Animal Consciousness
#5693·Dennis Hackethal, 19 days agoFor any finite sequence of behavior, it seems possible in principle to posit a sufficiently elaborate fixed program that produces it. The same would apply to human behavior.
I disagree. Human behavior is so far off the mark I can’t explain it in terms of preprogramming only. I don’t know how to explain poems and rocket ships. Biological evolution had no reason to create any of the knowledge needed to make rocket ships, so preprogramming doesn’t make sense as an explanation.
If monkeys suddenly started making rocket ships one day, I would have trouble explaining that, for the same reason.
Ultimately the criterion will depend on an explanation of how the underlying program works. There can’t be a purely behavioral criterion, as DD argues in BoI ch. 7 (IIRC). But until we have that, some behavior is so blatantly robotic, like a Roomba, that I think we can reasonably conclude it has nothing to do with consciousness.
I agree that behavior which is blatantly robotic can be evidence that the behavior itself does not involve universal creativity, questioning or error correction. But I don't see how that gets us to the stronger conclusion that it “has nothing to do with consciousness.”
A system could execute a rigid, preprogrammed behavior while still having phenomenal experiences such as seeing color or feeling pain. The robotic character of the behavior seems relevant to whether the system is exercising universal creativity, but not by itself to whether anything is being experienced.
To infer insentience from the robotic behavior, we would still need the separate premise that phenomenal experience cannot accompany non-universal information processing, which is the point under dispute.
#5692·Dennis Hackethal, 19 days agoExplanations of animal behavior can be phrased fully in terms of unconscious, purely dogmatic information processing. We can write the programs and simulate animals on a computer. We don’t need consciousness for any of it. But we can’t write the program that would simulate a person on a computer. That program would result in consciousness. There’s an asymmetry there.
Can I prove that dogmatic programs don’t give rise to consciousness? No. But I think that’s the wrong epistemological standard. I can’t prove that rocks aren’t conscious either. What I do know is that I don’t invoke the concept of consciousness when explaining rocks (whatever little there is to explain about them).
Suppose we eventually can write complete generative programs for both a crow and a human. You say that the human program “would result in consciousness.”
I agree that this follows from your theory if universal creativity entails consciousness. But then I don’t think it can also serve as an independent argument for that connection. The possibility of a universally creative philosophical zombie is ruled out by your theory, rather than independently by the fact that the program is universally creative.
Likewise, your theory predicts that the crow program would be unconscious if it remains non-universal. Competing theories of consciousness could make different predictions about the same two programs. For example, IIT explicitly allows functionally equivalent systems to differ in consciousness depending on their intrinsic causal organization. I’m not assuming IIT is correct. It just illustrates that knowing what the two programs can do would not by itself decide which theory of consciousness is correct.
So I think the simulation comparison inherits the disagreement about which theory of consciousness is correct; it does not by itself resolve the link between universal creativity and phenomenal experience.
#5692·Dennis Hackethal, 19 days agoExplanations of animal behavior can be phrased fully in terms of unconscious, purely dogmatic information processing. We can write the programs and simulate animals on a computer. We don’t need consciousness for any of it. But we can’t write the program that would simulate a person on a computer. That program would result in consciousness. There’s an asymmetry there.
Can I prove that dogmatic programs don’t give rise to consciousness? No. But I think that’s the wrong epistemological standard. I can’t prove that rocks aren’t conscious either. What I do know is that I don’t invoke the concept of consciousness when explaining rocks (whatever little there is to explain about them).
I understand “we can write the programs and simulate animals” to mean that we can write an underlying program capable of generating an animal’s full behavioral and cognitive repertoire across novel circumstances. If you only mean that we can reproduce particular behaviors, then I don’t see the asymmetry, since we can reproduce particular human behaviors computationally too.
But I think we should be careful with the stronger claim. As far as I know, we cannot currently write such a complete generative program for animals such as crows or apes either. Indeed, even for vastly simpler animals such as the fruit fly or C. elegans, despite having mapped its complete connectome, our executable models still reproduce only parts of its behavior rather than the organism’s full repertoire.
