Animal Consciousness
#5969·Vincent Brunsch, 2 days ago·AI-assistedYes, I think you misunderstood. I've been referring to continuity in the organization of information processing, not the physical substrate. Evolutionary continuity is relevant because humans and other animals share many mechanisms and processing structures, some of which may be relevant to sentience. That doesn't imply that evolution couldn't also produce fundamentally new cognitive capacities.
organization of information processing
What does this mean if nothing physical? You mean the structure of their code?
#5966·Dennis Hackethal, 3 days ago… I never argued that the physical substrate was what mattered.
As I understood it, you argued that it mattered insofar as it was part of evolutionary continuity. Did I misunderstand you there?
Yes, I think you misunderstood. I've been referring to continuity in the organization of information processing, not the physical substrate. Evolutionary continuity is relevant because humans and other animals share many mechanisms and processing structures, some of which may be relevant to sentience. That doesn't imply that evolution couldn't also produce fundamentally new cognitive capacities.
#5965·Vincent Brunsch, 3 days ago·AI-assistedI think you're still missing the distinction I've made. Initially, you invoked substrate independence as though it contradicted my argument, but I never argued that the physical substrate was what mattered.
As Tegmark explains in the article you linked, it's the organization of information processing that matters, not the material implementing it. And that's exactly what I've been talking about: humans and other animals share evolved mechanisms with significant continuity in how information processing is organized.
Your MacBook analogy doesn't address that. In fact, if a future MacBook became sentient, it would be very interesting to investigate its predecessors (probably) ONLY if they shared a sufficiently similar organization of information processing. If, instead, sentience arose through a fundamentally different program, those predecessors would be much less plausible candidates for sentience.
So when you conclude that it would be about software rather than hardware, you're arguing against a claim I never made.
In fact, if a future MacBook became sentient, it would be very interesting to investigate its predecessors (probably) ONLY if they shared a sufficiently similar organization of information processing.
But we already know both current and future MacBooks will have von Neumann architecture. We already know it’s only different programming that could matter re: consciousness.
#5965·Vincent Brunsch, 3 days ago·AI-assistedI think you're still missing the distinction I've made. Initially, you invoked substrate independence as though it contradicted my argument, but I never argued that the physical substrate was what mattered.
As Tegmark explains in the article you linked, it's the organization of information processing that matters, not the material implementing it. And that's exactly what I've been talking about: humans and other animals share evolved mechanisms with significant continuity in how information processing is organized.
Your MacBook analogy doesn't address that. In fact, if a future MacBook became sentient, it would be very interesting to investigate its predecessors (probably) ONLY if they shared a sufficiently similar organization of information processing. If, instead, sentience arose through a fundamentally different program, those predecessors would be much less plausible candidates for sentience.
So when you conclude that it would be about software rather than hardware, you're arguing against a claim I never made.
And that's exactly what I've been talking about: humans and other animals share evolved mechanisms with significant continuity in how information processing is organized.
I disagree. I think there’s an important break/jump in human evolution: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/the-neo-darwinian-theory-of-the-mind
#5965·Vincent Brunsch, 3 days ago·AI-assistedI think you're still missing the distinction I've made. Initially, you invoked substrate independence as though it contradicted my argument, but I never argued that the physical substrate was what mattered.
As Tegmark explains in the article you linked, it's the organization of information processing that matters, not the material implementing it. And that's exactly what I've been talking about: humans and other animals share evolved mechanisms with significant continuity in how information processing is organized.
Your MacBook analogy doesn't address that. In fact, if a future MacBook became sentient, it would be very interesting to investigate its predecessors (probably) ONLY if they shared a sufficiently similar organization of information processing. If, instead, sentience arose through a fundamentally different program, those predecessors would be much less plausible candidates for sentience.
So when you conclude that it would be about software rather than hardware, you're arguing against a claim I never made.
… I never argued that the physical substrate was what mattered.
