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> Fundamental phenomena would either exist or not exist, including the phenomenon of first-person experience. Why do you think first-person experience is funda

by Bjartr 3y ago

> Fundamental phenomena would either exist or not exist, including the phenomenon of first-person experience. Why do you think first-person experience is fundamental? It seems to me it's way more likely to be an aggregate phenomenon, like fire. There's no low level fundamental fireyness, it's a chemical reaction like any other, we humans just label reactions that meet certain criteria of scale, setting, and composition as "fires". > Some supporting evidence is that first-person experience in sentient systems, as far as I've observed, is usually motivated to preserve sentient systems I suspect this has more to do with the fact that you are far more likely to observe systems that seek to preserve themselves, since they are more likely to continue to exist. It doesn't indicate an emergent behavior of sentience, it's just observation bias.

odyssey7 3y ago
These are insightful. The question about classifying phenomena as "fire" reminds me of Plato's forms. It's about how the human cognitive system divvies up the world into abstract models, more than it's about the underlying physics of instances of those forms. Still, the ideas of a fundamental property of reality vs a composite one are themselves forms, abstractions within human cognition, so it seems the answer would be ill-formed. An emergent behavior is a macro phenomenon that arises from simpler ones. We can say that an emergent behavior exists if we can find just one example of it, so the probability of it happening isn't as central. However, establishing for one example that both a structure and its components are sentient is a tall order -- each of us knows only one first-person experience first-hand. We can accept that we are sentient, but could we conclude that each tissue and cell has its own experiences? Thinking about the subconscious helps persuade me that it's possible. Not all carbon exists in crystalline form, but just one example of graphite or diamond makes properties of carbon atoms apparent.

by Bjartr 3y ago

odyssey7 3y ago

These are insightful. The question about classifying phenomena as "fire" reminds me of Plato's forms. It's about how the human cognitive system divvies up the world into abstract models, more than it's about the underlying physics of instances of those forms. Still, the ideas of a fundamental property of reality vs a composite one are themselves forms, abstractions within human cognition, so it seems the answer would be ill-formed. An emergent behavior is a macro phenomenon that arises from simpler ones. We can say that an emergent behavior exists if we can find just one example of it, so the probability of it happening isn't as central. However, establishing for one example that both a structure and its components are sentient is a tall order -- each of us knows only one first-person experience first-hand. We can accept that we are sentient, but could we conclude that each tissue and cell has its own experiences? Thinking about the subconscious helps persuade me that it's possible. Not all carbon exists in crystalline form, but just one example of graphite or diamond makes properties of carbon atoms apparent.