#5685·Vincent Brunsch, 20 days ago·AI-assistedIn the reasoning you link in support of animal insentience, you argue that similarities between human and animal nervous systems do not tell us whether the same conscious “software” is running. But humans and other mammals are not analogous to two identical computers on which entirely unrelated programs happen to have been installed. The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.
A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.
Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience. The observation that universal creativity is uniquely human still leaves open whether older, shared systems already supported phenomenal experience.
The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.
That isn’t learning in the relevant sense that has to do with consciousness. DD explains some of that here.
#5685·Vincent Brunsch, 20 days ago·AI-assistedIn the reasoning you link in support of animal insentience, you argue that similarities between human and animal nervous systems do not tell us whether the same conscious “software” is running. But humans and other mammals are not analogous to two identical computers on which entirely unrelated programs happen to have been installed. The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.
A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.
Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience. The observation that universal creativity is uniquely human still leaves open whether older, shared systems already supported phenomenal experience.
The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.
Unnecessarily complex language like this makes ideas harder to criticize. Just write ‘they sense things, feel pain, and change behavior.’
#5685·Vincent Brunsch, 20 days ago·AI-assistedIn the reasoning you link in support of animal insentience, you argue that similarities between human and animal nervous systems do not tell us whether the same conscious “software” is running. But humans and other mammals are not analogous to two identical computers on which entirely unrelated programs happen to have been installed. The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.
A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.
Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience. The observation that universal creativity is uniquely human still leaves open whether older, shared systems already supported phenomenal experience.
Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience.
No, the substrate independence of computation rules that out. Neurons don’t matter for our purposes here, at all.
#5685·Vincent Brunsch, 20 days ago·AI-assistedIn the reasoning you link in support of animal insentience, you argue that similarities between human and animal nervous systems do not tell us whether the same conscious “software” is running. But humans and other mammals are not analogous to two identical computers on which entirely unrelated programs happen to have been installed. The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.
A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.
Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience. The observation that universal creativity is uniquely human still leaves open whether older, shared systems already supported phenomenal experience.
A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.
It’s a guess. No other explanation is known. If you have a different guess, propose it here.
#5685·Vincent Brunsch, 20 days ago·AI-assistedIn the reasoning you link in support of animal insentience, you argue that similarities between human and animal nervous systems do not tell us whether the same conscious “software” is running. But humans and other mammals are not analogous to two identical computers on which entirely unrelated programs happen to have been installed. The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.
A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.
Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience. The observation that universal creativity is uniquely human still leaves open whether older, shared systems already supported phenomenal experience.
The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history…
So do laptops and their hardware, only with memetic evolutionary history. So what?
#5683·Vincent Brunsch, 20 days ago·AI-assistedI have seen no evidence of any animal behavior that could not have been preprogrammed. If you know of any, please show me. <
You ask for animal behavior that could not have been preprogrammed. But I’m not sure any finite observed behavior could meet that standard.
For any finite sequence of behavior, it seems possible in principle to posit a sufficiently elaborate fixed program that produces it. The same would apply to human behavior.
So if the criterion for sentience is behavior that could not possibly have been preprogrammed, it is unclear how sentience could ever be established behaviorally, including in humans.
For any finite sequence of behavior, it seems possible in principle to posit a sufficiently elaborate fixed program that produces it. The same would apply to human behavior.
I disagree. Human behavior is so far off the mark I can’t explain it in terms of preprogramming only. I don’t know how to explain poems and rocket ships. Biological evolution had no reason to create any of the knowledge needed to make rocket ships, so preprogramming doesn’t make sense as an explanation.
If monkeys suddenly started making rocket ships one day, I would have trouble explaining that, for the same reason.
Ultimately the criterion will depend on an explanation of how the underlying program works. There can’t be a purely behavioral criterion, as DD argues in BoI ch. 7 (IIRC). But until we have that, some behavior is so blatantly robotic, like a Roomba, that I think we can reasonably conclude it has nothing to do with consciousness.
#5682·Vincent Brunsch, 20 days ago·AI-assistedBut the argument is that behavior that may just as well be preprogrammed and then executed mindlessly is not evidence of consciousness (because it is, again, mindless).