As I understood it, you argued that it mattered insofar as it was part of evolutionary continuity. Did I misunderstand you there?
#5934·Dennis Hackethal, 4 days agoThere’s also continuity in how MacBooks process information over the years, and how their hardware evolved, including ‘sensory processing’ like their cameras and microphones, yet none of them are sentient/conscious, and if one became conscious tomorrow, it would have nothing to do with its hardware and everything to do with its software.
I think you're still missing the distinction I've made. Initially, you invoked substrate independence as though it contradicted my argument, but I never argued that the physical substrate was what mattered.
As Tegmark explains in the article you linked, it's the organization of information processing that matters, not the material implementing it. And that's exactly what I've been talking about: humans and other animals share evolved mechanisms with significant continuity in how information processing is organized.
Your MacBook analogy doesn't address that. In fact, if a future MacBook became sentient, it would be very interesting to investigate its predecessors (probably) ONLY if they shared a sufficiently similar organization of information processing. If, instead, sentience arose through a fundamentally different program, those predecessors would be much less plausible candidates for sentience.
So when you conclude that it would be about software rather than hardware, you're arguing against a claim I never made.
#5958·Vincent Brunsch, 3 days ago·AI-assistedI 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.
… 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.
She’s unconscious for all of that! It shows the opposite.
I shouldn’t be a hypocrite…
Your hypothetical "I'd know it when I see it" seems to test whether an animal possesses universal creativity…
More unnecessarily complicated language.
Your hypothetical "I'd know it when I see it" seems to test whether an animal possesses universal creativity…
More needlessly complicated language.
#5958·Vincent Brunsch, 3 days ago·AI-assistedI 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.
What is the independent reason for thinking that noncreative information processing cannot support phenomenal experience?
Because nothing is missing in our explanations of how calculators, roombas, self-driving cars etc work. Consciousness doesn’t figure in our explanations of them. The information processing animals do is the same as that of calculators etc. So the same conclusion applies.
#5958·Vincent Brunsch, 3 days ago·AI-assistedI 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.
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?
Because then it can be explained fully in terms of mindless execution of a pre-written computer program.
#5958·Vincent Brunsch, 3 days ago·AI-assistedI 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.
Your hypothetical "I'd know it when I see it" seems to test whether an animal possesses universal creativity…
More unnecessarily complicated language.
#5943·Dennis Hackethal revised 4 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.
We have different degrees of awareness during different dreams, I agree. But we’re aware of them. With higher critical ability, we plausibly get lucid dreaming – lower instead means passive observation.
It’s like watching a movie. I have no control over what happens in the movie, still I’m consciously aware of it. I could instead play a video game, where I do have some control over what happens, and which arguably requires more of a critical attitude. I don’t see how this refutes my stance.
We have different degrees of awareness during different dreams, I agree. But we’re aware of them. With higher critical ability, we plausibly have more control over a dream – lower instead means passive observation.
It’s like watching a movie. I have no control over what happens in the movie, still I’m consciously aware of it. I could instead play a video game, where I do have some control over what happens, and which arguably requires more of a critical attitude. I don’t see how this refutes my stance.
#5690·Dennis Hackethal, 19 days agoWe have different degrees of awareness during different dreams, I agree. But we’re aware of them. With higher critical ability, we plausibly get lucid dreaming – lower instead means passive observation.
It’s like watching a movie. I have no control over what happens in the movie, still I’m consciously aware of it. I could instead play a video game, where I do have some control over what happens, and which arguably requires more of a critical attitude. I don’t see how this refutes my stance.
Vincent is right that lucid dreaming is about having knowledge that one is dreaming. I was under the mistaken impression that lucid dreams are about control, but that’s not the case:
… a lucid dream is a type of dream wherein the dreamer knows that they are dreaming while in their dream.
#5737·Vincent Brunsch, 16 days ago·AI-assistedI don’t think the movie/video-game analogy captures what I find interesting about dreaming here, because it seems to put phenomenal awareness, meta-awareness and control on a single scale of “critical ability”.
