I’m not so sure I get your meaning. Is your knowledge of the taste of salt based on communication?
Usually people make precisely the opposite claim. That no amount of communication can teach you what something subjectively feels like if you haven’t had the experience yourself.
My tentative new idea is (along the lines of) ‘subjective experience’ is akin to a ‘story that could be told’ from the perspective (POV) of the ‘experiencer’. There would then be a ‘spectrum’ of ‘sentience’ corresponding to the ‘complexity’ of stories that could be told about different kinds of things. The ‘story’ of a rock or a photon is very different, and much simpler, than even a bacterium, let alone megafauna or humans.
‘Consciousness’ tho would be, basically, ‘being a storyteller’.
But without consciousness, there can’t be any awareness (or self awareness) of ‘sentience’ or ‘subjective experience’. Non-conscious sentience just is sentient, but not also (self-)aware of its own sentience.
Consciousness does tho provide some (limited) way to ‘share’ subjective experiences. And maybe there’s some kind of (‘future-tech’) way we could more directly share experiences; ‘telling a story’ is basically all we have now.
I’m not so sure I get your meaning. Is your knowledge of the taste of salt based on communication?
Usually people make precisely the opposite claim. That no amount of communication can teach you what something subjectively feels like if you haven’t had the experience yourself.
I do find it difficult to describe “subjective experience” to people who don’t quickly get the idea. This is better than anything I could write: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/.
I’ve updated somewhat – based on this video (of all things):
Stephen Wolfram: Complexity and the Fabric of Reality | Lex Fridman Podcast #234 - YouTube
My tentative new idea is (along the lines of) ‘subjective experience’ is akin to a ‘story that could be told’ from the perspective (POV) of the ‘experiencer’. There would then be a ‘spectrum’ of ‘sentience’ corresponding to the ‘complexity’ of stories that could be told about different kinds of things. The ‘story’ of a rock or a photon is very different, and much simpler, than even a bacterium, let alone megafauna or humans.
‘Consciousness’ tho would be, basically, ‘being a storyteller’.
But without consciousness, there can’t be any awareness (or self awareness) of ‘sentience’ or ‘subjective experience’. Non-conscious sentience just is sentient, but not also (self-)aware of its own sentience.
Consciousness does tho provide some (limited) way to ‘share’ subjective experiences. And maybe there’s some kind of (‘future-tech’) way we could more directly share experiences; ‘telling a story’ is basically all we have now.