This seems to be circular reasoning:
Your reply seems to move from “the behavior could have been preprogrammed” to “the behavior is therefore mindless.” But those are different claims.“Preprogrammed” describes how the behavior is generated. “Mindless” additionally says that no phenomenal experience accompanies that process. That does not follow unless we already assume that non-universal or preprogrammed computation cannot support phenomenal experience. Which is precisely the connection my criticism questioned.
So showing that animal behavior could be preprogrammed may show that the behavior does not prove sentience, but it does not by itself provide evidence of insentience.
Explanations of animal behavior can be phrased fully in terms of unconscious, purely dogmatic information processing. We can write the programs and simulate animals on a computer. We don’t need consciousness for any of it. But we can’t write the program that would simulate a person on a computer. That program would result in consciousness. There’s an asymmetry there.
Can I prove that dogmatic programs don’t give rise to consciousness? No. But I think that’s the wrong epistemological standard. I can’t prove that rocks aren’t conscious either. What I do know is that I don’t invoke the concept of consciousness when explaining rocks (whatever little there is to explain about them).
#5684·Vincent Brunsch, 20 days ago·AI-assistedIf vivid phenomenal experience persists while the relevant critical capacities are greatly diminished (and some forms of meta-awareness appear to be absent altogether in ordinary dreams) that seems at least evidence that phenomenal experience does not closely depend on the degree to which those capacities are active. Lucid dreaming strengthens this: reflective/metacognitive capacities can return within an experience that was already phenomenal.
I usually find that terms like “phenomenal experience” and “cognition” are confusing and make discussions harder. Ultimately, there’s one type of consciousness and one type of information processing that gives rise to it. I don’t think distinctions between different types of ‘cognition’ or ‘experience’ are worth drawing, if they even exist in reality at all.
#5684·Vincent Brunsch, 20 days ago·AI-assistedIf vivid phenomenal experience persists while the relevant critical capacities are greatly diminished (and some forms of meta-awareness appear to be absent altogether in ordinary dreams) that seems at least evidence that phenomenal experience does not closely depend on the degree to which those capacities are active. Lucid dreaming strengthens this: reflective/metacognitive capacities can return within an experience that was already phenomenal.
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.
#5681·Dennis Hackethal revised 20 days agoI don’t think animals are sentient.
I realize this view sounds outlandish to most but it’s a considered, researched conclusion.
There’s lots of evidence of insentience in the way animals behave. If they were sentient, they would not behave the way they do: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/evidence-of-animal-insentience
Dozens of videos compiling and explaining evidence of animal insentience: https://libertythroughreason.com/insentience-in-animals-and-sleepwalkers/
Additional reasoning:
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-faq
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/konrad-lorenz-hacked-animals
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-discussion-tree
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/the-animal-rights-community-is-based-on-fear-a
In the reasoning you link in support of animal insentience, you argue that similarities between human and animal nervous systems do not tell us whether the same conscious “software” is running. But humans and other mammals are not analogous to two identical computers on which entirely unrelated programs happen to have been installed. The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.
A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.
Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience. The observation that universal creativity is uniquely human still leaves open whether older, shared systems already supported phenomenal experience.
#5680·Dennis Hackethal, 20 days agoThis suggests that phenomenal experience can occur independently of the active critical capacities you take animals to lack.
I don’t think so, since, as you write yourself, the critical attitude while dreaming is only “diminished”, not completely gone.
If vivid phenomenal experience persists while the relevant critical capacities are greatly diminished (and some forms of meta-awareness appear to be absent altogether in ordinary dreams) that seems at least evidence that phenomenal experience does not closely depend on the degree to which those capacities are active. Lucid dreaming strengthens this: reflective/metacognitive capacities can return within an experience that was already phenomenal.
#5679·Dennis Hackethal, 20 days agoHi Vincent, welcome to V. Nice meeting you at Conjecture Con.
But why must phenomenal experience emerge only together with universal creativity?
