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#5943·Dennis Hackethal revised 3 days ago… because it could always in principle have been produced by a nonconscious program.
I don’t think that’s right. There could be animal behavior I’d have serious trouble explaining.
People asked me about this at Conjecture Con. For example, if we took an animal out of the context in which it evolved, and put it in a new context it didn’t evolve for – that’s where animals bug out – but instead of bugging out, it behaved more like a human in an unknown situation and became reflective, actually seemed to understand what was going on, that would at least give me pause.
I can’t be more specific than that because it would depend in part on new knowledge the animal would have to create in that situation, and by definition I can’t predict new knowledge. But I’d know it when I see it.
That may not be completely satisfying, but it shows that it’s simply not true that any animal behavior “could always in principle have been produced by a nonconscious program.” (Or rather, the implication that I could always explain any animal behavior away.)
To be as specific as I can though, video 15 in my series on animals and sleepwalkers shows the kind of thing I mean. The woman in the video is asleep while talking to her husband for most of the video, but toward the end she wakes up, and there’s something different in her eyes and about her attitude and responses. It’s hard to put into words, but again you know it when you see it.
I think this leaves my central criticism unresolved: Your hypothetical "I'd know it when I see it" seems to test whether an animal possesses universal creativity, whereas my question is whether it can have subjective experiences without possessing that capacity.
Even if an animal never demonstrated the kind of reflective understanding you describe, why would that count as evidence that it cannot feel pain, fear, or anything else?
This seems to depend on the very connection between universal creativity and sentience that is under dispute. What is the independent reason for thinking that noncreative information processing cannot support phenomenal experience?
And I find your sleepwalking example particularly interesting in this regard, because it seems to support the possibility that these capacities don't need to go together. In the video, you yourself point out that the woman can recognize objects and taste, including recognizing that rice cakes are dry, even while asleep.
When she wakes up, however, what seems to change is her capacity for reflective awareness and understanding.