RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
June 27, 2022 at 7:30 am
(This post was last modified: June 27, 2022 at 7:47 am by The Grand Nudger.)
The same way I justify the notion that you are really™ experiencing what things are like. It is a good point, though. If seeing some set of behaviors, and understanding how these things worked, doesn't suggest or certify that a thing is experiencing - then it doesn't suggest or certify that in our cases either...which is a way some people go with it. Stuff like this doesn't indict any hypothetical science of sentience, it indicts our own self designation as sentient creatures by such a description.
Personally, I think we already live in a world full of things that experience, and it's clear that we don't all manage that in the same way or with identical apparatus. It would not surprise me to find that yet another collection of stuff that achieves a similar effect (and I doubt that we've accurately identified every already existent experiencer just on this rock at present). I think that it would be harder to produce a specifically human consciousness than a general machine consciousness - but if we knew how it worked ala the questions setup - less so. I also understand that our frame of reference is necessarily constrained - that some other sentient creature might doubt that we fit the bill - might think that we're just convincing bioautomata..just as we tend to believe about much of life and even much of our own selves. It may say ...armed with a similar understanding of it's own operation.... "see, we do step z - and they don't". QED, case solved, not sentient like us, not sentient...really™.
Personally, I think we already live in a world full of things that experience, and it's clear that we don't all manage that in the same way or with identical apparatus. It would not surprise me to find that yet another collection of stuff that achieves a similar effect (and I doubt that we've accurately identified every already existent experiencer just on this rock at present). I think that it would be harder to produce a specifically human consciousness than a general machine consciousness - but if we knew how it worked ala the questions setup - less so. I also understand that our frame of reference is necessarily constrained - that some other sentient creature might doubt that we fit the bill - might think that we're just convincing bioautomata..just as we tend to believe about much of life and even much of our own selves. It may say ...armed with a similar understanding of it's own operation.... "see, we do step z - and they don't". QED, case solved, not sentient like us, not sentient...really™.
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