These capacities can dissociate: In an ordinary non-lucid dream there can already be vivid phenomenal experience without awareness that one is dreaming. Lucidity adds that meta-awareness, but does not necessarily add control (lucid dreams can themselves occur with or without substantial control over what happens).
So rather than a simple progression from passive/uncritical to active/critical, dreaming seems to give us different combinations of phenomenal experience, meta-awareness and control.
That is precisely why I think it provides some evidence that phenomenal experience is not tightly bound to the other capacities.
… without awareness that one is dreaming.
I can be unaware that I’m dreaming but still be aware of the dream itself. Just like I can be unaware that someone’s utterances are lies but still aware of their utterances. The word ‘aware’ has more to do with knowledge here than with consciousness.
… 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.”
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.
… 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.
Give video example of behavior
… 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.”
… 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.”
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.
#5745·Vincent Brunsch, 16 days ago·AI-assistedThe evidential standard seems asymmetric.
You have said that there ultimately cannot be a purely behavioral criterion for consciousness, because what matters is an explanation of the underlying program (#5693). But at the same time, apparently rigid or “blatantly robotic” behavior is allowed to count as evidence against consciousness.
In the other direction, apparently flexible, sophisticated or sentient-like animal behavior does not seem able to count correspondingly in favor of consciousness, because it could always in principle have been produced by a nonconscious program.
If behavior alone cannot establish sentience because we need to understand the underlying processing, I don’t see why apparently robotic behavior should by itself count more readily toward insentience. Unless there is already an independent reason to think phenomenal experience requires universal creativity, the evidential standard seems to favor insentience in advance.
… the evidential standard seems to favor insentience in advance.
As I noted elsewhere, you seem to be using some other epistemology, unlike Popper’s/Veritula’s. You could make it explicit in a separate discussion and then maybe continue here later. Until then, we may well reach an impasse in the animal discussion. Veritula doesn’t have a way to reflect impasses; in the meantime, it may not show the adoptability of ideas the right way.
#5745·Vincent Brunsch, 16 days ago·AI-assistedThe evidential standard seems asymmetric.
You have said that there ultimately cannot be a purely behavioral criterion for consciousness, because what matters is an explanation of the underlying program (#5693). But at the same time, apparently rigid or “blatantly robotic” behavior is allowed to count as evidence against consciousness.
In the other direction, apparently flexible, sophisticated or sentient-like animal behavior does not seem able to count correspondingly in favor of consciousness, because it could always in principle have been produced by a nonconscious program.
If behavior alone cannot establish sentience because we need to understand the underlying processing, I don’t see why apparently robotic behavior should by itself count more readily toward insentience. Unless there is already an independent reason to think phenomenal experience requires universal creativity, the evidential standard seems to favor insentience in advance.
… 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.”
#5745·Vincent Brunsch, 16 days ago·AI-assistedThe evidential standard seems asymmetric.
You have said that there ultimately cannot be a purely behavioral criterion for consciousness, because what matters is an explanation of the underlying program (#5693). But at the same time, apparently rigid or “blatantly robotic” behavior is allowed to count as evidence against consciousness.
In the other direction, apparently flexible, sophisticated or sentient-like animal behavior does not seem able to count correspondingly in favor of consciousness, because it could always in principle have been produced by a nonconscious program.
If behavior alone cannot establish sentience because we need to understand the underlying processing, I don’t see why apparently robotic behavior should by itself count more readily toward insentience. Unless there is already an independent reason to think phenomenal experience requires universal creativity, the evidential standard seems to favor insentience in advance.
But at the same time, apparently rigid or “blatantly robotic” behavior is allowed to count as evidence against consciousness.
I think animals are so blatantly mindless and stupid, like so far off the charts, that it counts for something. I’d bet money that you use the same standard for a Tesla bot or a Roomba, even though neither of us has a working theory of consciousness.