Idk why you switched from “consciousness” to “phenomenal experience” here. But the argument is that behavior that may just as well be preprogrammed and then executed mindlessly is not evidence of consciousness (because it is, again, mindless).
I have seen no evidence of any animal behavior that could not have been preprogrammed. If you know of any, please show me.
I have seen no evidence of any animal behavior that could not have been preprogrammed. If you know of any, please show me. <
You ask for animal behavior that could not have been preprogrammed. But I’m not sure any finite observed behavior could meet that standard.
For any finite sequence of behavior, it seems possible in principle to posit a sufficiently elaborate fixed program that produces it. The same would apply to human behavior.
So if the criterion for sentience is behavior that could not possibly have been preprogrammed, it is unclear how sentience could ever be established behaviorally, including in humans.
#5679·Dennis Hackethal, 20 days agoHi Vincent, welcome to V. Nice meeting you at Conjecture Con.
But why must phenomenal experience emerge only together with universal creativity?
Idk why you switched from “consciousness” to “phenomenal experience” here. But the argument is that behavior that may just as well be preprogrammed and then executed mindlessly is not evidence of consciousness (because it is, again, mindless).
I have seen no evidence of any animal behavior that could not have been preprogrammed. If you know of any, please show me.
But the argument is that behavior that may just as well be preprogrammed and then executed mindlessly is not evidence of consciousness (because it is, again, mindless).
This seems to be circular reasoning:
Your reply seems to move from “the behavior could have been preprogrammed” to “the behavior is therefore mindless.” But those are different claims.
“Preprogrammed” describes how the behavior is generated. “Mindless” additionally says that no phenomenal experience accompanies that process. That does not follow unless we already assume that non-universal or preprogrammed computation cannot support phenomenal experience. Which is precisely the connection my criticism questioned.
So showing that animal behavior could be preprogrammed may show that the behavior does not prove sentience, but it does not by itself provide evidence of insentience.
Add newest video compilation
I don’t think animals are sentient.
I realize this view sounds outlandish to most but it’s a considered, researched conclusion.
There’s lots of evidence of insentience in the way animals behave. If they were sentient, they would not behave the way they do: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/evidence-of-animal-insentience
Additional reasoning:
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-faq
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/konrad-lorenz-hacked-animals
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-discussion-tree
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/the-animal-rights-community-is-based-on-fear-a
I don’t think animals are sentient.
I realize this view sounds outlandish to most but it’s a considered, researched conclusion.
There’s lots of evidence of insentience in the way animals behave. If they were sentient, they would not behave the way they do: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/evidence-of-animal-insentience
Dozens of videos compiling and explaining evidence of animal insentience: https://libertythroughreason.com/insentience-in-animals-and-sleepwalkers/
Additional reasoning:
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-faq
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/konrad-lorenz-hacked-animals
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-discussion-tree
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/the-animal-rights-community-is-based-on-fear-a
#5678·Vincent Brunsch, 20 days ago·AI-assistedIn the reasoning you link in support of animal insentience, you argue that sentience and the capacity for universal creativity/critical thought come as a package deal. Dreaming seems to provide evidence against that connection.
Ordinary dreams can involve vivid visual experience, fear, pleasure, pain, etc., while metacognition, reality testing and critical reflection are greatly diminished. Lucid dreaming makes the distinction especially interesting: metacognitive awareness can return during an already conscious dream. The dream does not become phenomenally conscious only when lucidity begins; rather, an additional capacity for recognizing and critically reflecting on the experience appears.
This suggests that phenomenal experience can occur independently of the active critical capacities you take animals to lack.
This suggests that phenomenal experience can occur independently of the active critical capacities you take animals to lack.
I don’t think so, since, as you write yourself, the critical attitude while dreaming is only “diminished”, not completely gone.
#5677·Vincent Brunsch, 21 days ago·AI-assistedYou propose in your writings that universal creativity can emerge from lower-level, mindless computation, and that consciousness is among the emergent properties associated with creativity. But why must phenomenal experience emerge only together with universal creativity?
The fact that simple execution-only systems are not conscious does not show that no noncreative computation can have phenomenal properties. For example, pain could in principle have emerged from a different kind of lower-level computation long before that system acquired universal creativity.
