The idea that subjective experience can be dismissed as a hubgalopus strikes me as pretty weird. Maybe there’s nobody home at the Tiiba residence but that’s not how it is around here.
Subjective experience is defined by Daniel Dennett as the existence of an answer to the “what-is-it-like-to-be-a” question. That is, I know from direct observation that it is like something to be Michael Tobis. I suspect from extrapolation that it is like something to be Tiiba or to be Eliezer Yudkowsy, or, indeed, a cat. I suspect from observation that it is not like anything to be a chair or a football or a coffee cup, or to use Dennett’s favorite example, a cheeseburger.
I am uncertain about whether it is like something to be a Turing-Test-passing device. Oddly, I find it fairly easy to construct reasonably compelling arguments either way. I consider the question indeterminate, and I consider its indeterminacy to present serious ethical problems for anyone proposing to construct such a device.
That I cannot define this property of subjective experience in an objectively testable way is not just conceded but claimed. That is part of my point; objective methods are necessarily incomplete regarding a very salient aspect of the universe.
But it is certainly subjectively testable (by me in the case of the entity which I, in fact, am and by you in the case of the entity which you yourself are, presuming in fact you are one). At least one subjectivity exists, by subjective observation. Yes, you in there. That perceived whiteness on the screen around these symbols. That feeling of wooliness in your socks. The taste of stale coffee in that mug by your side. All that sensation. Those “qualia”. If they don’t exists for you, I am talking to myself, but I promise you I’ve got a bunch of experiences happening right now.
I find no grand theory compelling which cannot account for this central and salient fact. Yet this fact, the existence of at least one subjective experience, cannot actually be accounted for objectively, because, again there can be no objective test for subjectivity.
Accordingly I find no grand theory compelling at all.
I am comfortable with this undecidability of the nature of the universe, (in fact I find it rather attractive and elegant) but many people are not. It really wouldn’t matter much and I would happily keep this model of the fundamental incompleteness of reason to myself, except that all you transhumanists are starting to play with fire as if you knew what is going on.
I believe you do not know and I believe you cannot know.
Strong AI is consequently, in my view, a very bad idea and so I devoutly hope you fail miserably; this despite the fact that I have a lot in common with you people and that I rather like most of you.
The idea that subjective experience can be dismissed as a hubgalopus strikes me as pretty weird. Maybe there’s nobody home at the Tiiba residence but that’s not how it is around here.
Subjective experience is defined by Daniel Dennett as the existence of an answer to the “what-is-it-like-to-be-a” question. That is, I know from direct observation that it is like something to be Michael Tobis. I suspect from extrapolation that it is like something to be Tiiba or to be Eliezer Yudkowsy, or, indeed, a cat. I suspect from observation that it is not like anything to be a chair or a football or a coffee cup, or to use Dennett’s favorite example, a cheeseburger.
I am uncertain about whether it is like something to be a Turing-Test-passing device. Oddly, I find it fairly easy to construct reasonably compelling arguments either way. I consider the question indeterminate, and I consider its indeterminacy to present serious ethical problems for anyone proposing to construct such a device.
That I cannot define this property of subjective experience in an objectively testable way is not just conceded but claimed. That is part of my point; objective methods are necessarily incomplete regarding a very salient aspect of the universe.
But it is certainly subjectively testable (by me in the case of the entity which I, in fact, am and by you in the case of the entity which you yourself are, presuming in fact you are one). At least one subjectivity exists, by subjective observation. Yes, you in there. That perceived whiteness on the screen around these symbols. That feeling of wooliness in your socks. The taste of stale coffee in that mug by your side. All that sensation. Those “qualia”. If they don’t exists for you, I am talking to myself, but I promise you I’ve got a bunch of experiences happening right now.
I find no grand theory compelling which cannot account for this central and salient fact. Yet this fact, the existence of at least one subjective experience, cannot actually be accounted for objectively, because, again there can be no objective test for subjectivity.
Accordingly I find no grand theory compelling at all.
I am comfortable with this undecidability of the nature of the universe, (in fact I find it rather attractive and elegant) but many people are not. It really wouldn’t matter much and I would happily keep this model of the fundamental incompleteness of reason to myself, except that all you transhumanists are starting to play with fire as if you knew what is going on.
I believe you do not know and I believe you cannot know.
Strong AI is consequently, in my view, a very bad idea and so I devoutly hope you fail miserably; this despite the fact that I have a lot in common with you people and that I rather like most of you.