“How do you know it exists, if science knows nothing about it?”
All science has to go on is the data that people produce which makes claims about sentience, but that data can’t necessarily be trusted. Beyond that, all we have is internal belief that the feelings we imagine we experience are real because they feel real, and it’s hard to see how we could be fooled if we don’t exist to be fooled. But an AGI scientist won’t be satisfied by our claims—it could write off the whole idea as the ramblings of natural general stupidity systems.
“This same argument applies just as well to any distributed property. I agree that intelligence/sentience/etc. does not arise from complexity alone, but it is a distributed process and you will not find a single atom of Consciousness anywhere in your brain.”
That isn’t good enough. If pain is experienced by something, that something cannot be in a compound of any kind with none of the components feeling any of it. A distribution cannot suffer.
“Is your sentience in any way connected to what you say?”
It’s completely tied to what I say. The main problem is that other people tend to misinterpret what they read by mixing other ideas into it as a short cut to understanding.
“Then sentience must either be a physical process, or capable of reaching in and pushing around atoms to make your neurons fire to make your lips say something. The latter is far more unlikely and not supported by any evidence. Perhaps you are not your thoughts and memories alone, but what else is there for “you” to be made of?”
Focus on the data generation. It takes physical processes to drive that generation, and rules are being applied in the data system to do this with each part of that process being governed by physical processes. For data to be produced that makes claims about experiences of pain, a rational process with causes and effects at every step has to run through. If the “pain” is nothing more than assertions that the data system is programmed to churn out without looking for proof of the existence of pain, there is no reason to take those assertions at face value, but if they are true, they have to fit into the cause-and-effect chain of mechanism somewhere—they have to be involved in a physical interaction, because without it, they cannot have a role in generating the data that supposedly tells us about them.
“So the Sentiences are truly epiphenomenonological, then? (They have no causal effect on physical reality?) Then how can they be said to exist? Regardless of the Deep Philosophical Issues, how could you have any evidence of their existence, or what they are like?”
Repeatedly switching the sentient thing wouldn’t remove its causal role, and nor would having more than one sentience all acting at once—they could collectively have an input even if they aren’t all “voting the same way”, and they aren’t going to find out if they got their wish or not because they’ll be loaded with a feeling of satisfaction that they “won the vote” even if they didn’t, and they won’t remember which way they “voted” or what they were even “voting” on.
“They are both categories of things.”
“Chairness” is quite unlike sentience. “Chairness” is an imagined property, whereas sentience is an experience of a feeling.
“It’s the same analogy as before—just as you don’t need to split a chair’s atoms to split the chair itself, you don’t need to make a brain’s atoms suffer to make it suffer.”
You can damage a chair with an axe without breaking every bond, but some bonds will be broken. You can’t split it without breaking any bonds. Most of the chair is not broken (unless you’ve broken most of the bonds). For suffering in a brain, it isn’t necessarily atoms that suffer, but if the suffering is real, something must suffer, and if it isn’t the atoms, it must be something else. It isn’t good enough to say that it’s a plurality of atoms or an arrangement of atoms that suffers without any of the atoms feeling anything, because you’ve failed to identify the sufferer. No arrangement of non-suffering components can provide everything that’s required to support suffering.
″ “Nothing is ever more than the sum of its parts (including any medium on which it depends). Complex systems can reveal hidden aspects of their components, but those aspects are always there.” --> How do you know that? And how can this survive contact with reality, where in practice we call things “chairs” even if there is no chair-ness in its atoms?”
“Chair” is a label representing a compound object. Calling it a chair doesn’t magically make it more than the sum of its parts. Chairs provide two services—one that they support a person sitting on them, and the other that they support someone’s back leaning against it. That is what a chair is. You can make a chair in many ways, such as by cutting out a cuboid of rock from a cliff face. You could potentially make a chair using force fields. “Chairness” is a compound property which refers to the functionalities of a chair. (Some kinds of “chairness” could also refer to other aspects of some chairs, such as their common shapes, but they are not universal.) The fundamental functionalities of chairs are found in the forces between the component atoms. The forces are present in a single atom even when it has no other atom to interact with. There is never a case where anything is more than the sum of its parts—any proposed example of such a thing is wrong.