So unless there is an explanation for why phenomenal experience cannot emerge from noncreative computation, the inference from “animals are noncreative” to “animals are insentient” does not seem to follow.
The inference would seem more natural in the opposite direction: evidence that animals lacked phenomenal experience might support doubts about more general mental capacities, but the absence of universal creativity does not by itself explain why even pain or color experience should be absent.
Hi Vincent, welcome to V. Nice meeting you at Conjecture Con.
But why must phenomenal experience emerge only together with universal creativity?
Idk why you switched from “consciousness” to “phenomenal experience” here. But the argument is that behavior that may just as well be preprogrammed and then executed mindlessly is not evidence of consciousness (because it is, again, mindless).
I have seen no evidence of any animal behavior that could not have been preprogrammed. If you know of any, please show me.
#3039·Dennis Hackethal, 11 months agoI don’t think animals are sentient.
I realize this view sounds outlandish to most but it’s a considered, researched conclusion.
There’s lots of evidence of insentience in the way animals behave. If they were sentient, they would not behave the way they do: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/evidence-of-animal-insentience
Additional reasoning:
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-faq
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/konrad-lorenz-hacked-animals
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-discussion-tree
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/the-animal-rights-community-is-based-on-fear-a
In the reasoning you link in support of animal insentience, you argue that sentience and the capacity for universal creativity/critical thought come as a package deal. Dreaming seems to provide evidence against that connection.
Ordinary dreams can involve vivid visual experience, fear, pleasure, pain, etc., while metacognition, reality testing and critical reflection are greatly diminished. Lucid dreaming makes the distinction especially interesting: metacognitive awareness can return during an already conscious dream. The dream does not become phenomenally conscious only when lucidity begins; rather, an additional capacity for recognizing and critically reflecting on the experience appears.
This suggests that phenomenal experience can occur independently of the active critical capacities you take animals to lack.
#3039·Dennis Hackethal, 11 months agoI don’t think animals are sentient.
I realize this view sounds outlandish to most but it’s a considered, researched conclusion.
There’s lots of evidence of insentience in the way animals behave. If they were sentient, they would not behave the way they do: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/evidence-of-animal-insentience
Additional reasoning:
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-faq
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/konrad-lorenz-hacked-animals
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-discussion-tree
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/the-animal-rights-community-is-based-on-fear-a
You propose in your writings that universal creativity can emerge from lower-level, mindless computation, and that consciousness is among the emergent properties associated with creativity. But why must phenomenal experience emerge only together with universal creativity?
The fact that simple execution-only systems are not conscious does not show that no noncreative computation can have phenomenal properties. For example, pain could in principle have emerged from a different kind of lower-level computation long before that system acquired universal creativity.
So unless there is an explanation for why phenomenal experience cannot emerge from noncreative computation, the inference from “animals are noncreative” to “animals are insentient” does not seem to follow.
The inference would seem more natural in the opposite direction: evidence that animals lacked phenomenal experience might support doubts about more general mental capacities, but the absence of universal creativity does not by itself explain why even pain or color experience should be absent.
I don’t think animals are sentient.
I realize this view sounds outlandish to most but it’s a considered, researched conclusion.
There’s lots of evidence of insentience in the way animals behave. If they were sentient, they would not behave the way they do: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/evidence-of-animal-insentience
Additional reasoning:
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-faq
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/konrad-lorenz-hacked-animals
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-discussion-tree
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/the-animal-rights-community-is-based-on-fear-a
As I write in the first link, the videos “mostly show bugs and nonsensical behavior, things that wouldn’t happen if animals were sentient.”
P.S. Dirk was here
As I write in the first link, the videos “mostly show bugs and nonsensical behavior, things that wouldn’t happen if animals were sentient.”
As I write in the first link, the videos “mostly show bugs and nonsensical behavior, things that wouldn’t happen if animals were sentient.”
As I write in the first link, the videos “mostly show bugs and nonsensical behavior, things that wouldn’t happen if animals were sentient.”
P.S. Dirk was here