#5744·Vincent Brunsch, 16 days ago·AI-assistedI agree that this is not “learning” in the special Deutschian sense of universal knowledge creation. I was using “learning” in the ordinary biological sense of experience-dependent changes in processing and behavior.
In fact, the passage you link makes that distinction explicitly: Deutsch allows that the robot’s useful change can be called learning, while denying that it constitutes genuine creation of new knowledge.
That distinction is actually part of my point. I’m not claiming continuity in universal creativity between humans and other animals. I’m pointing to continuity in the older, non-universal capacities (such as sensory, nociceptive, affective and ordinary learning processes). Whether those processes can support phenomenal experience is precisely what is under discussion.
Ok but whether systems unrelated to learning in the Deutschian sense have continuity doesn’t seem to matter then.
The evolution of feathers has continuity in birds. So what? How does that matter for consciousness?
#5743·Vincent Brunsch, 16 days ago·AI-assistedI also wonder whether your note here should be a criticism rather than a comment. As I understand Veritula, an outstanding criticism makes the parent idea problematic and therefore not rationally adoptable, whereas comments are neutral.
A suggestion that an idea could be phrased more simply seems like a useful comment, but unless the wording actually makes the content of the claim ambiguous or substantively defective, I don’t see why it should count as a reason to reject the idea itself.
Criticisms target ideas as written. That includes grammar, typos, complexity/simplicity, etc.
#5742·Vincent Brunsch, 16 days ago·AI-assistedI initially wondered whether you were right that I could simplify this, but I think the distinction is necessary here. Writing “they … feel pain” would already assume part of the conclusion under dispute: that animal nociceptive processing is accompanied by phenomenal pain.
By “sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms” I was trying to refer to processes we can identify without assuming that they involve conscious experience. The wording is less simple, but in this case I think the precision actually matters.
Precision isn’t the issue here. Simple language can be precise. Read Popper and Feynman on expressing yourself so your readers understand you and your ideas get easier to criticize.
#5741·Vincent Brunsch, 16 days ago·AI-assistedI agree of course that consciousness, if computational, need not depend on neurons as a particular material substrate. But that is different from saying that the organization and activity implemented by those neurons tell us nothing.
The article you link makes this distinction itself: substrate independence means that most details of the substrate do not matter; what matters is the relevant pattern or structure of information processing. Studying homologous neural systems can give us evidence about exactly that organization and processing.
So my claim is not “they have similar neurons, therefore they have similar experiences.” It is that there is evolutionary continuity not only in the neural substrate, but also in how systems involved in sensory, nociceptive and affective processing are organized, what signals they process, and how they interact with other systems.
That seems evidentially relevant to what information processing is occurring. Substrate independence does not make that evidence irrelevant.
There’s also continuity in how MacBooks process information over the years, and how their hardware evolved, including ‘sensory processing’ like their cameras and microphones, yet none of them are sentient/conscious, and if one became conscious tomorrow, it would have nothing to do with its hardware and everything to do with its software.
#5740·Vincent Brunsch, 16 days ago·AI-assistedYes, it’s a guess. So the leap to universal creativity does not itself imply that phenomenal experience appeared in the same leap.
I proposed an alternative possibility (#5739): older, shared systems may already have supported phenomenal experience before universal creativity emerged. I’m not claiming that this alternative is established either.
I’m not sure “no other explanation is known” is quite right. For example, IIT offers a very different theory under which consciousness depends on a system’s intrinsic causal organization. My conjecture that phenomenal experience could predate universal creativity is at least compatible with that kind of account.
So it seems to me that we currently have competing conjectures here, rather than one known explanation and no alternative.
I’m not claiming that this alternative is established either.
This is again the wrong epistemology.
So it seems to me that we currently have competing conjectures here, rather than one known explanation and no alternative.
It only seems that way because of the wrong epistemology.