Is there an example of something being more than the sum of its parts there? If so, why don’t we go directly to that. Give me your best example of this magical phenomenon.
“But the capability of an arrangement of atoms to compute 2+2 is not inside the atoms themselves. And anyway, this supposed “hidden property” is nothing more than the fact that the electron produces an electric field pointed toward it. Repelling-each-other is a behavior that two electrons do because of this electric field, and there’s no inherent “repelling electrons” property inside the electron itself.”
In both cases, you’re using compound properties where they are built up of component properties, and then you’re wrongly considering your compound properties to be fundamental ones.
“But it’s not a thing! It’s not an object, it’s a process, and there’s no reason to expect the process to keep going somewhere else when its physical substrate fails.”
You can’t make a process suffer.
“Taking the converse does not preserve truth. All cats are mammals but not all mammals are cats.”
Claiming that a pattern can suffer is a way-out claim. Maybe the universe is that weird though, but it’s worth spelling out clearly what it is you’re attributing sentience to. If you’re happy with the idea of a pattern experiencing pain, then patterns become remarkable things. (I’d rather look for something of more substance rather than a mere arrangement, but it leaves us both with the bigger problem of how that sentience can make its existence known to a data system.)
“You could torture the software, if it were self-aware and had a utility function.”
Torturing software is like trying to torture the text in an ebook.
“But—where is the physical sufferer inside you?”
That’s what I want to know.
“You have pointed to several non-suffering patterns, but you could just as easily do the same if sentience was a process but an uncommon one. (Bayes!)”
Do you seriously imagine that there’s any magic pattern that can feel pain, such as a pattern of activity where none of the component actions feel anything?
“There is already an explanation. There is no need to invoke the unobservable.”
If you can’t identify anything that’s suffering, you don’t have an explanation, and if you can’t identify how your imagined-to-be-suffering process or pattern is transmitting knowledge of that suffering to the processes that build the data that documents the experience of suffering, again you don’t have an explanation.
“How do you know it exists, if science knows nothing about it?”
All science has to go on is the data that people produce which makes claims about sentience, but that data can’t necessarily be trusted. Beyond that, all we have is internal belief that the feelings we imagine we experience are real because they feel real, and it’s hard to see how we could be fooled if we don’t exist to be fooled. But an AGI scientist won’t be satisfied by our claims—it could write off the whole idea as the ramblings of natural general stupidity systems.
“This same argument applies just as well to any distributed property. I agree that intelligence/sentience/etc. does not arise from complexity alone, but it is a distributed process and you will not find a single atom of Consciousness anywhere in your brain.”
That isn’t good enough. If pain is experienced by something, that something cannot be in a compound of any kind with none of the components feeling any of it. A distribution cannot suffer.
“Is your sentience in any way connected to what you say?”
It’s completely tied to what I say. The main problem is that other people tend to misinterpret what they read by mixing other ideas into it as a short cut to understanding.
“Then sentience must either be a physical process, or capable of reaching in and pushing around atoms to make your neurons fire to make your lips say something. The latter is far more unlikely and not supported by any evidence. Perhaps you are not your thoughts and memories alone, but what else is there for “you” to be made of?”
Focus on the data generation. It takes physical processes to drive that generation, and rules are being applied in the data system to do this with each part of that process being governed by physical processes. For data to be produced that makes claims about experiences of pain, a rational process with causes and effects at every step has to run through. If the “pain” is nothing more than assertions that the data system is programmed to churn out without looking for proof of the existence of pain, there is no reason to take those assertions at face value, but if they are true, they have to fit into the cause-and-effect chain of mechanism somewhere—they have to be involved in a physical interaction, because without it, they cannot have a role in generating the data that supposedly tells us about them.
“So the Sentiences are truly epiphenomenonological, then? (They have no causal effect on physical reality?) Then how can they be said to exist? Regardless of the Deep Philosophical Issues, how could you have any evidence of their existence, or what they are like?”
