Sentience: This feels like a continuous thing that gets less and less sophisticated as we go up the information history. In each generation, the code gets a little better at using the laws of physics and chemistry to preserve itself.
I think that getting better at using the laws of physics to reproduce, is some stage before sentience. Sentience as defined by Singer is about responses to pleasure and pain stimuli—which is a specific adaptation that requires specific neural pathways that are not present, e.g., in bacteria. I’m fine with adding another layer before sentience, let’s call it reproduction, and maybe that one is continuous as you suggest, but it stretches what people call conscious. Sure, you can define consciousness to include that layer, and maybe that is what people call panpsychism, but to me, that seems more like expanding a definition by applying an affect heuristic.
But the last two still feel too strong. I will think more about it.
For what it’s worth, I think we will soon see “robots” or LLMs or some such systems that have meta-consciousness or self-consciousness. There are reports of LLMs passing the mirror test and if they can do that and argue the case—and I have seen pretty advanced arguments about reflection too—then you have meta-consciousness also.
I think that getting better at using the laws of physics to reproduce, is some stage before sentience. Sentience as defined by Singer is about responses to pleasure and pain stimuli—which is a specific adaptation that requires specific neural pathways that are not present, e.g., in bacteria. I’m fine with adding another layer before sentience, let’s call it reproduction, and maybe that one is continuous as you suggest, but it stretches what people call conscious. Sure, you can define consciousness to include that layer, and maybe that is what people call panpsychism, but to me, that seems more like expanding a definition by applying an affect heuristic.
I’m not sure what “the last two”. :confused:
*The last two bullet points. Meta-consciousness and self-consciousness
For what it’s worth, I think we will soon see “robots” or LLMs or some such systems that have meta-consciousness or self-consciousness. There are reports of LLMs passing the mirror test and if they can do that and argue the case—and I have seen pretty advanced arguments about reflection too—then you have meta-consciousness also.