consciousness and intelligence really are, but I think it's consistent with our current understanding of biology and neuroscience.

taneq 3y ago

If your definition of sentience is entirely related to subjective experience (as opposed to anything more concrete such as eg. a reflexive self model) then, given how completely non-disprovable subjective experiences are, it seems irrelevant to any serious conversation.