Repeatedly switching the sentient thing wouldn’t remove its causal role, and nor would having more than one sentience all acting at once—they could collectively have an input even if they aren’t all “voting the same way”, and they aren’t going to find out if they got their wish or not because they’ll be loaded with a feeling of satisfaction that they “won the vote” even if they didn’t, and they won’t remember which way they “voted” or what they were even “voting” on.
“They are both categories of things.”
“Chairness” is quite unlike sentience. “Chairness” is an imagined property, whereas sentience is an experience of a feeling.
“It’s the same analogy as before—just as you don’t need to split a chair’s atoms to split the chair itself, you don’t need to make a brain’s atoms suffer to make it suffer.”
You can damage a chair with an axe without breaking every bond, but some bonds will be broken. You can’t split it without breaking any bonds. Most of the chair is not broken (unless you’ve broken most of the bonds). For suffering in a brain, it isn’t necessarily atoms that suffer, but if the suffering is real, something must suffer, and if it isn’t the atoms, it must be something else. It isn’t good enough to say that it’s a plurality of atoms or an arrangement of atoms that suffers without any of the atoms feeling anything, because you’ve failed to identify the sufferer. No arrangement of non-suffering components can provide everything that’s required to support suffering.
″ “Nothing is ever more than the sum of its parts (including any medium on which it depends). Complex systems can reveal hidden aspects of their components, but those aspects are always there.” --> How do you know that? And how can this survive contact with reality, where in practice we call things “chairs” even if there is no chair-ness in its atoms?”
“Chair” is a label representing a compound object. Calling it a chair doesn’t magically make it more than the sum of its parts. Chairs provide two services—one that they support a person sitting on them, and the other that they support someone’s back leaning against it. That is what a chair is. You can make a chair in many ways, such as by cutting out a cuboid of rock from a cliff face. You could potentially make a chair using force fields. “Chairness” is a compound property which refers to the functionalities of a chair. (Some kinds of “chairness” could also refer to other aspects of some chairs, such as their common shapes, but they are not universal.) The fundamental functionalities of chairs are found in the forces between the component atoms. The forces are present in a single atom even when it has no other atom to interact with. There is never a case where anything is more than the sum of its parts—any proposed example of such a thing is wrong.
“I recommend the Reductionism subsequence.”
Is there an example of something being more than the sum of its parts there? If so, why don’t we go directly to that. Give me your best example of this magical phenomenon.
“But the capability of an arrangement of atoms to compute 2+2 is not inside the atoms themselves. And anyway, this supposed “hidden property” is nothing more than the fact that the electron produces an electric field pointed toward it. Repelling-each-other is a behavior that two electrons do because of this electric field, and there’s no inherent “repelling electrons” property inside the electron itself.”
In both cases, you’re using compound properties where they are built up of component properties, and then you’re wrongly considering your compound properties to be fundamental ones.
“But it’s not a thing! It’s not an object, it’s a process, and there’s no reason to expect the process to keep going somewhere else when its physical substrate fails.”
You can’t make a process suffer.
“Taking the converse does not preserve truth. All cats are mammals but not all mammals are cats.”
Claiming that a pattern can suffer is a way-out claim. Maybe the universe is that weird though, but it’s worth spelling out clearly what it is you’re attributing sentience to. If you’re happy with the idea of a pattern experiencing pain, then patterns become remarkable things. (I’d rather look for something of more substance rather than a mere arrangement, but it leaves us both with the bigger problem of how that sentience can make its existence known to a data system.)
“You could torture the software, if it were self-aware and had a utility function.”
Torturing software is like trying to torture the text in an ebook.
“But—where is the physical sufferer inside you?”
That’s what I want to know.
“You have pointed to several non-suffering patterns, but you could just as easily do the same if sentience was a process but an uncommon one. (Bayes!)”
Do you seriously imagine that there’s any magic pattern that can feel pain, such as a pattern of activity where none of the component actions feel anything?
“There is already an explanation. There is no need to invoke the unobservable.”
If you can’t identify anything that’s suffering, you don’t have an explanation, and if you can’t identify how your imagined-to-be-suffering process or pattern is transmitting knowledge of that suffering to the processes that build the data that documents the experience of suffering, again you don’t have an explanation.